Monday, November 10, 2008

Auction of Desire



Join us for the charity event of the season! 56D USA is proud to present an Auction of Desire with Albany's hottest bachelorettes. At The Charity Date Bid you can meet new people all while raising money for charities that you care about. The concept of live charity date auctions has been around for many years but in most cases it was only celebrities who could participate. At The Charity Date Bid anyone (over 18 years of age) can post or bid on a date and feel good about it, knowing that they are also raising money for reputable charities. The charities we support cover a wide spectrum of causes from children's charities to medical research to animal welfare

This is the world's first online charity date auction to reward the lowest unique bidder. Free to register, post a date and browse for single women or men. The perfect solution for single women and single men looking for dates, dating, personals, love, or romance and giving back to our communities at the same time!

The Lowest Unique Bidder and Your DATE (see below) will receive fully paid for, a deluxe Date Package which will include dinner for 2 at a To Be Determined upscale Albany area Fine Restaurant. (Alcoholic beverages are not included.)








The Lucky Woman

You're probably already thinking I'm a woman with missing teeth, sitting in her trailer park with her 15 cats, desperately trying to get "Dancing With the Stars" to come in while I mess with the bunny ears on the TV I fished out of the dumpster, all while I'm screaming at my bastard children who are running around naked with ten-day-old Kool-Aid mustaches.

Close. Well, not really.

I'm a 29-year-old female with two college degrees. One of them was obtained from Full Sail, so you'll probably understand immediately why I am unemployed. I have my own apartment in a complex that looks really nice and well-kept and sweeps the monthly murders under the rug. I only have one cat, who I am training to use the toilet. I have a TV, but I'm thinking of cutting the cable because, well, I'm unemployed and TV sucks, anyway. I have no children and I don't want children. When I am employed, I enjoy spending the disposable income on things like vacations and restaurants, not on people who will take advantage of me and then hate me in the long-run.

I have been spending my days cruising for jobs on Careerbuilder and Craigslist, even though I'm beginning to think 95% of the jobs on Craigslist are a scam and I will probably begin receiving timeshare information in the mail. Sometimes I even venture outside. There's a pond outside my front door, and the ducks amuse me.

I am broke so I like to go to Barnes and Noble for a few hours, read a book, and then head into the bathroom and cry because I am too poor to purchase a Vanilla Latte from the adjoining Starbucks. Some nights I go dumpster diving behind local businesses, hoping to score something major. All I've come away with so far is a box of kitty litter, but it gives me an adrenaline rush and makes me feel like MacGyver.

My lack of finances has isolated me from my friends, who get to go downtown and drink or see the same movies in theaters that I download at home for free.

Basically, I'm looking for a guy who will keep me entertained. I don't care if you are broke like me, and if you are not broke and want to take me to dinner, that is also fine. I have a cabinet stocked with white rice and ramen. I have an old XBox and a Super Nintendo. If you want, we can play "GTA Vice City" and beat up prostitutes together. I also enjoy going to tourist areas and laughing at the foreigners who wear bright yellow sneakers and soccer jerseys.

I typically like white guys who wear glasses. I don't know what it is about glasses, but they are such a turn-on. I also like psuedo-intellectuals who think they are smart, even if they aren't. I'm a conspiracy theorist, so if you want to feed into my paranoia, that is appreciated.

If you're not a white guy with glasses, it's ok. Hopefully you have a dynamic personality to make up for it.

I should probably mention here that I'm fat. Not grotesquely so, and I keep up with myself. I'm flexible and can get up off the couch. I don't smell like cheese and I don't need baby powder to keep my thighs from chafing. Poverty is making me lose weight, anyway.

If interested, BID on ME. No serial killers or hardcore drug addicts, please. I'm sure you are interesting, but I want to live to see the end of the world.



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Online Auctions Raise Big Bucks for Charity

Nonprofits can raise more money in less time by offering their Warren Buffett lunches and Michael Jordan sneakers for bidding on the Web

It used to take Cynthia Thomashow as long as six months to raise the $100,000 or so her nonprofit organization needs to run for a year. But with the help of an online charity site, she can raise that sum in as little as a month. "It changed our lives," says Thomashow, executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Environmental Education, a group that provides environmental educational tools to schools. "It's a quick and efficient way to raise an operating budget." Since 2004, Thomashow has raised about $500,000 with the help of online charity sites.

The Web has wrought a sea change in the way nonprofits raise funds through auctions. Charities have long hawked donated items through live auctions, where bidders try to outbid each other publicly, often with the help of a fast-talking auctioneer, or through so-called silent auctions that let potential donors browse through items, then submit bids in writing.

But with online auctions, nonprofits say they can raise more money in less time, selling a coveted item or service, often donated by a celebrity or socialite—say, a meal with Warren Buffett (BusinessWeek, 6/8/06) or Michael Jordan's sneaker collection—to the highest bidder from across the Web.

Monkeys, Yachts, and Warren Buffett

Online charity auctions have raised at least $250 million, according to figures provided by the largest sites, including eBay (EBAY), which runs a program called Giving Works. Others include Charity Folks and Charitybuzz. The biggest player, eBay, has raised $150 million for charity since 1999. Of that total, $50 million was raised in the last year alone. Its Giving Works helps more than 84 million eBay users "support the causes most important to them" and gives 15,000 nonprofits "direct access to this key constituency," says Kristin Cunningham, general manager of eBay Giving Works.

No item, it seems, is off-limits for auction. Online casino site Goldenpalace.com placed the winning bid for the right to name a new species of titi monkey discovered in Bolivia by the Wildlife Conservation Society. With $650,000, the casino outbid Ellen DeGeneres to name the monkey callicebus avrei palatti, or "Golden Palace." Other prizes that have been auctioned for a cause include a 90-foot Ferris wheel and five days on a 157-foot private yacht. Two auctions have even reached seven figures: The most recent lunch with Warren Buffett fetched $2.11 million, and a letter signed by 41 Senate Democrats demanding that Rush Limbaugh apologize for calling antiwar veterans "phony soldiers" hauled in $2.1 million.

The auction-hosting sites get a share of loot, too. CMarket's Biddingforgood.com started in 2003 and has raised nearly $46 million for nonprofits through 4,500 online auctions. Similar to other hosts, cMarket gets 9% of sold items, up to $4,500; the rest goes directly to the charity.

Fund-Raisers Tap Facebook

Besides helping nonprofits save time and money, online auctions often attract a broader audience—and they can build buzz for weeks as bids rise. Best of all, the money is typically unrestricted, so it can be used for operational costs; direct donors often favor specific programs.

As successful as online auctions are, though, most charitable giving still happens off-line. The $1.1 billion in gifts on the Web last year made up just 1% of overall fund-raising, according to a 2008 survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And the online total includes giving through all charity Web sites, not just online auctions. But charity auctions aren't the only new way the Web is being used to raise money. Fund-raisers are increasingly tapping social-media tools and sites (BusinessWeek, 2/14/08) such as Facebook, and Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have sophisticated Web fund-raising operations (BusinessWeek, 6/27/08).

This month, Charitybuzz is auctioning a painting of Obama by artist Shepard Fairey with the word "hope" beneath it. Proceeds will benefit the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, a group founded by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons that exposes disadvantaged urban youth to the arts. The current high bid? $108,000 and counting.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2008/tc20080722_430362.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology