As we all know, Eric doesn't want donations of any sort, because he doesn't see gaming as profitable.
Profit, according to the Oxford Dictionary: A financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.
If we use the generic concept of profit, it is not it, it is not profit, I think it has been poor worded and a lot of people would not understand what you said; Eric doesn't want people to spend their money on PB2, not making profit, if it was about profit then he could just spend the money with let's say developing PB2.5 or just storing the money so he can host his own website which has no financial gain.
BUT LETS USE WHAT I KNOW ABOUT:
According to the austrian school of economics which works with the concepts of praxeology aka human action:
Action attempts to exchange a less desirable condition for a more desirable one, and costs are incurred to achieve a goal. The difference between the value of the costs and of the goal is called profit.
Then it is indeed profit, as what I am doing right now is trying to achieve profit, making so Eric starts accepting money so PB2.5 comes out better, earlier and maybe he makes something out of it, the simple fact that I am spending time right now is the cost, everything implies it.
I kinda went off topic but ok.
But I can't help but think. When PB2.5 comes out, it'll have the same population PB2 does because we aren't doing anything about it.
Why? it won't, so let me use a simple fact.
BoZ currently has 42 members according to their website, not sure about inactive and people that wouldn't do it.
I'm sure all members of BoZ that played PB2 would play it at least once to see how it is, and even if not, they would try it out.
Now use the same concept but with many other PB2 groups, use the many people from the forums or discord that don't play, random old players, it is way more people.
Of course it is not an amount of players that would stay high for a long time, but it would be more and if the game is indeed great, they might stay, and if it has constant updates or has a really great community-oriented system it might live more.
But wait! How can we advertise this game if Eric doesn't accept donations you may ask?
We can just spend our money ourselves in a private way to make propaganda for it, Eric would have no way to deal with it and there is also a big chance he could even not see it, and it would work pretty well.
Tempus has control over PB2's social media, when PB2.5 comes out, we can donate to him so he pays for Youtube, Facebook and other kind of ads.
Why exactly Tempus? wouldn't it be worse considering, well, he is close to Eric and Eric doesn't like it, there is a high chance he would follow what Eric says or agrees with him, and also why use PB2s social media? the people that follow it probably still play the game and already are playing it if 2.5 releases.
This idea isn't foreign either, back in the days of plazmaburstforum dot com or whatever we could donate to Tempus to keep his TTS server and the forum alive.
A idea being foreign or not doesn't mean anything, in theory it just builds an appeal to the past/tradition aka argumentum ad antiquitatem.
The idea is great, your idea for execution is not, just take someone everybody from the community trusts and would like to do it, give the person some money, that person starts doing an ACTUAL JOB and does an excelent job at it or it dies (if it dies we just pick someone else) and well, it works!