Raise Significant Funds without asking for Money
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Rochester Web firm helps with charity auctions
Originally posted on 7/5/2007 5:43:46 PM
by Matt Rousch in the Great Lakes IT Report
This could spell the end of the church rummage sale.
A group of veteran technology partners has established a new company and Web site that provides a novel way for churches and charities to get money without asking for it.
Project 12 Baskets LLC calls on charities, schools and churches and asks them if they're interested in creating a new currency -- through donations of various items from their constituencies.
Project 12 Baskets accepts the donated items, photographs them, lists them on Web auction sites -- and in special cases, brings in resale specialists -- ships the item and collects the payment.
"We handle all the paperwork from A to Z," said Rob Grozenski, executive vice president of Project 12 Baskets. "Approximately 70 percent of net proceeds of the item goes to charity."
Grozenski is one of four partners in the company who worked together at the Troy-based Chimes Inc. division of Computer Horizons Corp., which was sold last year for $80 million to Axium International.
The others are Barry Olson, president of Chimes, now CEO of Project 12 Baskets; Charles Halash, senior vice president of marketing at Chimes, now COO of Project 12 Baskets; and Ben Olson, Barry's son, who is chief technology officer at Project 12 Baskets and who worked on Chimes' online delivery systems for employee recruitment and work force administration.
Grozenski said that Project 12 Baskets offers a "success-based model," and that the charities pay nothing for the service until the item is sold. "There's no cost to the charity," he said. "They just help us market the service and allow contact with people." Donors, meanwhile, get a precise tax deduction for the sale price of their items -- no more of those "garage-sale estimates."
Project 12 Baskets is based in Rochester, and has a collection center in Utica.
The service is also being marketed in the Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Pennsylvania markets.
Oh, and the name? It's a reference to the Biblical miracle of feeding the 5,000. The account says Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish, prayed over them, and somehow turned them into enough food for thousands of followers -- in fact, there were 12 baskets of leftovers.