Custom Handmade Knives and Charity

Lorien

Lorien

Nose to the Grindstone
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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Thank you in advance for your feedback regarding the following questions;

1. What are your favourite charitable focuses, when it comes to using custom handmade knives as auction items, to raise resources for?

2. Any tips on how/who to conduct an auction with a charitable focus?

I'm looking for simple answers, and/or the rationale behind said answers.

All answers are welcome. Please do not argue with each other.
:)
 
Lorien said:
Thank you in advance for your feedback regarding the following questions;

1. What are your favourite charitable focuses, when it comes to using custom handmade knives as auction items, to raise resources for?

2. Any tips on how/who to conduct an auction with a charitable focus?

I'm looking for simple answers, and/or the rationale behind said answers.

All answers are welcome. Please do not argue with each other.
:)
Click to expand...

Why do you ask the question?

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
just formulating some plans/goals. Nothing specific as of yet.
 
I've learned that an auction will draw funds from one, and maybe two benefactors, while raffles will draw incrementally from many.

I'd avoid an auction and go for larger participation.

Having participated in probably ten-twenty charitable causes (which ALWAYS required clear photography) I've been a participant/supporter/organizer for over ten years. back in my Knife Network days we even had a forum called: "Charitable Causes" and I was a mod and an organizer.

One disappointment which challenges makers and photographers: You cannot 'claim' your work costs for tax writeoffs. It is truly an obstacle, because if you simply DONATED $500 to the gift organization you would receive a tax form. All charities are non-profit and have the ability to point back to the 'donors' their contribution as a charitable write-off.

I'd be much more inclined to work hard if I knew the benefit organization could send me a statement saying my work was worth, say, $200 towards this. Unless you know a workaround, this isn't allowed. The donation has to be a tangible item, not labor.

This is a valid topic. We'll all be involved again in the future somewhere.

Coop
 
Hi Lorien, I know there's several ways to go about donating to charities but what I have done in the past is just offer a knife forsale - stating buyer to
make check out to the specific charity you the seller wants it to go to, then payment is sent to seller and sellers forwards it to the charity and sends the knife to the buyer.
This works well in getting buyers envolved and wanting to purchase and donate to a charity at the same time, makes buyers more relaxed when it comes to opening there wallets when they know their helping others plus by doing it this way there's no question that 100% of payment goes directly to the charity. I'm sure an auction might generate more money but this way is very simple, to the point with very little hassel.

Bill
 
thank you for your responses, I know this is kind of a weird question. The reason I ask here, is that there seem to be a lot of people involved in custom knives with big hearts- especially knife makers.

I'm trying to get a read on what various causes are out there that our particular community tends to support.

If a guy were to want to raise as much money for a cause as possible, and chose to do this via raffle or auction, who out there can facilitate this kind of thing? Any tips on how to go about putting a raffle together?
 
Lorien said:
I'm trying to get a read on what various causes are out there that our particular community tends to support.
Click to expand...

There is no trending on this....it ranges from local to international. Some people do it out of general altruism, some do it because they have been personally affected.

My family donates to local wild animal rescue and rehab, the USO, American Cancer Society and PROTECT. I don't know one other person in the knife community who is active in those same four causes, but everyone I know is active in at least one of their own choosing.

The CKCA was involved in cancer causes before it was the CKCA. Kevin Jones put it together and continues to do so. He has put more time into it than anyone else I know....and he has a whole organization of 200+ members to back him up if he needs help.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Hey Lorien,
I don't have extensive experience in the area of knives for charity but I can share what little experience I do have. Since my entire life revolves around fundraising for personal and project funds I come into contact with many people who do the same. One of those groups is the Christian Motorcyclist Association. Last year I made a knife as a donation to be auctioned off for one of their fund raising events called Run For The Son. I made the knife to be an analogy for the Gospel of Christ: recycled spring for the blade, recycled motorcycle chain for the guard and spacer, recycled blue jeans for the handle and a piece of motorcycle wheel spoke for the pin. I did a write-up that spoke about the correlation to the Gospel to go with the knife. As a knife it surely wasn't the best but because of how it was made it and what it stood for there was much interest. I don't mention that to toot my own horn but to say that it was about much more than a knife. Here's the thing; if I had made just any knife and donated it to the auction then it wouldn't have brought near the funds. Because I had made a knife that keeps speaking to the subject even after the auction is over people saw much more value in it. I don't know if this helps you but my point is that if the knife can somehow tell a story or related to the on-going efforts of the fund raising it may be a great way to bring funds.

Here is the knife I'm referring to:
 
Mike, that's a great story and you make an excellent point! Duly noted my friend :)
 
Lorien, as STeven mentioned, the CKCA has pretty much made it one of our missions to raise as much funds as possible for Cancer Research in the name of Custom Knives.

You may ask, why Cancer Research?

Well unfortunately, cancer touches the lives of almost everyone in one way or another. I doubt there’s many folks who don’t have a family member, friend, someone they know/work with or have had some form of cancer themselves. So basically, the CKCA feels that cancer research is the best way for our modest annual donation to have the most positive impact on the most people across the globe.

I can’t help but wonder (as I expect others do) if what we give to some charities really makes much of a difference? Well you don’t have to wonder or look too far to find proof that as a direct result of cancer research thousands of cancer survivors across the world are living normal and healthy lives that would have died if diagnosed with cancer just 5-10 years ago. We are beginning to win the war on cancer as a result of the funding of cancer research.

As far as auctions vs raffles?

I feel the CKCA may have raised more money on 1 of our 5 Cancer Research Knives to date if we had auctioned it as opposed to raffling it, however I feel knife auctions are like rolling the dice as your success is dependent upon the attention you capture from a limited number of participants at a given time. As Coop states “raffles allow you time to draw incrementally from many folks".
The CKCA typically starts promoting our annual Cancer Research Projects around March with our drawing not being until October. Even though we don’t rule out an auction, I feel raffles give us better and more consistence contributions as opposed to trying to flip-flop back and forth.

An auction does require a lot less time and effort than having to manage, promote and accounting for a raffle over 6-7 months.

I do believe our community is starting to grow tired of the MANY knife auctions and raffles we are seeing pop up. They are not creating as much excitement as they used to.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
Kevin, thank you very much for your considered post.

The information in this thread is very helpful, thank you all very much for your contributions.

It's going to be some time before I'm going to be able to actually explore the various options specifically, but a project is starting to shape up that I'm hoping to turn into a Pay it Forward scenario and I guess we'll see how she goes.

Some causes of interest so far are;
BC Children's Hospital
Mustard Seed Food Bank
TD Friends of the Environment

Please feel free to suggest other charitable causes you like.
 
Hi.

FYI, the one thing I do with pretty much all charities with which I am involved (except for some trivial amount) is to check them on http://www.charitynavigator.org/. I find their ratings to be extremely valuable.

However, I do not believe that it covers charities in Canada. Maybe there is a similar organization for Canada?

Good luck.
 
The Virginian said:
Hi.

FYI, the one thing I do with pretty much all charities with which I am involved (except for some trivial amount) is to check them on http://www.charitynavigator.org/. I find their ratings to be extremely valuable.

However, I do not believe that it covers charities in Canada. Maybe there is a similar organization for Canada?

Good luck.
Click to expand...

I agree Ken, we've always used Charity Navigator for help in selecting our cancer research charities.
 
Ken, thanks for the heads up! I'll definitely look into that
 
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