Sprite Stitch / Child's Play Quilt

[blackmageheart]

Firstly, thank you to tnitnetny for contacting Child's Play.

Here is the response she received from them:

First of all, thank you and all of the other crafters for their hard work and support of Child's Play. I bet the quilt is going to look incredible. As for doing an auction yourselves or sending it to us, it's up to you, but I'll go over some of the details for you.

If you list the auction yourself, you wouldn't have to worry about shipping hassles at all. However, ebay does take a cut of the final sale out, and like you said it may not raise as much as it could if featured in the dinner auction. We are registered as an eBay GivingWorks charity. This means that anyone can sell pretty much anything on eBay (using their MissionFish charity system) and the proceeds from those auctions go directly to Child's Play. In order for those proceeds to go to Child's Play, please list the auction through their MissionFish Charity system. When you begin the listing process, there is an option when you’re setting the price to select a non-profit to benefit, and what percentage you're planning to donate. A search for "Childs Play" will turn us up. eBay will ask you to register for a MissionFish account (if you don't have one already), but it’s straight forward. You’ll need a credit card to complete the process. Please read through eBay’s Giving Works website for more information (http://www.ebaygivingworks.com/), so you that understand how you will be billed when the item is sold.

For the dinner auction, all of the money would go straight to Child's Play, and it might get higher bids. You'd have to deal with shipping it, but we would take care of everything from there. For this option, we'd need you to fill out our Auction Procurement Form and ship the quilt.

So, we have a choice on how to proceed with the sale of the quilt. tnitnetny has asked me to put up a poll, asking the members of Sprite Stitch for their opinion. Please choose the option that you agree with and that describes you.
Please also feel free to add your opinions in this thread.

Thank you!

[dangergerbil]

I didnt make a square (joined the forum too late ) but im happy to donate some money to the shipping costs if required.

[LinkIsMyHomeboy]

I would also be willing to send some money to help with shipping costs.

[ristvak]

I didn't participate, but I say send it to the dinner.

If you list it on ebay you have to make sure you get the word out about it, then you have to hope the people you're telling are interested, and inevitably you'll have a ton of people watching it and the auction will end after half of them have forgotten about it.

If you send it to the dinner you've already got your target audience and it will be in everyone's face so they won't be able to mope around saying they forgot about the auction end time.

You're going to have to ship it either way, and, while I imagine it's quite heavy, at least if you send it to the dinner you don't have some whiney ebay n00b complaining about how much you're charging for shipping

[blackmageheart]

I would also be inclined to send it to the dinner, the prestige of that event alone would be worth the shipping costs! Which I would be more than happy to contribute to!
I've got five squares in the quilt project, I would be completely over the moon if they were seen at the dinner Not to mention that CP would get more of the money, and perhaps a higher amount than on ebay.

[tnitnetny]

I don't need money for shipping. That is part of the cost I incured and volunteered for when I said I would quilt it. Although if you would like to donate, my email for paypal is in the quilt thread.

Benefits/Drawbacks of sending to the dinner:
Benefits - There is a dedicated gamer audience. The items sold at the dinner get a LOT of money. There was a simple Link quilt there last year that wasn't anything special and it got about $800. I could see our quilt go for more then $1k. This would get the most money for the quilt.
Drawbacks - We may not know how much the quilt sells for. There would not be as much publicity for Sprite Stitch. We would not be able to bid on the quilt ourselves unless you go to the dinner.

Benefits/Drawback of auctioning:
Benefits - We know exactly how much money we raise. The auction is pretty simple and would be listed under Childs Play. I could probably get the auction mentioned on a few web comic sites, as well as a few businesses which would get a lot of attention for Sprite Stitch. If you wanted the quilt, you could bid on it.
Drawbacks - Even though it may get a lot of publicity, it will most likely not sell for as much as it would at the dinner.

I am torn. I want to get as much money as possible for the charity, but I also want to get publicity for Sprite Stitch.

[Pixel Stitches]

I am torn. I want to get as much money as possible for the charity, but I also want to get publicity for Sprite Stitch.

Well, hopefully everyone agrees the most important thing about all this is that the charity recieves as much money as possible. I think the best way to go about doing that is to send it to them for the dinner auction

[tnitnetny]

But I also know that people that made would like a chance to bid on it and that can't happen if we donate it to the dinner auction. That is why I asked for it to be seperated between people that made squares and people that didn't. If most of the people agree that we should donate it instead of auctioning ourselves then I completely agree. Like I said, I am torn with what I think.

[Aelys]

I haven't been very active on this message board in the past few months and the reason is that I was working on a massive charity campaign in support of the relief efforts after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It was a videogame industry project and we raised almost $130k, not including the charity album that Yamaoka-san put together under our name (http://playforjapan.org/).

The reason why I'm mentioning this is because we all used eBay Giving Works for our auctions and... the fees were horrible. While eBay Giving Works doesn't take a cut itself, Mission Fish does (about 3%), plus PayPal takes another big cut for the transaction (I don't remember exactly how much, but if I'm not mistaken the total between the two ended up being somewhere around 20%). On top of this, you still have to pay for shipping unless you charge the buyer, which is not a very polite thing to do when it comes to charity.

That being said, I would recommend auctioning the quilt at the dinner and possibly investing on a Sprite Stitch banner that would be displayed on the background. I'm sure there are ways to arrange this and we can all contribute to the cost (or at least I would). Heck, we could even print a Sprite Stitch card for the winner signed by all the contributors to the quilt.

Next time something like this gets organized for charity, I sure want to participate!

[tnitnetny]

The dinner auction will not allow a banner to be put up. The items donated are all sold as a silent auction on a table in a seperate room. I did state a few times in the quilt thread that I am making 1-2 squares with both the Sprite Stitch logo and the Child's Play logo. So we would still get some publicity for the site, just not as much.

Thanks for your input. I knew that Mission Fish took a cut, but I didn't realize that was in addition to the ebay fees. Cost of shipping is not a point. I would have to pay shipping whether it goes to Seattle for the dinner auction, or it goes to a buyer of the auction.