Deloitte estimate that 150,000,000 euro was spent in Ireland on Unwanted presents in 2011. £2.4 billion is the figure estimated spent in the UK.

Where are all these PRESENTS ??

Most people will have received one Unwanted present this Christmas, and probably has another in the cupboard, from last Christmas.

Now is the time to offload these gifts, and help our charities that are struggling.

There are approximately 2,366 homeless people in Dublin, every night. One of our charities Peter McVerry Trust look after these people. Their income has dropped significantly, yet demand for their services has increased.

Your Unwanted present could cover the cost of a homeless person for a night or two.

Another one of our charities Barnados who help Vulnerable children, need extra funds, as again their income has dropped as a result of this recession.

Your Unwanted gift could be the difference a child needs.

Another charity Careaid specialise in sinking wells in Africa, so that people can access clean water. The average cost per well is approximately 4 euro per user. Although small, this cost cannot be raised locally, so again your unwanted gift can supply clean water to a few.

Although we have less disposable income now, we still have goods that are surplus to our needs.

Please put them up for sale on Give and Buy and turn your excess, into satisfying our charities needs.

Thank You and a Happy New Year,
Aidan Corless

PS: Please also ask your friends to help ! Help us Help them!

With Christmas fast approaching, the usual carousel of charity messages are pouring out of the radio and through our TV screens.

Where does it all go? Sometimes it can seem like a bottomless pit, with you at the top tossing your coin into the ether. And in these straitened times, it can be hard to support them all – no matter how deserving.

I suppose that’s why I really got involved with Give & Buy. It just made sense to me. Where else can you take something like an unwanted wedding gift (Sorry Aunty Mary!) and turn that into a donation.

When we’re all thinking a bit more about how much everything costs, it’s comforting to know that you can give without having to spend a penny.

If you have a moment – take a quick photo of your unwanted gift and put it up on the site. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain for the recipient charity!

Muriel Molloy, Merrion BD

First of all a big thanks for all those that supported our ‘We don’t want your money’ promotion last Monday, which was a great success as well as a good bit of fun.

While we handed out our 1800 packets of Tayto crisps to shoppers and by-passers on Grafton Street, we we able to share the Give & Buy concept with a number of new people who had not heard of it before. And the feedback was positive all round, with people agreeing that this was a great idea to raise money for charity in a novel way. So, hopefully, we should see a lot of new stock on our website over the next few weeks, and people take a look at the many things, unused or unwanted, in their homes and attics, and put them up for sale at Give & Buy.

We were also very lucky on Monday in terms of the weather (no rain, no snow – what more could one want in November!) and it was great to have both Dublin Lord Mayor Andrew Montague and Bobby Kerr from Dragon’s Den attend, both taking some time out of their busy schedules to attend the event and actively and enthusiastically supporting our mission and event !

Attached are some photos of the event for those who could not make it …

Susanne Dirks at Give & Buy

Just back from town. 1st of Advent, only 4 weeks to Christmas, so I took the DART into town expecting traffic to be chaotic and shops full.

But not so, clearly these are different times and I was surprised how relatively empty shops where, how easy it was to walk and actually make progress walking along Henry Street.

Thinking back about it now, it makes sense, of course, as three trends seem to influence Christmas shopping this year:

1. Less – after all these are tough economic times
2. Spend online – less hassle, better offers
3. Re-gift and/or give presents that have a deeper meaning

Which all links in very well with what we do at Give & Buy, where we have recently added a number of new items for sale as possible Christmas presents, but are still looking our increase our range of goods and services on offer to give buyers the greatest possible choice for finding ‘charitable’ Christmas gifts online.

Hence, our promotion and photoshoot tomorrow morning (see details on our homepage), where we hope to raise the profile of Give&Buy and find new people to donate goods or services for sale in aid of charity.

If you have time tomorrow, please join us …

Susanne Dirks @ Give&Buy

I guess it’s something we all take for granted and it just doesn’t strike you at all when living abroad that in Ireland almost everyone is involved in some way or another in charity. Why it is I just don’t know! Where did it come from?

