2016 Charity Auction - Spitballing

[isiolia]

I definitely want it to happen but last year was like pulling teeth picking a charity and getting ppl to donate. Any ideas on what can we do to make this year easier and more successful?

I would maybe reconsider the notion of doing an auction, or at least doing it as decentralized as it has been. Personally, I donated items for a couple years, but haven't bought anything, and didn't really come up with anything the last year or two. Partly because I had less that I was willing to part with, and partly because - for those of use that aren't B/S/T'ing much - shipping stuff out is a potentially expensive hassle (particularly if international bids win).

Plus, to me, it's somewhat wasteful - all those shipping costs that are "donated", but not seen by the end recipient. I know that would have doubled the donation (or more) for some of the items I shipped out the first year.

The way things have been set up is very one-sided. Bidders are effectively buying stuff per usual. Pay money, item shows up. Donors, on the other hand, are spending time and money to give things away. It gets a lot more attractive to just keep stuff, and click to donate online elsewhere. Likely more rewarding if you're participating in buying too, but not everyone does.

I know there have been efforts to make sure things have a decent value, or reimburse shipping, etc. However, it doesn't change that it's a one-sided thing. I can see the point in what mjmjr25 was suggesting there. At least then, everyone is participating to the same degree. Everyone ships something, everyone gets something, everyone puts money in the pot. I'm not sure on the entire idea, with regard to actually raising money...but that aspect of it is a key consideration, in my opinion.

My thought would be more to take the charitable giving part of it, and maybe see if there'd be another way to implement it.
Could do it as a raffle instead. Another site I frequent does that annually to help with hosting costs, though they have a lot more active posters. They have donated prizes sent to one of the admins, who then handles shipping them back out to winners.

Or perhaps something centralized. Like make site merchandise that could be sold with a few bucks going to a charity, or sent as a reward for donating via some other means (like GoFundMe). Possible to curate a Humble Bundle or something? Not sure how that works.

[Fragems]

Shipping stuff out is a potentially expensive hassle (particularly if international bids win).

This is the big reason I usually only bid now. International shipping is a bitch and hitting up the bidder for extra shipping $ is awkward. After the first time I donated stuff I essentially got into the mind set that I'm spending so much on shipping that I'd be better off donating money directly or bidding.

I might donate some stuff this year since I have duplicates of a few things that I got cheap off Amazon Warehouse deals, but in all likelihood I'll probably just end up bidding on stuff if we do it.

[joehero]

I have a few thoughts on this.
1. The last auction was specific on does and don'ts when donating items. I think i said something about not donating items unless the value outweighed the cost of shipping. I was ready to donate and have in the past, but then was reluctant after reading that. There's a possibility that other also felt the same and that would explain the low donations. Although, I dont see the harm in donating something that has less value than the shipping as long as the donor is paying for it.
2. I like the idea of keeping it an auction. This site is a community of members with a passion for video games. To simply donate money would be less interaction on the site and less amusing. To win a bid on a game that you would enjoy and the money goes to someone or something that could benefit from it is rewarding on both ends.
3. I would suggest all auctions be done on ebay. These items would be made available to the world and not just Racketboy members. This might help drive the price up on some of the items. Also every auction header should have Racketboy in the header making it easy to search. All descriptions could have a short write up on what racketboy is and what charity its benefiting. Last have a page with links to all auctions and update the price on them.
Just a couple of suggestions. No matter what way it goes, I hope it's successful!

[KalessinDB]

This year I'm definitely going through some changes in my collecting, and was definitely thinking about letting some of my stuff go to the auction since it's a good cause...

But there's definitely been a decline in interest in the last few years. Then again, the site as a whole seems to have had less people over the last few years, and that's a conversation we've had many times before.

[mjmjr25]

I have a few thoughts on this.
1. The last auction was specific on does and don'ts when donating items. I think i said something about not donating items unless the value outweighed the cost of shipping. I was ready to donate and have in the past, but then was reluctant after reading that. There's a possibility that other also felt the same and that would explain the low donations. Although, I dont see the harm in donating something that has less value than the shipping as long as the donor is paying for it.

Yeah - I did have that as a rule for 2 reasons:
1 - if something goes for $7 and costs $10 to ship. Where is the benefit to the charity? USPS gets $10 and the charity gets $7 - that is silly. Keep your item and make a $10 donation to the charity.
2 - when we allowed anything and everything - we absolutely had more items, but we also had a lot of stuff people just didn't want. People put in random bits and bobs, incomplete games, partially working gadgets, etc. They cluttered up the list, often didn't sell, and when they did - see above.

The EBAY idea...not sure. I like the site promotion aspect, but the items we put up here as auction generally do well - same or better (sale price) than they'd do on ebay. Those that do bid on the few items, bid generously. We wouldn't see higher end bids, but we would have to deal with ebay fees, paypal fees, and then transferring all the money to the joint paypal account and then to the charity. This doesn't begin to take into account run of the mill ebay hassles.

tl;dr - great for site promotion; likely less money raised, and huge potential for headaches.

[Anapan]

You know I'm always all in.
Tough decision on the public auctions - I don't like the idea myself - I think we should keep it in-house, but it's all about the charity getting the biggest gain so it's definitely something to think about. I can definitely see the headache part being large - I still haven't received one of the items I won (not complaining - he's a good guy who hasn't been here after donating, and I owe him one. Too bad about him quitting the forum tho).
I'm planning to build another OX-Box primed for multiplayer, and have some boxes in a storage room slowly being filled with leftovers from upgrades.
It'd be a shame if we didn't keep the tradition alive after all these years.
Be attitude for gains!

[Ziggy]

You know, I was just looking over last year's auction. I'm not sure if we have to change anything. Sure, the auction participation (mainly donations) was lacking from previous years, but we made a donation of $1,000. That's something to be proud of. Of course, it would be great if we raised more (but you can ALWAYS say that no matter how much you raise) but I'm totally fine with a thousand dollar donation.

$1000 – Setup an accessible gaming system in the home of a disabled gamer

I'm absolutely fine if that's the best we can accomplish. In fact, I'm proud of it.

So I'm not sure if we need to change how we're doing the auction. Even though last year was our (I think) smallest and slowest auction, it still works! If we do an auction at the end of this year and it ends up "only" raising $1,000 like last year, I'm cool with that. I'm not saying we can't aim to do better, I'm just saying I don't think we need any drastic changes. The formula works.

My vote would be to keep the same format as previous years but try to garner more participation.

[wclem]

The auction for whatever reason seems to come up when I am not thinking about it. I forget it is coming up or whatever. This year I have been holding some items aside just for it. I am glad to see it pop up early this year. People can start saving items for it now rather than scrambling because they forgot it was coming up.

I am absolutely gonna get in on the donating this year. I have some items that are not games but media related. Swag, movies and dvds etc. Unless something happens I am going to be active this year.

It would be nice to see people bidding from outside the site, or those who sign up just to bid. Might attract some people, hopefully they do not hit the front page though, looks like a dead or dying site.

[jmbarnes101]

I have an item or two I'm planning on donating. I keep trying to get something else done but it doesn't seem to happen; it's time intensive and the individual pieces for it are hard to find.

[noiseredux]

Ziggy seems to be really amped up about it this year. Maybe he'd be interested in running it this year? Maybe he can get jmbarnes101 to help him out or something? I mean I know it's still kind of early to really be planning it anyway, but...

I don't know. I'm not sure that we knew who was even going to organize it this year? Dave's busy painting pictures, Luke's banned and Mike wore a plastic bag over his head in a thunderstorm recently. I just don't feel like he should be in charge of anything.