eBay Celebrates in Lumberton - Our Community Counts Winner

Hey there - I'm a bit jet-lagged here still, but who minds a little lack of sleep after partying it up?

Last week I traveled back East to the town of Lumberton, New Jersey, who was the winner of our Community Counts promotion we held in November, 2006. I was part of the crew that threw all the eBay registered members of the town a big celebration to honor them and say thank you for being the most active Community on eBay. 

As background, for 3 weeks last November we held the Community Counts contest where members earned points for their local communities (based on each member's registered ZIP Code) each time they were active buying, selling, using the Community Forums, or taking part in eBay Giving Works.  We then balanced out the points on a per capita basis so that everyone had a fair chance to win.  We wanted to give the tiniest town in Kansas the very same chance to win as New York City.  To illustrate - Lumberton, who has 3,012 registered members, finished with a score of 234,580. Compare that to San Jose, eBay's hometown, which boasts 27,246 members but only tallied 1,277 points. 

Hundreds of Lumberton-based eBay members ventured out with their families to their local park to attend the celebration with us.  We provided a yummy dinner, and everyone sat down to eat while enjoying a performance from the local high school jazz band. 

Following the dinner and music, Gary Briggs, our Chief Marketing Officer (he's the guy who does our marketing updates), officially declared Lumberton the winner of the Community Counts promotion, and bestowed a big thank you and congratulations upon Lumberton's Mayor, Patrick Delany. In return, the Mayor had a cool gift for Gary. Since a simple key to the city was was too "bricks and mortar and not hip enough" for eBay, he gave Gary a "Smart Card to the City." That was hilarious (and awfully clever).

Next, Gary honored the unsung hero in Lumberton - Kathy Pfeiffer, their postmaster.  She's been the Lumberton Postmaster for ZIP code 08084 since 1993, so she and her team are "very familiar with eBay packages that come and go from the post office daily." 

Finally, it was time for the big money to appear. As part of the promotion, we had pledged to donate $10,000 to the charity of Lumberton's choice. It was with a lot of pride that Gary was able to hand over the money to the Burlington County Animal Alliance. 

From my point of view, everyone seemed to have a great time. The casual atmosphere helped everyone feel comfortable, and to enjoy talking with their neighbors and the close to 40 staff members from eBay and PayPal who traveled to throw the big bash! 

Now I just need to readjust back to the West Coast time zone...