Listing For a Cause

Hopefully you’ve heard about eBay Giving Works – that’s our program where you can donate part (or all) of your sale to a variety of nonprofit causes. Just look for it directly within the Sell Your Item form and in Turbo Lister. As Bill Cobb mentioned at eBay Live! last week, our Community has raised over $20 million this year through eBay Giving Works, which is absolutely amazing.

Now GlobalGiving, a nonprofit org, has put together a very interesting event on eBay Giving Works that will be running through the end of June (they were also mentioned in Ryan’s last blog post). If a seller lists an item to benefit a GlobalGiving project, they earn 5 points on behalf of the entire eBay Community. They’ll earn 2 more points for each subsequent item they list, and another 2 for each item that sells. These can add up quickly, and we hope they do. Every time the amount of points earned by the Community hits a certain level, an anonymous GlobalGiving donor will kick in a special donation amount.

For example, once the Community accumulates 5,000 points, the donor will give $5,000. At 15,000 points they’ll kick in another $10K, and match that again at 25,000 points. Whichever seller has earned the most points for the Community at each threshold gets to decide which cause gets the funds. And this is all in addition to the normal donation you can make for each item itself!

I talked with Jennifer Ibarra, Associate Manager for Cause-Related Programs, about this GlobalGiving's campaign (I didn’t have to go far since she sits only a few cubes away from me). “We thought this would be a great way to involve the Community in group fundraising, while also earning extra money for the special cause that GlobalGiving is involved in. Hurry, though, because time is running out on the project!" As a sidenote, you can hear more about this from Jennifer when she appears on Griff's eBay Radio show this Tuesday.