Move over eBay: Goodwill finds success with own auction site
By KATE SHELLNUTT
It’s eBay without the bidding wars and a thrift store without the smell.
Goodwill Industries International’s auction site sells items from its thrift stores nationwide. Its revenues fund education, training and job placement programs for people with disabilities and other barriers.
Photo by Mary Childs
Following the success of dot-com
companies, a Goodwill store in Santa Ana, Calif. created the site in
1999. Since then, 117 regional Goodwill offices have joined shopgoodwill.com, the first nonprofit auction Web site.
But Goodwill Industries of the Valleys, which includes Lexington’s Goodwill store, is not one of them.
“We are not selling our donations online,” said Kelly Sandridge, the community relations director for Goodwill Industries of the Valleys. “We like serving the individual communities where our stores are located."
She said selling local donations online would reduce the positive impact Goodwill has on the Shenandoah Valley region.
“Our stores provide jobs in the community, give neighbors a great place to shop for a great value, and provide recycling opportunities to help protect the environment,” said Bruce Phipps, Goodwill of the Valleys president and CEO, in a press release this month.
Sales revenue from the region’s 23 stores helped provide job training and education to 2,370 Shenandoah Valley residents and secure jobs for 253 residents last year.
Sandridge also added that the Roanoke-based office would need to hire more employees to become a seller on Goodwill’s auction site.
“We’d need more manpower,” she said. “And right now, we just don’t have that.”
The regional office does have a Web site, http://www.goodwill-the-valleys.com, where visitors may donate online or order specialty, handmade baskets, whose proceeds fund Goodwill’s local employment efforts.
The shopgoodwill.com auction site includes thousands of items organized by category and has sold nearly 2 million items since it debuted in August 2001. The site gets 400,000 visitors a day, according to a Goodwill Industries report. Better-known auction site, eBay, pulls in over twenty times that amount each day.
Goodwill stores across the country pull some of their more valuable donations - new items or antique collectibles - to sell online. Shoppers can bid on jeans from Banana Republic, Christian rock CDs, tarnished musical instruments and rhinestone broaches.
Prices range from one to thousands of dollars, and shopgoodwill.com accepts credit cards, but not PayPal, an online payment service and eBay favorite.
Bids for the most expensive item sold on the site, a watercolor painting by Frank Weston Benson, reached $165,000. Last year, shopgoodwill.com’s sales totaled nearly $10.6 million, with the average item selling for $20.
Regional offices of Goodwill Industries International receive all revenue from the items they sell. From that money, over 82 percent is spent on education, training and job placement programs for disabled or needy people.
Though money from shopgoodwill.com sales goes directly to Goodwill, an organization recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit, items purchased on the site are not tax-deductible. Purchases cannot be considered donations because shoppers pay fair market value for items auctioned off on shopgoodwill.com.
Individuals who make direct monetary contributions to Goodwill can deduct the amount of their donation. And store attendants will validate itemized lists of material donations at stores or drop-off sites, and donors can deduct the fair market value of the items.
Goodwill Industries International auction site
Produced by Washington and Lee journalism students.
Lead supervisor: Prof. Claudette Artwick
Reporting supervisors:
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd