Guardian Christmas Appeal includes online reverse auction
Howard Lake | 14 December 2004 | News
The online element of this year’s Guardian Christmas Appeal includes not only online donations but also for the first time an online reverse auction.
Bidders can contribute to the Guardian’s appeal while competing to win a 40GB Apple iPod or a 42-inch LG plasma TV for a fraction of the normal price. It’s a good example of the the win-win principle, and of a charity appeal offering an incentive to donors.
The reverse auction requires bidders to pay £5 for each bid: the lowest unmatched bid gets the item. So, in theory you could bid as little as £1 and, provided that is the lowest bid and no-one else matches that bid, you could walk away with one of the two items.
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To make it even more attractive, each of the 40 iPods and 10 TVs are available in a separate auction, and each auction has a limited number of bids allowed. The odds are therefore very good for each bidder: each time an iPod auction reaches 120 bids, a winner is selected. For the LG TV, it is one winner for each 800 bids.
The bidding is being conducted in partnership with online auction service Auctionair Limited.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.