Need to raise funds
Does your school, charity, or not-for-profit organisation need to raise funds?
Why not consider OnlineBidz, where 80% of the money raised stays with your organisation.
OnlineBidz is a novel reverse auction which is available to help you raise funds for your organisation.
In three steps you can be raising funds for your organisation.
- Ask your membership/community for donations of products or
services. (This is much easier than asking people and businesses for
money. It is much easier, for example, for a hairdresser to give a
haircut than it is for them to donate money.)
- List all your items on OnlineBidz. This is done at no cost to your organisation.
- Send emails to your membership/community (even the local media) and spread the word about your online auction.
How does a reverse auction work?
Items
are listed with a value of 1.5% or less of the retail value making them
incredible value. For an example an item worth $50 may be listed for 50
cents and can thus be won for 50 cents or less. This is the maximum bid
people can place.
You have your members/community sign up for an account on OnlineBidz
and each deposit $10 or $20 so they can start bidding on items.
They then go and place bids on items for an amount up to the maximum
bid. A small fee is charged for each bid. In this example the bidding
fee may be $1.
There is a set number of bids and once the number of bids is reached the auction is over and a winner declared.
The person with the highest unique bid (which is always 1.5% or less of
the retail value), wins the auction and pays the amount they have bid.
In the above example, winning a hair cut for 50 cents or less.
In a reverse auction it is not the highest bidder that wins the item, it is the highest unique bidder.
So for the example above, it works like this: Let's say that George,
Bill and Mary are the only bidders at an auction. Mary bids 50 cents,
Bill bids 50 cents and George bids 15 cents. As you can see, the
highest bid of 50 cents is above George's bid of 15 cents, but it's
George who wins the auction. Why? Because his bid is the highest unique
bid. The amount that Bill and Mary bid is indeed higher but it's not unique because two people bid this amount.
Common questions
How do we make money for our organisation?
The
money is raised with the small fee paid when placing a bid. The
bid fee is set to be around 2% of the retail value of the item.
This is done to ensure it is a fair game to everyone. Eighty percent of
the money raised is then paid to your organisation as each item is won.
Why would businesses people in our membership/community donate items?
For
business this is an excellent way to promote their business. Their
details are listed with the item so every time someone looks at the
item their business is promoted. So instead of spending money on
advertising which often has very little results, businesses end up
donating an item at their cost price (much less than the full retail
price), receive advertising for their business and also help your
organisation.
We even have businesses which have expressed interest in donating items
to other groups so they can promote their business and at the same help
other charities and not-for-profits raise money.
One important restriction is all items must be new. That means everyone gets great value for brand new products.
Testimonial
I noticed with one not-for-profit they were able to easily obtain
donations. People are quite happy to give products and services. What they couldn't obtain easily was donations of money. I
then realised OnlineBidz was a great way to convert donated items into
money and approached them.
Since originating this idea one not-for-profit has raised around a $1,000 for their award night and I
have raised $100 for the BacLinks charity. I am currently raising
money for the YWCA Encore after breast cancer gentle exercise programme using this innovative approach to raising funds.
No other method I could find would allow me to pass on 80% of the money
raised direct to the charity. All other methods require some form of
payment up front no matter the outcome and that can be quite costly.
Chris does an amazing amount of work as the role of the contact point
which saves the organisation a great deal of time and effort.
Thank you Chris for making OnlineBidz
available.
- Kelvin Eldridge, Director Online Connections.
Contact us now
If you're interested in raising money for your school, charity or not-for-profit organisation please
feel free to contact us. We look forward to giving you a hand.
|
