After all that effort, why not just do your own auction at the school? That is coming from someone that's not fond of shipping things, however.
The hardest part of an auction (IMHO) is getting the items. Why share 40% of the profits by letting someone else do the fun part? Also, people at the school benefit by getting great deals. It's exciting and you will get higher bids for items from people at your school than they might on ebay (Depending on the items.)
Just do it yourself. We had our first silent auction this year. As unorganized (Can you get more disorganized than not having a chairman?), and short on time and volunteers as we were, we made $5000 at our auction.
(Evil nonsequitur coming out) Hey, send ME your items, I'll put them in our next auction and give you back 60% of the profits. How's that sound?
My understanding is that Auction & Earn is done through eBay's Giving Works program. That being the case, I'm with Serendipity--just do it yourself directly on eBay. You can either set up your own Giving Works account through Mission Fish, or just set up an eBay id outside of Giving Works (check out eBay's site for more info). I have my doubts as to how much people really focus on whether items they want to purchase are part of the Giving Works program, so I don't think there's a real advantage to listing under Giving Works.
Also--SchoolPop is part of a company called LoyaltyPoint. They're still trying to digest the acquisition of SchoolCash, and my experience with their customer service has been horrendous lately (as in I can't get any customer service). Their financial statements look crappy, and I'm starting to have my doubts as to whether my school is going to see the money we earned through SchoolCash anytime soon. I'm pretty sure that when the SchoolCash site was still up, they had said that all SchoolCash earnings were going to be paid out by now, and not only have they not been paid, but all of them aren't even listed on the SchoolPop site yet. I just wouldn't trust SchoolPop right now to get you your Auction & Earn money very quickly.
Just my opinion, but if you wanted to do something like that, you would be better off having an ebay auction fundraiser. Sell all the stuff yourselves and make 100% profit. Plus that way people can give you used items as well as new. The schools that I know that have done this have made big money.I f you are yourself not familar with ebay, just ask around, I guarantee someone around the school will be familiar with it. It would be a little more work for you guys, but I personally don't believe in handing over money to some business for things I can do myself.
The person in charge of Schoolpop for our school (it has never been very successful at our school) got a flyer from our rep saying they have a new program called Auction & Earn. You send home flyers asking for donations of used merchandise ($50 and up and under 100 pounds), you collect it, you box it up, and they sell it and send you 60% of what they earn.
Anyone have any experience with this? My fear is that we will get donations of lots of junk (my experience is that people tend to inflate the value of things they donate) and that it will take a lot of labor. Plus how do we know what they sell the things for?
