Group Charity Fundraiser

After a few posts on an unrelated thread ( http://www.ukofequestria.co.uk/threads/has-being-a-brony-changed-your-life-in-any-way.619/page-2 ), _ZeDB, derpyhooves117 and I decided to see who would be up for doing a charity fundraiser as a group. Afterall, if one guy can help so many then surely a group of us could do even better.

As you may know, derpyhooves117 is hoping to run the london marathon in 2013 for the rainbow trust (his thread is here http://www.ukofequestria.co.uk/threads/brony-marathon-2013.627/ . If you have time, throw him some support, it meets a lot to him). With this in mind, he'd really appreciate it if anything we plan could happen afterwards (long time to plan means a smoother and even more fun event anyway).

This thread is to see 1. if you're up for it and 2. what we could do. The three of us decided that we should be as ambitious as possible, without aiming for Everest or something like that. Whatever happens, if the response is good enough, then it could be possible to do a relay sort of thing. Alternatively, if we decide on a long distance event covering multiple days and some people can only do parts, then feel free to do what you can. Afterall, fun is the main objective for these sorts of things.

charity auction anypony?

Could work. Auction of MLP merchandise might raise a fair bit of money.

I vote for charity auction, there's probably quite a few people with doubles lying around.

Thats true
Plus some people can sell their own drawing or plushes too

In which case I think we should club together with a reasonably large meet for it. It makes sense to do it then as opposed to have it seperate. At a meet there will be people who might not otherwise have come along.

Yeah that sounds like the best idea
Plus we could have an online auction too

Maybe have an online auction for more common items, blind bag doubles etc, and have an auction at a meet for custom stuff that might not be so common.

I think an online auction is the only real option. There aren't any meets coming up where we can do it (I've never been to MCM but I imagine they won't take too kindly to people hosting an unofficial auction on their site), indeed I think it would be better to do it before MCM because then people can exchange items there after having bidded for them a week or so beforehand.

Thats perfect
plus it would encourage more people to go to meet ups

ahhhh now I've read that it makes sense

I see your point about the meet up and exchanging. As for the online auction, a serious question is how we are going to do it. Is there a website we could use? I know a friend who might be able to rustle up a simple one, but then credit card details, shipping information etc has to be kept secure. We'd also need a way of keeping track of donaters.

Cant you just put these things up on ebay, and give whatever money it goes for to a charity? Saves all the making a site stuff. And just give links to the auctions somewhere here?

I did have a think about ebay, then decided it might be better having the links "self contained". Posting the links here solves that problem! That would also mean that sellers might have to set up an account just to sell a few doubles. If ebay is used, we will need to set up a single account for that sort of thing and leave the more "complex" to be sold by their sellers.

What if we ask people to PM us bids and then the highest bid gets the pony swag?

Or maybe even use the chat and get bidders to pay through PayPal

That sounds like itd work, but we'd still be at the situation of money/addresses being unsecured. Or can people just paypal others randomly? is that how paypal works?

Could work. If we have the merchandise on a thread that people can flick through with maybe a refernce number or something, that sent us a message and their bid. That method raises the question of how we tell them about the current bids. It would suck to have loads of alerts, and only one is relevant.

I think it'd be easier to keep track of things if it was one bid per person

What about the possible after meet for MCM? you could hold an auction there maybe