There is nothing remarkable about the single pool table inside the Cavalier Store, a bar & restaurant in Lynchburg, Virginia. It’s 3 feet by 7 feet, the standard “bar table” dimensions, and owner Wells Duffy originally found it gathering dust in a rural barn. Who knew that it would one day become a prolific moneymaking machine for charity?

Each year, on the Sunday after the Super Bowl, the place is packed with onlookers for the final round of the annual Cavalier Cup Pool Classic.

“It’s my busiest day of the year, by far,” Duffy said with a smile, “and I lose money.”

That’s because beer sells for $1, when someone isn’t buying rounds for the house. And all that money Duffy doesn’t make goes to Crisis Line of Central Virginia, a local hotline.

Yet that’s only part of the story. Over the past four years, the Cavalier and its pool table have come to demonstrate how one establishment and its customers, focusing on a single charity, can truly make a difference.

“This started out as just a fun tournament for the regulars,” said Steve Harrington, a Lynchburg business owner who has coordinated the Cavalier Cup since it’s inception. “You paid an entry fee, and it was double elimination. It was also a lot of work for me, figuring out the brackets and harassing people to get their matches played, and I was starting to get burned out on it.”

About that time, Duffy happened to listen to a local radio show on which then-Crisis Line director Pat Shahrokhi was interviewed.

“I was just really impressed with her, and with the organization,” he said, “and I decided I wanted to do something for them.”

Duffy bumped the Cavalier Cup entry fee up by $10 to benefit his new favorite charity. Some of his customers began donating lump sums to the cause, and the local Budweiser distributor provided all the beer for Cavalier Cup Day, the $1 price going into the Crisis Line pot.

Finally, two years ago, Harrington added a new wrinkle to the tournament. The Cavalier Cup is highly competitive, with the last eight survivors from a field of 30 or 40 competing on the final day. Harrington decreed that whoever raised the most money for Crisis Line, even if he or she had lost earlier in the event, had the right to play the last tournament finalist for a spot on Cavalier Cup Day.

“This has two advantages,” Harrington said. “It helps raise money, and it ensures that the preliminary matches get played faster, because nobody wants to be the last finalist in and have to play in that extra match.”

Some of the tournament purists grumbled, Harrington admitted, but complaints diminished this year.

“I don’t know much about pool,” said Jeanette Wilson of Crisis Line, “but I love what they do for us.”

About five years ago, Crisis Line of Central Virginia expanded its reach to cover Southwest Virginia, as well, via long distance. The agency now gets more than 1,500 crisis calls a month — including, most recently, those related to the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

”It was great to see people donating money and having a lot of fun at the same time. And when it was all over, the Cavalier had raised $6,000 for us.”

All from one tiny pool table.

It’s a classic fund-raising strategy. Entice people into indulging themselves, then provide them with a guilt-free disclaimer: “I’m doing this for a good cause.”

Anyone who has ever devoured an entire box of Girl Scout cookies over an afternoon knows what it’s like to be a willing victim of this ploy. And in Canada, the VON Hamilton Foundation has taken it a step further, adding eye candy (the Nutcracker ballet) to a decadent chocolate-themed feast.

What’s not to like here? Studies have shown that chocolate is perhaps the world’s most universally desired flavor. Meanwhile, even those who profess to hate ballet will mark their calendars months in advance for a Nutcracker performance, if only for their kids’ sake.

“We were trying to find a family-oriented fund-raiser,” said Krista Law, Fund Development Coordinator for the VON Hamilton Foundation, “and we also wanted to develop a partnership with another organization — in this case, the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble.”

“VON” stands for “Victorian Order of Nurses,” and has chapters across Canada. Among other things, it offers services to indigent patients, homebound visits, a day program for clients with Alzheimer’s or dementia, education for family caregivers and advanced training for nurses.

The VON Hamilton Chocolate Lovers Brunch was designed specifically for the “Good Beginnings” program, a volunteer parent and infant support program that offers weekly in-home visits by a trained volunteer.

“Most of our chapters have adopted the Chocolate Lovers Brunch,” said Law, “but they tend to do it in February, for Valentine’s Day. We were the only chapter to schedule it at Christmas time, along with the Nutcracker.”

The first such event, in 2005, drew 240 people and raised $1,500. Last December, the Foundation attracted 220 and brought in $5,000.

