The Voynich Ninja

If someone offers a prize or a grant; great, if not then things continue as normal; fine.

If i had some $ going spare, i would fund some research grants rather than offer a prize.
  And to be brutally honest if i did have some spare $, i would spend very little of it on vms research,
  the vms, to me is a cool little puzzle and with this forum to inspire and guide me it makes working on it a fun and entertaining pastime.

To get back on topic, 
i cannot think of a hobby from playing tennis to finishing jigsaws to solving crackme's that does not involve a least a little self-induced pain. ( kinda like life in miniature i guess ).
As to whether it is worth the pain and time that is up to you yourself to decide,
regarding any health issues that arise that also is up to you but hopefully there are people around who can intervene when you push too hard.

Interesting little link to Association for Art History -> Grants
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Why fiddle about? Why not just hire some competent archivist to spend 2-4 hours at a hundred euros an hour to explore this (or that) "mythical" undigitized archive to see what's there? Don't know where that would be, but I'm sure there will be some good suggestions.

The question is not who has the solution, or who has what education. It's who gets the money or not.
The only question should be.
What should I wear when I accept the prize.

Well, I think there are good reasons that most academics currently involved in MS 408 research are not medievalists or (art)historians (with the rare exception of Lisa Fagin Davis as we all know), but linguists or cryptologists. Frankly, as a trained scholar of manuscripts of a non-European cultural tradition, while I think MS 408 cannot be "solved" without the dedicated input of medievalists, to them there are probably far more interesting problems out there which can also be far better illustrated by other manuscripts. 
Unless this prize comes with a prestigious fellowship or endowed chair etc (and trust me when I say nothing the likes of Mr. Musk can provide will ever suffice), I do not see established scholars being very interested in something like this at all. 
Not to mention that MS 408 seems too tainted by the...let's say...the less rational or civil members of the amateur research community to be respected proposal material. 

Anyways to get back on topic, if trying to solve it is fun, then why not? I haven't tried myself since I don't pretend to know anything about European manuscripts, but I have spent many enjoyable evenings reading everyone's admirable efforts.