you all might remember me spitballing a month or two ago about slowtwitch charitable giving. after alot of input from you’all i’ve settled on the model of your equipment sold via new and used charity auctions. the hang-up is that i wanted certain functionality from ebay (it has a charitable giving wing), and ebay was not able to provide it. specifically, i wanted the seller to be able to click a box – one of four options – designating the charity the proceeds would flow to, and have the money go directly to that charity. ebay couldn’t do it.
so instead i’m floating another idea, which is to have one designated charity every month, and just change the charity monthly. all you guys can sell your stuff on ebay – with some element of slowtwitch look & feel – and the proceeds will to the charity that month. every month it rotates. we can have our regular rotating charities, and then throw in a special need every now and then (george gage comes to mind, as an example).
so, then, i’m working on the premise we’ll do it this way. perhaps this can scratch the itch you have to give your stuff away, and do it for a cause. i’ll report back when i get this thing ready to go, and i’d like to have it up and running first of the year.
i would hereby like to nominate you to the post of finding a better way. i’m all with you. i’m all for it. can you have it done by the end of the year?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just asked if there was a better way…nothing more than that, I didn’t sign up for anything
I remember your original idea and don’t remember there being any mention of eBay in that one, is that thread still on here somewhere? Why did that never gain traction?
Edit: What about a 4th forum on here? Charity classifieds? We vote on maybe 5 charities, somehow you (or one of your underlings) sets up a PayPal account with them, someone purchases something, the seller gets an email that the charity has received payment, then they mail it out?
Please! No more forums. Do you guys ever go over to coolrunnings.com and look ath thier “community section”? There must be 15 different forums, it’s overkill and very convoluted. You never know just where to post something. KISS man. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Edit: What about a 4th forum on here? Charity classifieds? We vote on maybe 5 charities, somehow you (or one of your underlings) sets up a PayPal account with them, someone purchases something, the seller gets an email that the charity has received payment, then they mail it out?
Please! People often can’t even find the LR, let alone the classifieds or yet another forum.
i think you are on to something here. but perhaps instead of a 4th forum, we could do a parallel idea:
how about putting the items in the regular ST classifieds, but when you would submit the for-sale listing, you would check a box which would put it in a charitable category, and then the item would automatically come up as “starred”, or marked, or as a differently colored listing among the regular for-sale listings on the ST classifieds forum pages.
then the listing would draw a bit more attention then the normal listings, it would be easy for buyers to see all the items for sale at one time (as both the regular items and the charitable items would share the same pages), and people would then have the option to make a choice to join in the charitable giving every time they make use of this forum’s handy (and free) classified listings.
not exactly sure how the money collection system would work, but i think this might be a good way to list the charitable for-sale items, and not force people over to ebay.
I’m no computer guru or anything, and I’m drunk enough to not fully understand what this thread is really trying to get accomplished (hard to read it all out of one eye while fighting off double vision) but…
Why cant we just set up a simple web site with a paypal account(s)? I know there are people here who can make a simple classifieds-based website where we can list gear and have the $ get posted to whatever cause you set up. Put a little link button on the main menu at the top of the page.
Any thoughts? (other than shut up, you drunk, retarded pig)
Please! People often can’t even find the LR, let alone the classifieds or yet another forum.
First, is it such a bad thing that people can’t find the LR
Second, Slowman asked for other ideas, that’s what I proposed, I am no computer geek and yet I still think my brain won’t go on overload if ST goes from 3 forums to 4. Or come up with another idea, I don’t know, or a whole different part of the website, I was just brainstorming.
We vote on maybe 5 charities, somehow you (or one of your underlings) sets up a PayPal account with them, someone purchases something, the seller gets an email that the charity has received payment, then they mail it out?
Call me stupid but isn’t this nearly EXACTLY what would be set up on E-bay? Except on E-bay no one has to worry about all the backend commerce as it’s already set up, your allowed to pay in a number of different ways, the money is handled by an unbiased 3rd party, no snail mail etc etc.
I think the idea of a a “Slowtwitch E-bay Store for Charity” is perfect, easy, stable and quicker than just about any other option.
Never done it but I can’t imagine it would take more than a few clicks to set up an E-bay store. Like Slowman said, alternate charities, set up a paypal account or have the charity set up an account that all proceeds go to. No accusations like what is going on now about the TSR stuff. The giver posts, the buyer, now all E-bay users a much larger crowd than slowtwitch sees everything for sale.
If someone is looking for something the can post here and if someone has it they can post that they are posting it on E-bay. Put a low buyout on it and the individual that is looking for it will know as soon as it goes up.
If someone wants to do a “bigger project” they can buy parts out of the “slowtwitch cahrity store” assemble a bike and give it to the person here they think deserves it.
Well, in my idea I mentioned setting up PayPal accounts with the charities we decide on…so I agree with you about the “unbiased 3rd party.”
Maybe I don’t know enough about PayPal, but if you have a problem on eBay and you use PayPal don’t you bring it up with PayPal? Not eBay? If so, why even get eBay involved? I don’t see the need for the middle man (being eBay). Seriously, I am not criticizing you, just wondering if there is some service we need them to provide that I am not thinking of?
I don’t know, I just don’t see the eBay store idea catching on. You’re right though, it would have a larger crowd seeing the products.