“We really increased our sponsorship money the second year,” Law said, “and that helped a lot. The difference in attendance, I think, was that we did it the first year on Saturday and last year on Sunday. Church probably cut into the crowd a bit.”

The group staged the brunch at 11:30 in the downtown Hamilton Sheraton, with the ballet following at 2. “The ballet was held at Hamilton Place, which is right across the street from the Sheraton,” said Law. “So people only had to park once.”

Indeed, they probably needed a short walk after their feast. Besides the traditional brunch food, the menu also included chocolate Belgian waffles, chocolate eclairs, several cakes, an assortment of chocolate pastries and a chocolate fountain “surrounded with dipping fruit and treats.”

VON Hamilton charged $95 for adults for the brunch and ballet and $50 for children, and $55 for adults for brunch only and $30 for children. The ballet company offered a reduced rate on tickets, Law said.

As for advertising, the Foundation put up a billboard and received lots of air time from Lesley Stewart, the weather and traffic reporter on a Hamilton television station.

The buffet required a significant number of volunteers, Law said, “and we also had a holiday market where we sold angels and nutcrackers and holiday gift baskets. We had a raffle, entertainment (a singing group singing Christmas carols, a clown for the kids.) VON volunteers looked after the events at the Brunch and the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble looked after everything at the ballet.”

VON Hamilton hasn’t decided whether or not to try the Chocolate Lovers Brunch for a third year.

“It’s been very popular,” she said, “but you don’t want to overdo a good thing.”

Not even chocolate.

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As the mechanics of on-line auctions are refined and streamlined, they have become increasingly attractive options for non-profits.

Putting an auction on-line can extend its life, remove the uncertainty of a live event and vastly expand the audience of potential buyers. Moreover, there are groups such as cMarket and Missionfish who will offer not only a platform for such an auction, but hand-holding and advice.

Still, as with everything else, an online auction doesn’t just happen. And whether it’s put on by do-it-yourself software or through an outside entity, there are still things you can do (or not do) to make it run more smoothly.

These suggestions come from Missionfish co-founder Clam Lorenz and Dave Mello of cMarket.

DO ….

1. Give yourself enough time — time to find enough volunteers, line up enough sale items and set up a plan for publicity.

2. Hold a test auction. Sell a few items through the online platform of your choice to make sure you know what to expect when it’s time for the real show.

3. Find the right volunteers. List the job functions required for your auction, then enlist help from people with skills that match your requirements.

4. Seek specific donations. Tell people what donations you are looking for and the approximate value range desired. Don’t leave it to anyone’s imagination.

5. Solicit sponsorships. The revenue gained from sponsorships is exempt from any fees and can help offset expenses for your auction. Remember that you can give back to your sponsors by putting their name and logo in front of desirable supporters, on your home pages and in your e-mails.

6. Bundle creatively. Add to the perceived value of an assembly of donated items through a common theme. For instance, you could combine some disposable cameras, a few folding chairs and beach towels, and suddenly you have a “Day at the Beach” package.

7. Name creatively. Make sure your item names are descriptive, but also intriguing and interesting.

8. Keep your values reasonable. Inflating values will not result in higher bids or revenue if they are unreasonable. The same goes for opening bids — it is generally best to start the bidding at between one-quarter and one-third of the actual item value.

9. Use reserve prices on key items, especially a) when the item’s donor stipulates that it cannot be sold for less than a certain amount; b) when you have purchased an item for the auction and want to make sure you don’t lose money on it or c) you have a subsequent event or auction where you can sell the item later if it doesn’t go for the reserve price.

10. Stagger the addition of new items, rather than putting everything out at once. That encourages return visits to the site, and also allows you to stagger opening and closing dates.

11. Push the final hours of the auction by sending out “last chance” notices.

12. Follow the rules of the marketplace. For example, eBay has very strict rules about shill bidding (when someone close to you bids on an item you’re selling). Failure to abide by these rules can result in real headaches.

DON’T …

1. Put all your items in one basket. If you have a live event, make some items available for bidding online only, and others available for bidding in the room only.

2. Rely on just one method of promotion. Use e-mail lists, snail mailings, your Website, organizational contacts, word of mouth and the local media.

