Question about the Katrina Strut record auction...
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Hey Strutters- I guess this is a question for Raj but maybe others know.Was there any legal process that was made in order for us to do the Katrina record auction via the message board? Reason for asking is I wanna set up a similar fund raiser on another message board to raise funds for a little girls cancer treatment. One of the owners of Goner Records (here in Memphis) daughter is going through her third treatment and they are having a benefit show and auction here in town. Tons of folks visit the Goner board worldwide and want to help. I remember how well we all came through for Katrina victims and I think a similar record auction via the Goner website would work really, really well. Is it legal to just start threads and auction away?Any help would be appreciated. Please only real headz that know the deal.Thanks- AndrewHere's a link to the story... http://www.goner-records.com/anna/
Comments
Paypal, as you may recall, froze the money until this was done.
Bam can give you details.
Our "let a heatrock loose" campaign was quite a beautiful thing, but probably should not be used as a model.
The gist: I believe it was Guzzo who had the original idea for donations, and I PM'ed Raj and asked if we could do it by "auctioning a few records." I told deepstank about it and he said his employer offered a 3:1 match on funds for Katrina. I offered our paypal for collecting the money.
There were several problems:
The first problem was the amount of people who got involved. It was inspiring, but it basically consumed my entire life for that month. Each auction was started in it's own thread, and there were something like 500 auctions. Keeping track of the auctioner, the end time, the winner, the payment, the shipping details, etc. for all the auctions was rough. I worked as a database manager at the time (god, I hated that f??cking job) and was managing a case that involved us being sued by 500,000 people who were represented by 50 different law firms, so I was prepared. Otherwise, I think I might have f??cked it all up.
Second, it is illegal to use paypal for fund raising. We found this out the hard way, by getting an email from paypal that our account had some "suspicious activity" (balance went from $5 to $50,000 in a week) and that our account was suspended. Anthony Pearson called in a personal favor to his paypal contact, pleading our case, and inadvertantly exposed our makeshift charity. Paypal doesn't have a heart. Since we were not a non-profit, our appeal just made it worse (lame). Again, lucky for us, our own JRoot handled all the legal loopholes (I don't know if he slept for those 4 days), pouring over all the user agreements, writing letters, making arguments. Once we flexed back, paypal relaxed and let us have our money back, but if we didn't have an attorney like JRoot we would be f??cked (they were asking for shipping receipts, confirmation slips and credit card receipts for all the auctions).
Third, a messageboard doesn't really offer software that is equipped to handle auctioning. Luckily for us, most everyone was cool with the rules and played nice (e.g., someone says, "the auction ends at 5 EST" and everyone pretty much obeys). Not having any mechanism to calculate shipping, determine auction end time (we used the time stamp once the post was made, but that's not perfect), dealing with deadbeats, etc.. We only had to call out a few chumps (The_Mac) for not paying for auctions ("Man, guys, sorry, I'm really broke right now." -- wtf?!). Being put on blast made the few deadbeats pays, or made other non-winners offer to cover the cost. A few generous souls chipped in to cover extra shipping charges and the hundreds we lost in paypal fees. If you don't have a group of people that can act civilly, this part could be really ugly.
Finally, since our auction raised more than $5,000 we got into patriot act territory. Making transfers over $5,000 get flagged under the patriot act. Making transfers over $10,000 trigger an automatic query. (JRoot can be more specific.) So, at the end of it, I made a series of $4,999 withdrawals from my paypal account to my bank account. Then I wrote a series of $4,999 checks to deepstank. He made a series of $4,999 donations through his work, who matched his money three-fold, to our agreed on charities.
We spent about a week getting all the paperwork straight, updating the ledger with all the auction information, tracking shipments, making copies, and then we filed everything and prayed that no one from the IRS would call.
At tax time we all chose the "don't ask, don't tell" policy because the whole thing was so ridiculous, and involved so many people, that we'd sound like lunatics trying to explain it to an auditor ("Well, this amount here, it's a guy named rape_donkeys, super nice guy, he sold an original Fela Kuti record... You know Fela? The dude with 27 wives, it's a beautiful tune.")
In short, I think you should definitely do some fund raising for the daughter of Goner Records. I just don't think you should follow our lead. I don't regret any of it, and I only offered the above problems now because they were things I didn't think we worth talking about publicly during the auctions. I didn't want to suggest our method as a trouble-less way of raising money.
Good luck,
~B
I was drinking something at the time and it almost came out my nose.
On a side note. Best thing ever on this site. You guys were all great. Thx for every one who helped out. Including those behind the scene... I was proud to do my part of support and proud of every strutter who donated by buying or selling their raers.
I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew it was something, I just didn't know what.