How to donate to NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy using eBay Giving Works
If you read my e-commerce blog, the post below is adapted from this article: Using eBay Giving Works to give more to Haiti earthquake victims than you can afford by yourself
Whether you finished all 100 pages of your Screnzy script or 50,000 words of your National Novel Writing Month novel, you have to admit how much fun and productivity their parent company, The Office of Letters and Light, brought to your month. As a non-profit, they need all the money they can get to be able to keep on running these great events so, if you haven't already, please consider giving them a donation or at least purchasing something from their store.
But if you don't have enough ready cash to make a donation or you wish you could give more than you gave, consider using eBay Giving Works to give more than you normally could.
eBay Giving works is a service by which eBay sellers can opt to make a percentage of their sale go directly to the non-profit of their choice. The advantage to this is that it gives you a way to give more to The Office of Letters and Light than may be financially possible for you right now.
How do we get started? Go to The Office of Letters and Light page on eBay Giving Works here: http://donations.ebay.com/charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=17129
(If my link above doesn't work, go to http://donations.eBay.com and search for The Office of Letters and Light in the Non-Profit search box. If you are having trouble finding them, their ID number is 17129 so you may have more luck searching for that. Or include keywords and mission statements in your search and search for NaNoWriMo.)
On that page, you'll see three tabs, Buy, Sell and Donate. Donate just allows you to make a straight donation. It's buy and sell we are really interested in.
Under the Buy tab, you'll notice some items listed. These are items that have a percentage of their sale price going to The Office of Letters and Light. Along side of each listing, in the Donation % column, you can see what percentage of the final sale price is set to go to the non-profit. Purchase any of the items on that page and the designated percentage goes directly to The Office of Letters and Light. It's a great way to make a donation if it was something you were going to purchase anyway.
But what if you have something to sell? Older items you don't want anymore or something you were going to donate anyway? Why not list them here with a percentage (hopefully 100%) going to The Office of Letters and Light?
Every year, I auction off several copies of whatever my newest book is with 100% donation to The Office of Letters and Light on eBay through Giving Works. It's just my little way of trying to give back to these great events. It also lets me raise more money for them than I can do by myself. So if, say, my books cost $5 each, I realize I can only afford to donate $50. So I use that $50 to get copies of my book to sell. I then I sell 10 books at $10 each, I raise $100 for The Office of Letters and Light. Without Giving Works, I would have been able to only give half as much as I did.
Even if you don't have books to sell, mostly everyone has the ability to create something. A craft, a service or just an item you no longer want, anything can be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the non-profit.
To sell an item, go to that Sell tab. Once there, there is a explanation of how it works from the seller's point of view and then a big button to Sell Now. Once in the eBay listing page, where you see the Giving Works option (designated by a little blue and yellow ribbon, under where you set the price), you will need to select The Office of Letters and Light as well as the percentage that you want to donate. Other than that, you will set it up just like any other eBay listing.
If The Office of Letters and Light isn't showing as an option, just click the "Or, select another nonprofit you love" link and locate it again. (For future listings, you can do this at any time from the normal listing window instead of having to go to the Giving Works launch page first.)
It will look a bit like this:
Have any questions? Let me know below and I'll try to walk you through any issues.
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