3. List a catalog item without an image. If need be, request one from the honor, or from a manufacturer’s Website.

4. Forget about shipping costs

5. Wait too long to get a payment processing method set up.

6. Try to do everything yourself. Recruit volunteers, friends and family members to help with the item solicitation, sponsor solicitation and auction management. Otherwise, it’s stress waiting to happen.

7. Ship the goods before you get paid. You’d be surprised at how often new eBay sellers will ship out their merchandise before receiving payment form the buyer. People are usually honest, and the majority of buyers will do the right thing. However, when you’re selling expensive items, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

After four years of casting their lines into uncharted waters, Missionfish founders Sean Milliken and Clam Lorenz landed a whopper in 2003. Or maybe it landed them.

Either way, the “Giving Works” partnership between Missionfish and eBay has transformed both organizations.

“They said they liked what we were doing,” Lorenz said in a recent telephone interview, “and that they were trying to find ways to get more into philanthropy.”

At the time, Missionfish was experiencing modest success running its own charity auctions on-line, using in-kind contributions to non-profits as bait.

How Missionfish Began

“That was why we started this,” Lorenz said. “Sean and I were working for the Boys & Girls clubs in Atlanta, and we were always being offered things like a truckload of basketballs or furniture, or other stuff we already had or couldn’t use. It occurred to us that there was some potential in this.”

So Missionfish began as a for-profit company with the goal of moving in-kind (or, as First Book executive Chandler Arnold calls them, “unkind”) donations out of storage closets and warehouses and into the hands of willing buyers. They soon found themselves slightly ahead of the curve.

“We had a couple of long and lean years,” Lorenz said, “but it probably worked to our advantage. We stayed small, we didn’t overrun our capacity, and we were able to focus very minutely on what people really needed.”

In 2002, Milliken and Lorenz switched their status to non-profit and slipped beneath the umbrella of the Point of Light Foundation.

“They give us the space to work,” Lorenz said, “and all the support we need. But we also have autonomy. It’s a nice arrangement.”

Soon after moving from Atlanta to Washington, Missionfish started its “Lunch With a Leader” on-line auction, reeling in such high-profile individuals as Laura Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Petty, Pattie Labelle, Rosalyn Carter and Warren Buffet.

“Warren Buffets auctions off a lunch for eight,” Lorenz said. “The last time, it went for $600,000.”

The identification with celebrities made Missionfish itself more visible — and e-Bay came calling.

Partnering with eBay

“All of a sudden,” Lorenz said, “we had the opportunity of reaching 85 million potential buyers.”

That number has now more than doubled, and Missionfish has been able to retool itself to adapt to eBay’s brisk pace.

“We work with over 8,500 organizations now,” Lorenz said, “and last year we raised $30 million for non-profits.”

But that’s only a beginning, since Milliken and Lorenz are well aware that eBay as a whole has done $40 billion worth of business since its inception.

“We only have a staff of 17,” Lorenz said, “because we’re trying to keep costs down. It gets interesting sometimes.”

Here’s how the Missionfish Website explains the origin of the organization’s name: “The ‘Fish’ in our name borrows from an analogy by Share Our Strength founder Bill Shore. Rather than ‘giving fish’ to keep an organization running, or even ‘teaching them to fish’ for themselves, he says that what’s needed is to build ‘fisheries’ that can sustain a nonprofit’s work in a significant, ongoing way. We believe that MissionFish can be a Fishery –
producing unrestricted, consistent revenue for any nonprofit, allowing them to do more good.”

The Child Welfare League of America apparently agrees. The group hooked up with Missionfish in the early spring of 2004 and arranged for an online charity auction during National Child Abuse Prevention Month that April. According to the CWLA Website:

“The results of the auction were astounding. We accomplished all of our goals: to garner financial support for the Children’s Memorial Flag initiative, to raise awareness about the need to eliminate violence against children, and to broaden support for the League and its 1,000 child-serving member agencies.”

And they became Missionfish regulars.

Sellers who want to donate a percentage of their eBay sale to a non-profit can find an appropriate recipient in the Missionfish/Giving Works database. The seller then registers with Missionfish and designates what percentage
they want to contribute. Once the sale is completed, the seller gives Missionfish a donation of $3 plus 2.9 percent of the remaining profit (minimum donation, $10).

