As the parent of two school-aged children, it seems like every other day I get requests for contributions for art supplies, computer supplies, pencils and paper, ink cartridges, raffles, special events, teacher appreciation, club uniforms or church donations for the poor. The list goes on and on.

If you gave every time you were asked, you are either rich, or are embarrassed to say NO! There must be a better way to raise small amounts of funds for these kinds of requests. Well there is another alternative, Garage Sales.

Everyone has items stacked up in their garages, attics and closets that they no longer use or want. These items can be sold at a garage sale usually with a minimum of effort. Some or all of the proceeds of these sales can then be contributed to the causes mentioned above.

Garage sales are fairly common across the country. In addition to individuals, many homeowner associations, apartment buildings and even small businesses periodically hold garage sales. The problem that most people have with garage sales is getting people to show up for them. The sellers must usually promote their garage sales in the newspaper, community papers or newsletters. For this they usually have to pay listing fee, sometimes costing $30 or more. There are now many Internet sites that will allow sellers to list their sales or items. Most of these are free to register and allow the seller to list several items in a classified ad format. These sites are mainly focused on selling single items.

What if there was a way to list your garage sale and as many items as you wanted on a website for a small flat fee. The fee is less than the cost of a typical ad in a publication. And what if your school, club or other organization that needs to raise funds could split these flat fees. The group wanting to raise funds could promote the idea to their members or friends to hold their own garage sales and list all their items on the website using a special promotion code. The website would then track all the listings and split the earnings with the organizers. This benefits everyone who participates. Those holding a garage sale sell their items to local shoppers and Internet shoppers and keep all the proceeds. The organizer gets their share of all the website listing fees. This is what we call a win-win situation.

Let’s say that a fifth grade teacher needs art supplies for her fifth grade classes, but the school budget for art supplies has already been depleted. The teacher could send a note home with all of her students requesting that the parents hold their own garage sale before some date in the future and list their sale and items on the website. The teacher has 150 students and 40 of the parents decide to participate. The teacher signs up on the website with a promotion code of her choice. When the parents sign up for their garage sale, they enter the promotion code given to them by the teacher. The promotion code is then used to allocate funds for the teacher’s promotion. After the promotion final date, the website writes a check to the teacher for her share of the fees. Let’s say that the teacher gets $5.00 for each garage sale listed. The teacher would raise $200 (40 x 5 = 200) for her art supplies. Of course the teacher could also request that all participating parents also give a small portion of their sale proceeds as well to raise even more money.

Currently there is only one website that provides this type of fund raising capability, http://GarageSaleExpo.com/raisefunds. Perhaps more sites will get involved in this type of fund raising in the future.