Are you or do you know someone who raises money for charity ? Have you noticed that your fund raising income is lower than normal ? I guess the answer to those two questions will be a big yes. But did you know that there is help from one of the best known names in the world and has a presence in nealy every country.
The days are gone when you ran a fund raising auction and had just the few people in the room who lived in a nearby town or village. How would you like to place an auction and within a few minutes your item will be seen by millions of people around the world, and with the choice of saying anything between 10% to 100% can go to your chosen charity. Of course I am talking about eBay.
There are many different ways in which you can use eBay as a vichiel to sell items for charity. The best way is to sign up your charity for “Giving Works” if it is not already, as this means everything is kept above board and a record can be kept.
1) The first and easiest way is for someone who knows about eBay and has some spare time is for them to take on the job of doing the research and then listing and shipping the items out for members of the charity, but be warned this will take time, but the rewards for the charity will be well worth it. All that needs to be done is a letter go out to members asking for items that can be sold. These are items that would normally be sold at places like Garage sales, carboots etc.
2) Another way that is almost the same as the above is to collect a large amount of items from members, via newsletters, letters and word of mouth, and once you have a large amount, look for someone who runs a Trading Assistant Business and get them to do the work. The only downside of this is that they will take out a commission for their work. But the upside is that they know what they are doing and how to list to get good prices. Therefore the upside will far outway the downside.
3) Another way is where you can ask your members to donate brand new items and then get these items listed on eBay and you can use either the method of someone from the charity doing the listing or asking a Trading Assistant to do it.
4) Another way is when you stop and think outside the box, why not ask people to donate, write poems, short stories, recipies and get someone to compile them into a book either printed or ebook on cd format and sell that on eBay. Remember you will have people all over the world buying and supporting your charity.
5) The last way I want to tell you about today, is this. You are a charity based in New York, and the charity is basically a New York one, and all the support comes from local people, but you have supporters all over the world, but due to travel etc they cannot send items for auctions. Stop that was then we are now on eBay. Let us say there is someone in Australia who has family in New York who support the charity, they can now log into eBay Australia, list the item, click on the Giving Works button, look for the charity in New York click it, then state how much they want to give between 10 – 100%. Very easy and very simple, but at the same time very powerful.
Hope this has helped you think outside the box when you are looking for ways of using eBay.
