Pretty much like eBay except that the winning bidder pays the charity direct for an advertised item and the seller gets nothing. The charity gets all the money.

Everything else is details.
-- st3f, Jun 04 2005

:-)
-- reensure, Jun 04 2005


very public spirited of you [st3f] +
-- jonthegeologist, Jun 04 2005


I participated in one of these recently, except it was services donated.
-- ldischler, Jun 04 2005


Hmm, this sounds good but it makes me wonder: Would there be a lucrative market for scammers? Everything else is details, as you say, but that is one of the more important details. Aside from that, bun.
-- Size_Mick, Jun 05 2005


Chi bay?

sorry.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 05 2005


"Would there be a lucrative market for scammers?"
Since the winning bidder pays the charity directly (and the seller gets nothing) there is no profit motive for selling fake items. There is still a potential for scammers to lie saying that they haven't received items, though.
-- st3f, Jun 07 2005


Nice, although I can imagine a resistance on the part of sellers to pay shipping costs for their item so there might have to be a portion of the buyers money which is used for this.
-- hippo, Jun 07 2005


I skipped on some of the details in the idea because I wanted to keep it simple and save the details for the annotations.

There are a few alternatives that spring to mind.
1. The buyer pays for shipping -- possibly asking the seller (who gets nothing after all) to be a little too charitable. Easy to administrate and hard to scam, though.
2. The charity pays -- Either a rebate into the sellers auction account or by providing the seller with pre-pay labels. Either way has some overhead for the charity.
3. The charity ships -- I can't figure out why I like this so much (I do, though), particularly as you end up taking the item to the charity shop anyway.
-- st3f, Jun 08 2005



random, halfbakery