Raise Significant Funds without asking for Money
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Trash becomes treasure at charity auctions
Originally printed on February 13, 2008
by Elizabeth Rackover in the Oakland Press
When Barry Olson and his staff look at unwanted golf clubs and office furniture, discarded dolls and choir robes, they see gold. With an e-twist, modern alchemy is alive and well in Oakland County.
Olson wanted a way to raise money for charities without asking people to donate cash and checks. On the accepted theory that one person's clutter is someone else's collector's item, he and Rob Grozenski founded Project12Baskets in February 2007. Their first big project was a 12-room farmhouse estate sale in Ohio. The P12B team went through the house, brought all sellable items to their warehouse and offices in Rochester Hills, and "put them through the process." Items are cataloged, photographed, researched if necessary for value, and listed in online auctions such as eBay and Craig's List. “Over a period of four months, most everything sold and the money went to a parish that the family had grown up in," said Olson, president of Project12Baskets.
It was no small sum for the parish. "We got three times the value that an auctioneer had predicted," Olson says. "One of the real epiphanies was when the pastor said ‘You gave me two months of collection plates.' We unlocked a new currency for his congregation."
Project12Baskets, named for the New Testament miracle in which leftovers filled 12 baskets after Jesus fed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish, has been unlocking that currency for a wide variety of local charities since then. P12B recently presented Pontiac's Notre Dame Preparatory School with a check for more than $10,000 - proceeds reaped from donated household goods collected and sold between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31.
"It's intriguing from a non-profit standpoint to be able to raise money outside of our community," said Andy Guest, director of development for Notre Dame Prep. Spring cleaning drives and regular collection days afford the potential to "provide a permanent revenue stream to the school." Similar windfalls have benefited a variety of churches and schools in Oakland County, such as Lutheran High School Northwest in Rochester Hills, and Detroit Catholic Central High in Novi, as well as in other Michigan areas. To date, 65 charitable organizations have signed up with P12B with inquiries coming from such heavy-hitters as United Way.
"This is the purest form of green," says P12B Chief Operating Officer Charles Halash. "When we started this, I don't think any of us realized how timely we were - not just in terms of money, but waste. Things families would throw away get a new life instead of ending up in the trash." It isn't just families who throw things away: P12B solicits and accepts literally cubic yards worth of overstock and depreciated items from big corporations such as Lowe's that would otherwise be thrown into landfills. Dozens of boxes of closet and organizational shelving, for example, were snapped up by P12B and, one by one, are being sold online with profits going to charities. Lowe's gets the goodwill and write-off; charities get the proceeds; the Earth gets less trash.
Corporations that are moving or downsizing have made the discovery, too. Recently, automotive supplier Valeo donated commercial items including an audio/visual conferencing device, conference tables, drafting tables, monitors, computer cabinets and air conditioning units. "We have virtually anything you can imagine in here," Olson boasted. "And 92 percent of the items sell," Grozenski added.
With collection centers in Rochester Hills, Novi and Saginaw, as well as in Illinois and Minnesota, Project12Baskets is on its way to creating a new way for people to give from the bottom of their hearts - and basements.