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marurun
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by marurun Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:08 pm

Blu wrote:Thanks all!

I am happy to report that I got my Meat Bike last week in Houston at an awesome store called Planetary Cycles. We were down in the Galveston area for an impromptu visit to the beach, and it just so happened that my bike was ready on our way back to Dallas. I am officially Bike #304 for Meat Fight!


This is awesome news! I'm glad things are moving along. Hope your treatment and support networks have all been as positive as this seems to be!

Blu wrote:I am still going through my gaming stuff, and plan to add more. I want to make it worth people's while. I am contemplating running the by my local retro gaming group on Facebook, but that would involve bringing in new members to the forum and that carries some implications as far as bidding goes (with regards to vetted, established forum members bidding). It's a double edged sword, it could bring in new, quality forum members, but runs the risk of creating some logistic issues in the event of conflict.


Well, there's several ways to do this. If those local folks want to donate stuff to bid on, they should send it to someone, possibly you?, as an escrow point of sorts. If they're on the forums they will see the bids, and if the bids are being sent to you, you can provide them with any proof of bidding and payment they need. As far as bidding goes, we could make sure bids must be sent prior to shipping items, and if you're collecting the payments you can confirm that with us. All shipped items should have valid tracking numbers (required), for example. And money isn't donated until items are received. There are ways to make this safe such that the role of trust is minimized, except for the requirement of a trusted crossover point, which would likely be you and thus put additional burden on you. That said, other aspects of the auction can be handled by the rest of us just fine. We've been through this before.

When to begin?
We should set an auction start date that's far enough out it gives people time to do what they need to do on their end. A concrete start date will ensure even procrastinators (whom I would know NOTHING about) will have some idea their wiggle room to prepare donations, particularly crafted donations. The start and end date should also align well with any deadlines you have for raising money and subsequently donating/distributing that money. So we should probably defer to you on that.
How long should the auction be held?
I think we should allow maybe 3 weeks. That way if people are on vacation or have big work projects and can only check in infrequently during a span of time they can still try to participate. It also gives us a little marketing window even after we go live.
Payment deadlines?
Payment should be tendered within 1 week of the close of the auction, unless special arrangements for exceptional circumstances have been made AND AGREED UPON in advance of the close of the auction.
Shared Spreadsheet with organizers for highest bids, payments received, and shipping addresses?
Yes, great idea. We can use forum messages to track bid history in case there's an issue and a bid needs to be rolled back.

Those are just my thoughts, however. I'm always open to better ideas.
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by Anapan Sat Jul 03, 2021 2:02 am

Congrats! Also, Wow! I tried to keep up with a friend training for a marathon back when I was in Judo, and I had nowhere near the fortitude for that kind of prolonged struggle. The fact that you have a team coaching you is awesome!

I tried really hard when the previous auctions were listed to bring anyone to attend and had 0 response with items left being unbid on, but I think you should definitely try to get anyone outside of the community involved.
For the duration of the auctions I ran, I created and maintained a separate email - the same gmail I'd create to manage payment and use for the paypal collection to monitor any donation related questions from outside the community (nobody ever directly responded to it, but every one of them still contains important records of the donations). Of course anyone involved would be given this new gmail account's details.
Do not worry about non-payers or procrastinators, that's all part of managing a public auction. If I'm managing, I'll enforce the rules adequately.
We found 2 weeks kept people's interest deciding one is too short, but even with 2 weeks, there were days with little or no activity. My thought is that 3 might drag or make the thread get left inactive for a long time (also, I got the idea that it was in the way of regular forum activity given the low participation). The last 2 days were the main gaining ones, and given the rolling end the last hours did very well.
Deadlines are not important, those who pay usually do it right away, with the stragglers, a bit over 2 weeks... maybe.
Non paying and stragglers don't matter - their contributions are small, and without paying, all that happens is shortly after the deadline, someone else will buy it after being listed for sale publicly, and the money gets donated after the deadline.
When going solo I usually just keep multiple text documents with dates and backups on other places until conclusion.
My reason is experience with hardware failure and anything but raw data can't be recovered, but if I'm involved, I can adapt to cloud.
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by Blu Fri Jul 09, 2021 7:02 pm