“These items are posted on eBay with the Giving Works logo,” Lorenz said, “and a non-profit can ask not to be connected with an item that might be inapproriate for its mission. For example, PETA probably wouldn’t want to receive money from the sale of a mink coat, and the American Cancer Society wouldn’t want to profit from the sale of a carton of cigarettes.”

Non-profits can also sell directly on eBay through Missionfish for free.

“Registering for this is relatively painless,” Lorenz said. “We need proof that your organization is a non-profit — generally, the 501c3 letter is sufficient, or we have other ways of verifying. We also make sure that whatever money is raised goes to the organization’s bank account and not to an individual’s bank account.

“Then we flip the switch and you’re in the database.”

While some other groups may use the Internet and eBay in non-profit fundraising, Missionfish’s connection with eBay is by far the most extensive.

“I keep thinking about that $40 billion that’s been spent on eBay,” Lorenz said. “One percent of that is $40 million. You can help a lot of people with that.”

Get more information about Missionfish.

It’s always better to give than to receive, we’re told. But what if you could do both?

And what if it was possible to be positioned squarely in the middle of that intersection of giving and receiving, helping non-profits and making a profit at the same time?

Meet cMarket, currently enjoying the best of both worlds.

Launched in 2003 with an impressive “nut” of venture capital, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company sets up and helps manage on-line auctions for non-profit organizations. Period.

“That’s basically all we do,” said David Mello, vice president of client services for cMarket. “It keeps us pretty busy.”

Indeed. Over the past three years, cMarket has staged over 1,500 auctions — and the repeat customers are already lining up.

“We’d definitely do that again,” said director David Drake of the Maryland SPCA, which raised nearly $35,000 the first time it took its annual auction on-line. “In fact, we are doing it again — this year.”

Of the 180 items made available in the SPCA’s “Shop-a-Paw-Looza,” all but 15 sold.

“We tried to be creative,” Drake said. “We had a lot of pet-related items, and those went over very well.”

Dog birthday parties, for example, and free neutering. By the time it was over, according to assistant development director Elizabeth Johnson, “We made enough to feed all our animals for a year.”

Why Online Auctions Work

The word “charity” is out of fashion in the early 21st century. “Partnership” is in. In other words, donors like to feel that they’re getting something back for their contribution, and recipients like giving it to them. As an added benefit, preparing for an auction or other event can get volunteers a lot more involved than simply tearing open envelopes and hoping for checks.

Sometimes, if it’s promoted successfully, a non-profit’s auction can transcend charity altogether.

As cMarket founder Greg McHale explained in 2005: “Auctions tap into dollars that are often separate from the ‘charitable giving’ budget: household discretionary spending.”

Writing checks to non-profits is good for us, but not always pleasant. An auction, on-line or otherwise, can be the orange juice that disguises the taste of the medicine.

Moreover, doing it on-line, is one way to shrink the administrative cost line on a non-profit’s budget. These days, the more of the donated dollar that disappears between the contributor and the intended good works, the less attractive a cause can appear.

“It was a lot cheaper to do it this way,” said David Drake. “We used to have a silent auction, but it was just bringing in the same people. This allowed us to tap into a larger base, at much less cost.”

Setting Up the Online Auction

What cMarket offers is a sort of template for staging an auction, augmented with suggestions that match the individuality of each group.

“We help non-profits set up an online auction Website,” explained company spokesperson Shawna Stevenson, “with buttons people can use to donate items, refer a friend, e-mail an item page and sign the guestbook.”

cMarket does its work for a flat fee and nine percent of the take, none required on the front end.

“To tell you the truth, we really didn’t need to call on them (cMarket) very much,” said the SPCA’s Drake, “because the software was quite user-friendly.”

Auction Training & Support

cMarket also supplies on-line training and advice to non-profits to make the most of their auction.

“We’re available 9 to 5 by phone,” said Mello, “and you can e-mail somebody 24/7.”

“A lot of organizations have no trouble coming up with items to auction off,” Mello said, “but others do. That’s why we have an on-line store where you can purchase items at wholesale cost or below. If you’re in St. Louis, for example, we can offer some baseballs autographed by Albert Pujols. But we have all sorts of things.”

One advantage of an on-line auction, Mello said, is that its duration keeps the name of the organization in front of potential benefactors far longer than a one-shot gathering would do.

