Firstly, Mods, an apology if this isn't the correct place to post this. Feel free to move to somewhere more appropriate if necessary.
Right, perhaps an introduction required. I'm Fraser. Been mountain biking for about 20 years now, but I am a relative newcomer to this site. Since I joined however, I've done a wee bit of buying and selling, and something that always impresses me on here is the amount of good quality items that, for one reason or another, people "karma" to others. With that in mind, I have been thinking: given the time of year, many of us will be overindulging in all the festive season has to offer, including doing our best to annihilate the credit limit on our Mastercards. It can be easy to forget that life goes on, and that for some, Christmas won't be a time for celebrating.
This may have been done before, and if it has, apologies, but if not, what would the appetite be to run some kind of Christmas Retrobike Raffle? Kind hearted souls would donate one (or more) decent quality karma item(s) into a 'pot' of goodies, which would then be raffled off in the same way that many karma items are raffled off every day on here. The only difference would be that in order to get a number, a minimum donation would be required (nothing excessive, maybe £5 or whatever is felt to be appropriate). The more goodies we get, the more attractive the raffle becomes, and hopefully the more dough can be raised. Once all is said and done, a winner is chosen at random, all the karma donors post their items to the winner (perhaps for this reason, the raffle would need to be restricted to UK addresses?), and a donation of all the raffle money is made to a charity of choice via Just Giving or some such site. Due to the number of people on this forum, it would be nice to think that even a number of relatively small individual donations would quickly aggregate into a sizeable contribution to a good cause. May I suggest something as apolitical as possible, perhaps the "Make A Wish Foundation" (http://www.make-a-wish.org.uk) or something as the benefactor?
Maybe it won't work, hopefully it will. Maybe some of the finer details need going over, and if I've overlooked any glaringly obvious issues, I'm sure someone will let me know! Stop me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but this seems like a decent and friendly online community, and I just thought it would be nice to put that community spirit to good use.
Cheers! :xmas-big-grin:
Right, perhaps an introduction required. I'm Fraser. Been mountain biking for about 20 years now, but I am a relative newcomer to this site. Since I joined however, I've done a wee bit of buying and selling, and something that always impresses me on here is the amount of good quality items that, for one reason or another, people "karma" to others. With that in mind, I have been thinking: given the time of year, many of us will be overindulging in all the festive season has to offer, including doing our best to annihilate the credit limit on our Mastercards. It can be easy to forget that life goes on, and that for some, Christmas won't be a time for celebrating.
This may have been done before, and if it has, apologies, but if not, what would the appetite be to run some kind of Christmas Retrobike Raffle? Kind hearted souls would donate one (or more) decent quality karma item(s) into a 'pot' of goodies, which would then be raffled off in the same way that many karma items are raffled off every day on here. The only difference would be that in order to get a number, a minimum donation would be required (nothing excessive, maybe £5 or whatever is felt to be appropriate). The more goodies we get, the more attractive the raffle becomes, and hopefully the more dough can be raised. Once all is said and done, a winner is chosen at random, all the karma donors post their items to the winner (perhaps for this reason, the raffle would need to be restricted to UK addresses?), and a donation of all the raffle money is made to a charity of choice via Just Giving or some such site. Due to the number of people on this forum, it would be nice to think that even a number of relatively small individual donations would quickly aggregate into a sizeable contribution to a good cause. May I suggest something as apolitical as possible, perhaps the "Make A Wish Foundation" (http://www.make-a-wish.org.uk) or something as the benefactor?
Maybe it won't work, hopefully it will. Maybe some of the finer details need going over, and if I've overlooked any glaringly obvious issues, I'm sure someone will let me know! Stop me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but this seems like a decent and friendly online community, and I just thought it would be nice to put that community spirit to good use.
Cheers! :xmas-big-grin: