What would you do??

[Stitch2814]

Hey all I am at a bit of a pickle and confused slightly.

Everyone has seen the thread for me trying to get pin donations for my friends charity event that I help organise so its regarding Donations and I dont know the norm for this type of thing but here goes.

One member said they would donate something then with the price of postage internationally they declined to send anything and I was ok with that. Then that member told me to message someone else on their behalf wth my address as they won an Auction and would like to donate the pins to our charity day.

I messaged the auctioneer and sent them my address to confirm and the response from the auctioneer said *Hi, that is fine, I will send her pins to you* and that was 2 weeks ago..

Anyway, skip forward till today and I messaged the auctioneer and asked if she mailed the pins to me, and I was told NEITHER of the them (member and auctioneer) knew they had to send internationally when they actually did (member backed out due to international postage, and auctioneer saw my address in a PM and told me it was fine)

I was then told the pins were donated to Goofy_Moe's donation drive, this I am not to bothered about as either way the pins have gone to somewhere to do some good. BUT my point really is I was not told anything regarding this by either people when they confirmed to send me the pins and then backing out and claiming they didnt know I was international.. which to me seems a bit of a cop out.

I am just thinking what to do, as I think it was quite rude to not message me and just brush me off when I got told it was fine to send to me AFTER I PM'd my Irish address...

I just feel kinda cheated when it was for a charity event and was told it was fine. :down: Fair enough they were given to Goofy_Moes but it feels like another nail in the coffin for out event and it is getting more and more unbearable when people cant spare 1 pin to help sick kids enjoy a holiday.

 

[Psycho Pixie]

No idea what to say about the loss of the donation, but can you remind me which charity group and for what and when the deadline is? International shipping is expensive, but i might be able to swing something after we move. But i need to know exactly what it is going to please? ((In short words cuz i am a total A.D.D case))

 

[Stitch2814]

ALL money raised from our charity event goes to help people who suffer with epidermolysis bullosa, the charity sends families who have sufferers of EB on holidays. If you want to see the condition of the disease google it and have a read.

Plus My sig has the name of the charity, Scott Schofield Memorial Fund is the charity name.

 

[Psycho Pixie]

ALL money raised from our charity event goes to help people who suffer with epidermolysis bullosa, the charity sends families who have sufferers of EB on holidays. If you want to see the condition of the disease google it and have a read.

Plus My sig has the name of the charity, Scott Schofield Memorial Fund is the charity name.

Okies, when is the deadline for pin donations? I looked up the info from your siggy, still curious about when to send, how the pins become donations and such.

 

[Stitch2814]

Ive said this in other threads so once more wont hurt.

Pin donations or vinyls or anything we are sent are put into a few things -

1. 24 secret door Pin mystery game, pick a door get a pin
2 24 secret door vinylmation mystery game, pick a door get a vinylmation
3. Tombola, this is a number of items mixed together, people pay for raffle tickets that are folded up to which if you unroll one and it matches to a corresponding item (that would end in the number 5, so if you find 55 you win item with 55 on it)
4. Pin raffles
5. Vinylmatio raffles.
6. Pick a character game, you pick a character and if that character is picked out of the hat person wins a pin.

All above require a payment to have a go at the games and ALL money raised from the games is added with Entry fee's and all tallied up and donated to the charity, no pins are sold, traded or used out of context with the above games, unless we have a new idea for a game lol

September is the deadline, but I have a list of people who have said they would send items and have not done so and I have given them my address so to me thats a confirmation of agreeing to send.

 

[Psycho Pixie]

ah! ok. so the pins would be game and door prizes for those participating in the charity event. Okies!

Still need a deadline for you to receive the pins by....

 

[Stitch2814]

I put the deadline in above post lol, September is the deadline any time in september, we left it late last year and either donations were not sent in time so didnt get sent. So giving us plenty of time.

 

[starry_solo]

First, don't give up.

Second, you need to have a standard response about what the charity is about, what the disease is about, etc. Not direct someone to research it themselves. Because at that point, you've lost over 50% of readers.

Third, your signature should have a link to the Scott Ward-Schofield Memorial Fund. A clickable link.

Fourth, I will say what I said on the other board, you really need to look locally (within the UK) for sponsors to subsidize this event. The local charitable organization I am involved in (in the US) gets sponsors within the local community to subsidize their major charity event, which is a yearly ball held at a local hotel. This year, it also involved dancing and a casino night. All members of the organization were required to purchase a $125 ticket to the ball, of which $75 is tax deductible.

