At one time, I was interested in helping a national organization raise money to fight AIDS. I was friends with an individual who was involved with consigning collectibles to a large auction house in New York. I described to him that I wanted to raise money for this organization and he agreed with me that it was a good cause. Together, we contacted a few other consignors to the auction and explained our need. We got a few people to agree (along with the auction organizer) to earmark a number of the auction lots, probably around ten I think, to be listed as “25% of the proceeds of this sale will be donated to the **** organization to fight AIDS.”

As this was advertised in the catalog, bids were quite strong on these. Basically, 25% of what the lot consignor was making on the sale would go to the AIDS organization.

Most people feel pretty good about donating to a cause like this so the sales went well and the advertising took care of itself via the catalog. Of course, my friend also let many of his major buyer/clients know that these items were in the auction as well.

I feel this type of auction fund raising would work well on the EBAY online auction site today. Basically, I would recommend locating an EBAY auction seller on the site that may be from your area and aware of your cause. Contact this person and see if he/she would agree to this sort of arrangement. Basically he would be donating a part of his proceeds from the sale to the cause but the addition of the fundraising aspect might very well increase the amount of his bids making it a win win for all.