After our original article ran last week about the online community's reaction to the devastating tsunami in South Asia (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m12/i31/s02), more efforts were launched by online-auction organizations to raise money for charity.
Overstock Auctions, a new auction site launched in September, put into place a program to allow sellers to list charity items. Sellers can select a charity and designate a portion or all of the proceeds from the sale go to the charity (http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bin/auctions.cgi?PAGE=static&pagenum=3). Overstock Auctions will bill the seller for normal fees and for the donation amount, and forward it to the charitable organization specified. Unlike eBay, which collects and keeps seller listing and commission fees on charity auctions, Overstock is donating all seller fees on charity auctions to the charity selected by the seller.
Pennsylvania-based drop-off store Auction Inn is working with area Boys and Girls Clubs to raise awareness and money to aid the victims of the tsunamis. Consumers can drop goods off at club locations or Auction Inn stores. Auction Inn will place the items for sale on eBay, with at least ninety percent of all proceeds going to the Red Cross (http://digbig.com/4cjqk).
Linda O'Neill, co-founder of TheSuppliesRoom.com, an online retailer of office products, created a site called MommyTsunami.org. The site is a grassroots movement to raise awareness and money through a series of charity auctions on eBay (http://mommytsunami.org/).
Drop-off store iSold It, is also conducting a charity drive. The company is asking individuals to bring new and used items to any iSold It store location. The iSold It store will sell the item on eBay and send the net proceeds to CARE's Earthquake and Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation Fund (http://www.i-soldit.com).
Individuals can check with their local drop-off store and eBay consignment seller if they are interested in donating items to charity: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/pages/consign
Members on antiques site Trocadero (http://www.trocadero.com) are running charity auctions, and Amazon continues to collect donations on its site, raising a whopping $14,415,406.77 as of Wednesday evening. One hundred percent of donations will go directly to American Red Cross Tsunami Disaster Relief (http://www.amazon.com/paypage/PX3BEL97U9A4I).
Scammers tried to use technology to prey upon generous Internet users by sending out hoax emails made to look like they came from charitable organizations. And one Canadian student received unwelcome attention for attempting to auction the domain name "tsunamirelief.com" on eBay for $50,000 (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=7226548).