Follow-up thoughts:

1. Could we start on Sunday, September 6th at 12:00AM and finish on Saturday, September 18th at 11:59PM? I think two weeks would be a good window. Payments would be due Saturday, September 25th by 11:59PM (unless extenuating circumstances are agreed upon prior). This allows some built-in time after bidding ends means I'm physically and mentally here to help collect payments, and ship prior to heading to San Antonio. I think starting around the beginning and ending mid-to-late September would work well. We could add a week on prior for a soft start as well, just a thought.

I need to have the $300 raised for Bike MS to meet the minimum in order to pick up my ride packet. Meat Fight will work with me and they can shift over the $300 so that I'm covered for the ride. My intention is to reduce the burden on fellow members volunteering. I'm not particularly worried about this, just naming it.

2. I will post in the Dallas Retro Gamers Group I am a member of on Facebook, to see what the interest is. We can vet bids and ensure payment is received prior to shipping.

3. As far as payment goes, I am wondering the best way to approach this. Should we make things simple and have people donate to an existing PayPal account? Invoices could be created (if needed), and shipping costs included as well. Members would be reimbursed for the shipping costs through this PayPal. Then the remaining amount (collected bids) could be donated en-masse to the my fundraising page.

There's two justifications: I want to acknowledge and give recognition to the Racketboy Community. This could possibly get lost with people paying through my fundraising site. Second, and in my mind, this seems to be the least complicated method and it would keep it centralized.

For example, a clunky alternative: I would need to audit who has or hasn't "paid" via a donation to my fundraising page. I'd prefer to have a few additional volunteers eyes and ears on money coming in. This method would also require a separate shipping payment made by the buyer to the seller/donor. I see this as an unneeded extra step in the operations of things.

4. I have been working on a Google Spreadsheet with the inventory and bidding history/registry. I am happy to give editing privileges to fellow co-facilitators in the charity auction. Here it is here.

It gives a good central location for people to see what's there, view pictures (which we can also include within the thread of course), and all necessary information. I'm open to suggestions and additions!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by Blu Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:31 pm

Friendly bump!
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by JoeAwesome Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:05 pm

Posting for interest in bidding. Anything arcade or fight stick related would be sweeeeet. Good luck on this, Blu!
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by Anapan Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:52 pm

Given this much time, audience preference is very relevant. I do have a surplus of new arcade parts. I'll see what I can come up with.
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marurun
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by marurun Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:00 pm

Blu, those ideas sound great. I do know my ambitious plans to mode GBAs for donation will not work out, though. Too much cubital tunnel syndrome to do that kind of work.
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by marurun Tue Jul 20, 2021 11:49 am

So, related to that cubital tunnel syndrome, I have a mechanical red switch keyboard, barely used, which I can offer up for the auction. I'll put up a GBA SP AGS-001 with charger as well. I've got a ton of old console joysticks that could use some TLC as well, but I worry shipping wouldn't make them worth bidding on.
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by JoeAwesome Tue Jul 20, 2021 2:30 pm

marurun wrote:So, related to that cubital tunnel syndrome, I have a mechanical red switch keyboard, barely used, which I can offer up for the auction. I'll put up a GBA SP AGS-001 with charger as well. I've got a ton of old console joysticks that could use some TLC as well, but I worry shipping wouldn't make them worth bidding on.


I don’t recall how heavy packages went in past auctions- was shipping not separate or the auction started to include shipping costs?
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Re: Interest Gauge: Charity Auction / Raffle for Meat Fight

by Blu Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:10 pm

Thanks for the support Joe!

I think we could start the auction price to include shipping. That doesn't sound like a bad idea. Then we could just re-coup the donor the shipping cost from a centralized PayPal account. Thoughts?
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