The problem is two-fold: First, we would have to verify the non-profit status and since non-profit is a legal definition with tax implications, we'd have to do that verification with a high standard of due diligence. In the case of a charity auction, any portion of the price paid in excess of the item's fair market value is a tax-deductable donation to the charity... assuming the charity is a legally-established non-profit (a surprising number of churches actually don't have their 503c paperwork in order and are legally not non-profit charities; just having "church" in your name doesn't do it). When you suddenly have a tax deduction involved, you suddenly have the potential for tax fraud, a federal crime. We don't want to put Bladeforums.com, Spark, and even the individual moderators in the position of possibly being accessories to a federal crime. So, to give ourselves a legal defense against such a charge, we have to exercise due diligence, verify the charity's non-profit status, that the fair market value of the item is reasonable (and when the item is a knife and we who are moderators of the world's foremost knife discussion site and, therefore expected to have some expertees, have a higher expectation of due diligence), that the price is paid and the money actually goes to the charity, etc. It's a lot of work.
Second, many of -- hopefully most or even all of -- the members here support some church or other charity. If we allowed everyone here to promote his/her charity here, the site would just be burried in such posts. So, the best way for us to avoid accusations of bias and the resulting hurt feelings is to deny most everyone. We permit just a few each year because we do want to promote charity within the knife community. The one's we do permit are those which we believe will be of very broad interest to our international membership.
It's the sad reality of operating such a large site full of great and generous people all over the world.
