in fairness, there is no "consensus" when only a handful of 175 participants has been a part of this short dialog while the conditions have changed from what was presented.
that said, i DO support going forward with your collecting the $$ and donating. and, please cover your own expenses (fees, paypal, etc); you should not lose money acting as facilitator while you've already invested tons of your time. and, i would bring itch's cut down to zero for the duration of the bundle so we can deliver the most support possible to those who need it more.
with that, i've some experience hosting bundles with dozens of participants/upward of 200 projects so, some advice:
your email expressed concern re: how long it would take for you to assemble the bundle; a tip:
- when you go to enter the project urls, you can paste (at least) 20 at a time. so, what i do is open the jam's .csv file, select 20, Copy, go to the bundle project prompt and Paste. repeat and until you've pasted all 500+ but 20 at a time helps speed things up.
then, you've been relying on itch.io email and this forum for communication while you'll find a large portion haven't been following this nor do they check the particular email address they've connected with itch.io. aka, many of the participants will never receive the bundle link for them to Accept and, at this point, a number have forgotten about it, i expect.
that said, i would anticipate the first bundle failing (not enough will find their way there and Accept so that it could be published, even with the new self-pruning functionality). so, i would anticipate this by using the first bundle/run as a ping to see who is actually available and/or agrees to the new terms by clearly stating it in the bundle's Description along with a notion of "staying tuned" for an expected 2nd bundle that would only include those who received the communication and accepted the first.
you could try contacting itch and ask them to prune whomever doesn't accept the first bundle but i seriously doubt enough would have Accepted the first bundle assembled for them to do so (and they've not responded to my requests more than once).
then, i would set that first bundle's deadline to Accept to include 2 full weekends. then, if there needs to be another bundle, another 2 weekends which now puts the earliest Start Date for the bundle to be, say, October 1st.
while this is well beyond our initial hope for a Start, trust that it would finally be in motion and serving those who need the support, still. i know i'd be happy no matter when the Bundle finally goes Live.
finally, do update whichever final Bundle that goes Live with receipts of your making donations on behalf of supporters. it would help depict the notion of trust required for something like this to succeed.
add: i just re-read the Overview; i would run the bundle for AT LEAST 1 Month while you suggested 2 weeks. aka, give us a chance to help circulate it. since you didnt exclude NSFW, expect the bundle here to be de-indexed (unless ur manually gonna check each project ;) ) and/or not visible to many when browsing. so, we'll be the majority of the energy getting it in front of eyes.
/¢ :)
thanks again, Oni, for all of your time and effort.