helpvera - Profile (original) (raw)

What is this?

Help Vera! is a fundraiser and a charity auction to help the speculative writer and publisher Vera Nazarian save her home. The charity auction is in the style of livelongandmarry.

Why does Vera need our help?

Due to a series of misfortunes, a sub-prime mortgage gone bad, and caring for her sick elderly parents, Vera was facing foreclosure. Read her story here. Thanks to the efforts of this community, we have raised enough money to keep her out of foreclosure and fix her sewer. YIPPEE!!!

What will we do with the excess money? The answer is here

How we can help

THE FUNDRAISER IS OFFICIALLY OVER! Thank you to everybody who participated!

Auctions

Offer your skills, services, or products for the charity auction. Examples include - a piece of writing, a beta critique, baked goods, jewelry, and whatever else you can offer.

Details:
1. To post an auction, you need to become a member of our community first. You can do so at the profile page and clicking on "Join".

2. When posting your auction, please don't forget to put tags. Include your username and what it is that you are offering. Please be as thorough as you can, so that your stuff is easy to find. For example, an offer of cookies would have: offer, food, cookies. An offer of a signed book: offer, fantasy (or whatever genre), book, signed. More information about LiveJournal tags can be found here.

3. If you're a published writer, author or otherwise known by your name rather than your LJ UserName, you might want to consider putting your name in the auction as well. This community is attracting a lot of people who might not recognize you otherwise.

4. You may choose the ending time of your auction. If you choose not to specify a deadline, it will end one week from the time of your post. If there are no bids by that time, it will end on December 20th at noon PST. If any auctions would normally run past noon on December 20th, they will also end at that time.

5. If the item or service that you are auctioning might make a good Christmas gift, consider setting a "Buy Now" price.

6. When your auction has ended (either by deadline or "Buy Now"), please edit your entry add the tag "ended" to the tags portion of the entry.

7. If you're auctioning more than one item, please make a separate post for each item (or batch them into a lot). This makes the bookkeeping much easier.

Bid

Bid on goods and services our community members offer!

Details:

1. The overall auction begins on Friday, December 5th and runs until Saturday, December 20th.

2. Individual auctions end one week from the time the post was made OR until the end of the fundraiser. See point 3 in the Run an auction section for details.

3. To bid, comment to an offered post with the amount of money you wish to bid. If more than one item is listed in the post, please specify which item you are bidding on. If someone else raises the bid in a reply to your comment, bid again by replying to their reply with a higher offer. This will continue until the auction closes and the highest bid wins.

4. When you bid after someone, try to put in a reply to the person with the highest current bid. That way, they get a notification that they've been outbid and everything is right neighborly.

5. When you bid, it may be wise to use the "track this" feature in LJ for the post itself. That way, you still get notifications even when people are too distracted with the excitement of the auction to be following point 4.

6. If there is a "Buy Now" option, it can be exercised with the first bid on an auction. Once "Buy Now" has been exercised, further bidding will not be allowed. If the auction already had bids, you may not buy it outright with "Buy Now".

Pay

Paying is just like donating, with a tad more bookkeeping.

1. Either the winner or the seller trade email addresses. (Once you have your email addresses exchanged, delete the LJ comment with this information, it's safer for everyone that way.)

2. Discuss shipping arrangements, if applicable. (See Shipping below for details.)

3. Make a donation for the winning amount to HelpVera. (email is helpvera@fuzzyorange.com)

4. Email your PayPal receipt to the seller.

5. The seller will then ship your item or perform the service.

6. Bask in the glow of having helped Vera... or bid on something else.

Shipping

Internet auctions are confusing due to shipping issues. It is best for people posting auctions to state to where they are willing to ship things and whether or not shipping fees are included in the bid amount, but some won't. If they don't, and you live somewhere where shipping can be complicated or expensive, please discuss it with the seller before bidding.

If, after an auction completes, there is a disagreement about shipping, please resolve it between yourselves and remember, the important thing here is helping Vera. (While the shipping arrangements are between the buyer and seller, we will note that in cases where it's more expensive to ship than planned, it's often fair to just split the cost between the two of you.)