“We advise people to stagger the bidding time on various items,” he added, “to keep the interest up. It’s also good to include a few ‘buy now’ items that can be purchased for that price without bidding.

“Promotion is the key,” said David Mello, “and we have a lot of suggestions for that.”

So the options have multiplied for non-profits planning an auction — put it all on the line with a live auction, or put it all on-line.

Or maybe a little of both. It’s a brave new world.

Get more information about cMarket online auctions services

Whenever non-profit boards hunker down to discuss fund-raising options, one suggestion invariably floats to the surface.

“Hey,” someone always says, “why don’t we have an auction?”

A good idea, on its face. Get some items donated, invite the public, then hope that spirited bidding sends the prices soaring.

The devil, however, is in the details. Auctions can be volunteer-intensive, especially if a lot of items need to be moved into a central area. An auction on a given day or night must be publicized, and is then at the mercy of how many people decide to show up.

In the case of the Ethel Walker School of Simsbury, CT, a traditional auction just wasn’t feasible — the school was trying to target its alums, who were scattered all over the country. That’s when board member Donya Nagib Sabet, acting on a friend’s recommendation, decided to try an auction online.

“We were looking for something new,” Sabet said later, “a fundraising event that could engage Walker’s geographically diverse community. Something that would be accessible to everyone, and would be exciting, different and fun.”

And it worked. School supporters not only bid but donated items on-line — 153 of them. Over 1,000 bids were placed, and the school wound up raising $62,500.

“We had some nail-biting about midway through,” Sabet said, “but we stayed the course, and the last week, it just exploded.”

Meanwhile, in Boca Raton, Fla., the Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center tried a different wrinkle. The group continued to hold its annual ball and live auction, a perennially successful tradition used to attract scholarship money, but augmented that with an earlier on-line auction. As it turned out, according to group member Janet Oppenheimer, the on-line auction outperformed the live one.

In some ways, this isn’t surprising. While the extroverts among us may thrive in the spirited competition of a “real” auction, other people can find it intimidating. We’ve all seen too many movies where an ill-timed twitch or toss of the head winds up inadvertently purchasing a Ming vase or a Picasso.

On-line, the pressure is off. You bid at your convenience — and if decide to back off your bid, you won’t look like a coward in public.

Then, there’s the convenience aspect. As Janet Oppenheimer put it: “We wanted to reach people who might not be interested in a $500-a-plate dinner.”

Forget the black tie. With an on-line auction, you can bid in your pajamas.

“I was shocked at how little investment it cost us,” said Susan Neumann of the National Trust for Historic Preservation after her group tried an auction on-line. “It depends on how much you want to invest in the Web site. We didn’t invest anything. We built it ourselves using two staff people. We wound up paying less than $2,500. So it was an excellent investment for us.”

Like the Jewish Community Center in Boca Raton, the NTHP used the Internet to augment its normal dinner/auction. According to the Non-Profit Times, “By placing auction items online 3 1/2 weeks prior to the event, it allowed online bidders to place a maximum bid that would then be conveyed by proxies standing in against the silent auction bidders at a live event.”

“The economics of an auction are that fundamentally, the more people you have bidding, the higher the bids,” says Greg McHale, co-founder of cMarket in Cambridge, MA, by all accounts the leader in staging on-line auctions for non-profits and the group hired by both the Jewish Community Center and Ethel Walker School.

Non-profits can also use eBay to sell donated items with a time bound auction or over a longer haul.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation raised $200,000 on e-Bay, baiting their cyberhooks with such “experience” prizes as lunch with singer Avril Lavigne, a photo shoot with skateboard hero Tony Hawk and a tennis match with Donald Trump.

Of course, that organization is based in Santa Monica, CA. It would be a lot more difficult to pull in that star power from, say, Ottumwa, Iowa. That’s where MissionFish comes in. Since 2003, the company has worked together with Giving Works, a charitable arm of e-Bay, to multiply the options open to even small non-profits.

According to the MissionFish Website: “We created MissionFish because our years of non-profit work led us to realize a few things:

1.There are a lot of good people and companies that support non-profits, and they have a lot of good stuff to give away.

2. Most non-profits can’t use the things that those people and companies want to give away as in-kind gifts.

3. Nonprofits don’t generally have the time, the people or the infrastructure for dealing with these in-kind gifts even when they can use them.”