2016 Charity Auction - Spitballing

[noiseredux]

So I had a thought on how to raise extra funds this year for the charity event and that's through a raffle. I was thinking we could charge $5-20 a ticket and then pick up a decent prize like the new HDMI NES and the remainder would get sent to charity. Alternately we could have a smaller prize where for every $5 your auction items bring in you get entered for a chance to win said prize. Just trying to think outside the box folks.

not sure how you'd do that. Paypal considers raffles "gambling," and thus against their TOS.

[jmbarnes101]

Well then call it a donation. One happy donor just happens to get a prize out of it.

The second option doesn't do anything except encourage people to donate more and better items though.

[noiseredux]

Well then call it a donation. One happy donor just happens to get a prize out of it.

that's thin ice man. All you need is one guy to put "for the raffle" in the message box and you could be in some hot water. I wouldn't recommend we knowingly do anything against Paypal's TOS. If their rule is "raffles are gambling," then we shouldn't be encouraging folks to "gamble" but pretend they're not.

[Ziggy]

What if we do it like this: You earn one raffle ticket for each item you donate (item has to be valued at X amount of dollars to earn a ticket). Could do one prize winner, or one grand prize with 2nd and 3rd place winners. This would encourage people to donate items, which in turn would help raise more money, and it would have nothing to do with PayPal.

[jmbarnes101]

What if we do it like this: You earn one raffle ticket for each item you donate (item has to be valued at X amount of dollars to earn a ticket). Could do one prize winner, or one grand prize with 2nd and 3rd place winners. This would encourage people to donate items, which in turn would help raise more money, and it would have nothing to do with PayPal.

Very similar to my second option and I think this could work. I do like my idea of generating the number of tickets earned depending on how items perform though, no arbitrary value that way. We would need to figure out what the prize(s) would be and where they come from though. The benefit for the first is that it would pay for the item but PayPal has killed that so we'd need to get creative.

[mjmjr25]

Where does the item come from? It sounds like it would get paid for out of donations received that sell for a certain amount. I like the incentive idea, but if we're looking at a nice a prize, a prize that will actually motivate people to donate specifically for a chance to get that prize - were talking a few hundred dollars off the top - using last year's number as a total - $1,000 minus $300 - the charity would lose money? Maybe i'm not understanding the idea - can you guys elaborate?

[Ziggy]

Yeah, I think I like that better. You get 1 ticket for every $5 your item(s) raise. I think that's more fair than the 1 ticket per item idea.

Some of us could volunteer to chose and pay for the prize(s), or we could buy the prize from the PayPal earnings. We could try and obtain a grand prize item by asking someone to donate it or discount it for us. I think one grand prize (something cool like the HDMI NES) and two runner up prizes of $20 gift cards would be good.

edit: Yes, if we have to take money from the donations received it would kind of suck. But the idea is that (hopefully) more items would be donated so more money would be raised. You would hope that the extra donations adds up to more than the prize costs. But as I said above, we could try and get someone to donate or discount the prize for us. $300 sounds a little high.

[Michi]

*insert 'you have to spend money to make money' saying*


Seriously though, I think it's a good idea, you just have to be careful how you implement it. For instance, the organization I work for has a charity auction every July. A lot of what they auction off comes in through donations, yes, but I know for a fact that they also buy things through various sources to put in the auction each year. The difference, of course, is that they're an organization that can afford to spend a couple thousand dollars for items, because they're relatively sure they'll be able to make that money back and then some (hopefully.)

I think Ziggy's idea is a good one, but it's ultimately still going to boil down to if people think they have anything they think is worth donating or not. If it works out, and more donations come in, awesome-sauce. If not, back to the drawing board for next year.

[Ziggy]

but it's ultimately still going to boil down to if people think they have anything they think is worth donating or not.

That's what I was talking about earlier though. We put up the call for donations late in the year with a deadline, and people are limited to what they have lying around. We need to get people thinking about donations NOW.

For example: Let's say I'm browsing eBay or Amazon or I'm in a thrift store or whatever. Let's say I come across item ABC for a great price. I already own it, or I just don't want it for myself, but I pick it up anyway so I can donate it to the auction at the end of the year.

Another example: Any time you talk to a friend or family member, casually bring up the charity auction and ask them if they have any old games in their basement or attack. Or anything neat that might do well in the auction since it doesn't HAVE to be video game related.

[dsheinem]

Raffles? Prizes? Contests? Paying for prizes from donations? This all seems like a lot of work that, unfortunately, would likely be a lot more trouble than it is worth given the forum's status these days.

In any case, here's a few stray thoughts about a hypothetical new auction from a person who used to run the old ones...

First, starting to talk about the auction in June/July is insane. Sorry, Ziggy, but that isn't when we used to start discussing the auction and, if someone did bring it up in the summer, discussion was typically quickly scuttled until the fall. I always though it worked best if we start planning in October, implemented plans in November, and ran it in December. Otherwise it becomes a (nearly) year-round auction discussion and people tend to get burned out on it before it even starts.

Next, I don't think that the forum really has enough interested/invested participants to make any kind of traditional model we've used before worth while, no matter how great the cause may be. Not only are the forums increasingly barren, but I'd guess the vast majority of those who had backlogged stuff to donate to something like this did so years ago. If they weren't burned on shipping and donated again in a subsequent year, my guess is that they probably aren't sitting on near as much stuff to toss in to this anymore. Hell, the last year or so that I ran it we had maybe two-three people donating almost 50% or so of the items and another 10 or so people each donating a few items each. We went from auctions with several hundred items that were actively being bid on to auctions with scores of items that were remaining unbid until late if at all. If I recall correctly, we also have seen a significant drop off in the number of people doing the bidding each of the past few years.



I would suggest, instead, a more basic fundraiser where we just simply chip in to some kind of cause without any games or prizes attached to those donations. No contest, no auction, just a straightforward charity drive.

In fact, the first year we did something charitable as a site, that very idea of "just chipping in" was put into place when a number of forum members pooled their money to help another forum member out with some home repairs. That organizing was largely done via PM, but the auction began the next year as an idea of involving the larger community in a bigger effort to do some philanthropy. It worked, too, but it worked because that was a time when the forum would regularly see 3-4 times more posts than it does now, when the B/S/T section was super-active, and when we regularly were adding new members. Those times are gone, for now, and perhaps an auction-type format would work better if they come back.

For now, though, I'd suggest that we just pick a cause (in November), find someone to collect PayPal donations in December (Nick would be ideal, obviously), and present the forum's collective donation to the charity/cause with a nice letter at the start of the new year. If people want to use their own BST thread or eBay or whatever to sell games to raise money to donate, that would be great. Perhaps people could just title their BST thread with an indicator of some sort so people can look to shop there (or perhaps the mods can sticky these threads during December or something). Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of work and time and headaches to organize something that not a lot of members are involved in on a forum that sees a fraction of its old activity.