Events

Charities are increasingly using the commercial online auction services to sell tickets for their major events.

The Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers' London and Information Technology Special Interest Groups hosted a successful and popular presentation on fundraising on the Internet in London last night.

The evening was chaired by UK Fundraising's Howard Lake and featured presentations by Jason Potts and Cathy Anderson of Burnett Associates.

Harrods is celebrating its 150th anniversary with an online auction of designer teddy bears in aid of the British Red Cross. Hosted at Ibidlive, with bids handled by EarthPort.com, the auction concludes with a live auction at Harrods on 29 October.

NSPCC will hold an online auction starting on 13th September, with support from MSN and QXL. At 10.00am on Monday, TV star Melinda Messenger and Desmond 'Q' Lewellyn will start the bidding in what MSN describe as"the UK's biggest ever on-line auction."

Sponsored cycle rides are all the same. The cyclist asks her friends and relatives for cash. Online auction house QXL have come up with an alternative.

"Instead of asking friends to give money for every mile you ride," say QXL, "ask them to clean out their cupboards and auction off stuff like old books, CDs, toys, ceramics, collectibles, used (but working) computers and peripherals."

One of the more practical methods of celebrating the approaching Millennium change is to sign up for the Children's Promise.

Conference Registry Online TM, from the American Philanthropy Review, is an international registry of conferences, seminars, workshops, courses, and other events of interest to the nonprofit and NGO community. The service not only lists conferences on its Web site but will also deliver an announcement of the conference to every CharityChannel.com forum subscriber.

Put on your virtual glad-rags and head off for the first online charity ball. The organisers "seek to provide the best and most entertaining charity event on the Net to raise funds in support of a broad range of public charities in the areas of social services, education, health issues, and arts and humanities."

FUNDit, the Fundraising and Fundraising Technology Exhibition, is a new event for the fundraising community. It will be held at Kensington Town Hall on Thursday 6 May 1999.

Raising funds by tucking into a pizza sounds a little too good to be true. But Pizza Express have been offering this service for some years now, and have raised an impressive figure, simply by adding a discretionary 25p for every Pizza Veneziana sold. Sales of the fundraising pizza have now raised £777,434.46 (as of 3 May 1998).