View Live Free Charity Auction Going On Now

Announcing one of our auctions going live today. This is the first one using the new software so there will be debugging going on with our engineers while it is running.

We wanted everyone here at the Idealist to get an opportunity to come and check it out.

Some of the key features included in our service that make it stand miles ahead of anything else available are:

• Free, No Out Of Pocket Charges for the nonprofit. No Hosting, Setup, fees.
• Dedicated Auction This is a fully featured auction built for the exclusive use of the charity to use as needed.
• Free Email Database. The auction builds a database of all participants that can be used anytime to alert users to a new event or speacial product.
• Full Administrative Control. Tailor the look to match your website or event. Get detailed Reports on every aspect of the auction anytime.
• THIS AUCTION BUILDS THANK YOU PAGES FOR YOUR DONORS. Online marketers will be excited to hear they get online recognition for donations.
• Flat 5% charge on items sold through the auction. No other charges of any kind.

Yes, Ideally, if the auction site is treated like an "Online Thrift Store" rather than an event, companies will come to the auction site and donate an item, product or service.

Once the item is sold, the auction site will set up a "Thank You" page (this is all automatic)

Any person that visits the auction site to donate or bid on an item will be entered into the auction email database (again all automatic and exclusive to the auction site so no one else has access) The nice thing about this is that it allows the nonprofit to notify their followers about special offers. Say for instance someone donated World Series tickets to the charity, they could list them on the auction site and then send out a notice to all their past participants. Eventually this will create more traffic to the nonprofit website.

To start with we need to direct people to the auction site, that's why we ask the charity to put a link on the nonprofit website to the auction site. That way people get used to coming to charity website to donate or bid.

Usually there are places in a community that will allow for a Public Service type announcement (TV or Radio station) to help drive people to the auction. Also Google has an offer of so much free advertising per month for nonprofits but we have no control over how long this will program will be available

As for the money. we want the auction service to be able to fund itself so that it can continue to work after we're long gone. We spoke to Ken Berger of Charity Navigator, and he said they want to see a charity try to stay close to only spending 10% on fundraising projects. At present we want to try to keep it at 5% with no charges for set up or hosting or software. So in other words, 95 cents of every dollar raised would go to the charity. At this rate it should pay for itself in twenty years or so.

The main thing to remember is that this service is providing a HUGE benefit to the donor business already by setting up a "Thank You" page. On the internet, for online marketing, this is a big deal better than any plaque or even tax break. This Connects them with charity, acknowledges their philanthropy and lets the search engines know they are good people. REALLY BIG DEAL. If charities understand this one point they will have no trouble getting online merchants to donate.

But stop by and see one in action for Ark Rain then call us and we'll get one going for your worthy cause.