You need to play up the tax-deductible aspect of the donation. If it is tax deductible in the US and other countries to donate to non-US charities, you should play that up (here). If it is tax deductible only for UK people, that's fine too, play that up when you ask local businesses to help sponsor the event.

Although, looking at this IRS publication:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#en_US_2012_publink1000229695

It appears that it is not, see this quote:
"Contributions to Nonqualified Organizations

You cannot deduct contributions to organizations that are not qualified to receive tax-deductible contributions, including the following.



6. Foreign organizations other than certain Canadian, Israeli, or Mexican charitable organizations."

BTW, here is the fund's "Registered charity number 1143635" (on their website)

Back to the last charity event I attended, the organization had donors (including group members) donate bottles of wine, which they then auctioned off as a "wine bin" for which you had to purchase $100 ticket and there were only 52 tickets sold (I think there were at least 52 bottles of wine). The 52 tickets corresponded with a deck of cards. Each card drawn, the person had to sit down (loser). The last card was the winner (so it took a while to go through). <--this is something they do every year and it raised $5200 (again, sponsors/donors donated the wine).

And not just local businesses but local politicians! They can donate items that have a monetary value attached (dinners at their house, cooked by themselves or their lovely spouses) that can then be auctioned off (not in a raffle, but either a live auction or a silent auction with a minimum bid amount.) Politicians love to be involved in charities (it makes them look good to voters.) Get your local mayor, city council, famous barrister, etc. involved.

Have you contacted Disneyland Paris to see if they could donate tickets? WDW and DLR does that for certain organizations (must be 501(c)(3)) so you should find out if your charity qualifies on the UK-side.)

If people donate money to your organization, perhaps you can use the funds to purchase DS UK pins? Or other items on the DS website?

Perhaps get one person in the US to be your "point-person" for collecting donations and everyone sends the donations to him/her? Then that person can mail out the item (although there would probably be customs charges associated with that)?

Finally, the charity should set up a PayPal account in order to accept monetary donations. If it has one, you should provide it to us. A personal one is fine too (for you or Elaine).

BTW, here is the link to donate to the charity directly (but you have to donate as pounds £
https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/thescottwardschofieldmemorialfund

Hope this helps. One thing I am doing is going to try to raise up to $10,000 for 2-3 different charitable organizations in the area. Hopefully by mid-to-late summer. I have a sample fundraising letter done so if you need pointers (for approaching local businesses, etc.), that would be great.

 

[Stitch2814]

Li, as I have said before now, I am just one to help with the day aspects of things, my friend Elaine is on the committee and knows scott's mum directly. So posting all that for me is pointless when most of it is just words LOL I have pointed Elaine to this thread to read what you have put in your response so she can venture into that side of things.

I am in Ireland so I cant do local area as even when I visit I aint got time for that. I do appreciate your reply. But all you have said is directed at elaine when I am just helping out on the event day and hosting the games and collecting donations all technical aspects are down to her.

Reason why I say to go google it as some images of the disease are not very pretty which is sad to say but its not, and I do not think they need to posted on the forum as the images speak louder than the words I would paste here.

 

[Merryweather]

First, don't give up.

+1

I am wondering maybe accepting monetary donations might further your cause a bit.

I have not sent anything across the pond since the postage increase here, but looking at past threads I am guessing that it is $6 or so to send 1-2 pins.

If you accept $$ instead, maybe someone from the charity can use the pooled funds to purchase pins from disneystore.com in UK or from Ebay or gumtree (do I remember this right?). I know that this is more work at your end, but I am going to guess that more people might be willing to send cash donations instead of spending the same amount on postage. Just a side thought ...

And don't be disheartened if you hit a dry spell. September is a long time away, most of us are probably putting it off until August or so.

 

[Stitch2814]

I dont mind cash donations as I was able to get the disney characters as cars booster set for $7 and shipping for the $10 donated from Jadestarr so if people were donating $$ then I would purchase more pins from them lol

 

[Psycho Pixie]

oh good! september! OK. i will set myself a July Deadline, which means you should get it by august. lol

 

[Nathan95]

I think it's just the deadline. I'm pretty sure people will donate its just most people probably aren't going to donate right away because they have a ton of time to donate. EB runs in my family and both my mother and my sister suffer from it so I'll for sure donate but I want to wait until I obtain something amazing to donate since this disease hits close to home