To make things more organized, last year eBay hired MissionFish, a division of the Points of Light Foundation, to serve as a clearinghouse for nonprofits. The group, which is headquartered in Washington, checks the legitimacy of any group that seeks to benefit. Right now, there are 283 registered arts and humanities groups.
Others might use a middleman like Mindshare. They charge, says Englin, a one-time setup fee of $1,000 to $2,500, for which they design the pages on eBay, answer questions from bidders, mail the items and then analyze the results. "For us," says Richard of Arena, "it is essential."
Sitting pretty: This pair of hand-carved thrones from Arena Stage's production of "Camelot" brought the theater $152.50 from an online buyer.
(Arena Stage)
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What sells best for arts groups is a connection to personal experience. Signature, for example, is offering a signed poster from lyricist and composer Fred Ebb, the four-time Tony Award winner, who recently died. It could be one of the last of its kind.
Arena has tried the eBay way twice this year. The first was tied to its spring benefit and netted $6,500. The second earned $3,300.
The Great Chicago Fire Sale, the auction that helps arts programs there, pulled in $242,210 in 20 days this month. It had 6,343 bids and a high-end tone. Offerings included a dinner party for 12 anywhere in the United States prepared by Oprah Winfrey's personal chef. That garnered $6,100. Dyeing the river green was part of a package that included a hotel stay for two nights and a spot in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Someone paid $7,600. The Chicago auction also had a Frank Gehry drawing of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a concert stage in a city park. It had an original 1960s Playboy Bunny costume and a Gibson guitar signed by Buddy Guy, the king of Chicago blues for four decades.
This is not the first time Chicago has set the pace for novel fundraising. It was the first U.S. city to place gaily painted animals -- in its case, cows -- all over town. It then sold them off, reproduced them, and gave advice to about 200 other cities on how to create fun and profit. Washington copied that idea with "Party Animals," which decorated the city with elephants and donkeys. Earlier this year, it repeated the act with pandas. In this year's auction, Chicago included an original work from "Cows on Parade" and birdhouses from this summer's public art exhibition.
Some of the amounts raised are small, but the investment, points out Richard, is minimal because the auctioned items have been donated or are part of an old inventory. Arena has earmarked its proceeds for school programs, which cost about $1.2 million a year.
In its second try on eBay, the theater included autographed scripts by the award-winning playwrights David Henry Hwang and Nilo Cruz, which together sold for $289. It offered opening night and dinner tickets, as well as items such as Miss Adelaide's hat from "Guys and Dolls." That went for $55.35.
Sara Jaffe, the director of development for Signature, says, "Selling online was an untapped area." As part of its 15th-anniversary celebrations, Signature will be selling items on eBay Jan. 4 to 14. Its auction coincides with housecleaning, as the theater prepares to move to a new performance space in 2006.
"We have all these treasures in the building. The question is should we archive them. Our patrons are so loyal that they would probably love a piece to take home," says Jaffe.
The idea of building a memory beyond the souvenir playbill seems to be taking hold. Arena is already planning a third try, built around its spring benefit with the superhero theme "Capital Crusaders: It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Congress." Let the bidding begin.