The truth is that it is really noticeable only when you stop to think about it. When living for example in France where you are never see a collector on the street! You will see down & outs with little hand written signs asking for assistance but never a person with a badge collecting for a charity. Maybe they just don’t give out permits for street collecting!

There is a pile of junk mail in my post box every weekend I make it to my house in the countryside 2 hours from Paris but none of it asking me to help one or other cause. I’ve lived in 5 other European countries and it was much the same. When I lived In England I remember seeing some people selling poppies and once or twice for other good causes too but that was it…..

And yet we are still a rich people throwing out so much food so much unwanted good-for-use items each year that and as the years go by and especially during a recession we start to really notice just how much less we can live on and live without and in truth the only reason I don’t give something to the beggars in the street is that you can’t tell if they are capable of working or not and somehow I always excuse myself by affirming in my mind that I have always given to musicians especially in the Paris metro, that is those that can play a good tune….

John Harney at Give & Buy

You have to hand it to Ryanair and its PR-savvy boss, Michael O’Leary.  He knows how to generate publicity for the airline, and he doesn’t seem to worry if there are a few offended people. One of these initiatives is the publication of the “Girls of Ryanair” 2012 calendar, which this year is dedicated to helping DEBRA, one of the Give and Buy charities.

DEBRA is dedicated to helping the development of treatments and cures for EB (Epidermolysis Bullosa) a rare and painful genetic skin condition. We applaud Ryanair and their girls for selecting such a deserving charity and of course helping in a fun way.  You can buy this calendar for €10 at DEBRA’s online shop, on the Ryanair website or on Ryanair flights.

In this week’s blog, I would like to draw your attention to a campaign for charities that is currently taking place, i.e.  the Better Together Campaign.  This is a nationwide campaign, started by the Wheel in 2010, which aims to build support for hundreds of charities, community groups, clubs and associations across the country by encouraging the public to support these good causes and make a difference in their communities.

The campaign this year has three parts: a donating challenge, the selection of a charity hero, and the video competition – all aimed at giving Irish charities an opportunity to raise their profile and create awareness of their work.

I believe a campaign like this is a great idea especially in our current tough economic times when everybody is under financial pressure and getting people to give to charity is just that bit harder than usual and many charities are facing serious challenges as a recent survey showed.

At Give and Buy, we submitted two videos to the competition this week and I would like to encourage you to take a look at these videos – and (hopefully) vote for them.

But that aside, I recommend you take a look at the competition overall and the videos showcased in it.  A recent report published highlighted the use of social media by charities, including the fact the  31% of Irish charities currenlt use YouTube to draw attention and gather support for their cause. So, as expected, there are some seriously good videos in this competition, both in terms of the video production and the idea and also in terms of their content. Just check out the video section at Better Together, it is definitely worth a browse.

And with the Presidential Election on this week, there is of course one video you just have to watch:

http://www.bettertogether.ie/content/better-get-her-aras-0

Enjoy ….

Susanne Dirks at Give & Buy

At the GiveandBuy site, our administrators are continually monitoring the advertisements, and we are always amazed at the perseverance of those posing as Givers, who want a free ride or are looking for a new angle to advertise their less than legitimate wares. G&B as indicated, regularly review advertisements and will remove them if they appear to be less than genuine. Some simple checks for Buyers to ensure integrity of Givers are:

• Location: Foreign or Givers who hide their location should be avoided
• Offer: Too good to be true is a warning, e.g. iPad or iPhone offers, exotic pets
• Meeting: Giver does not want to meet, will ship goods on payment
• Payment: Giver wants payment before you have seen or inspected goods
• Contact details: Telephone numbers from outside of Ireland

In addition to checking the ads, Give and Buy also sends an email notification to both the Giver and Buyer once the Giver transfers the funds to G&B. If you purchase an item and do not receive this email notification, please let us know and we can follow up with the Giver and if necessary restrict further usage of the site.

Another troubling development that we are watching is that of Buyers approaching Givers by email and requesting they accept payment by EFT or PayPal and an agent will pick up the goods. Unfortunately this is a scam used on many e-commerce sites, like eBay. Please be aware this can result in the Giver being out of pocket both for the goods and the cash. How does this work; goods are collected by an agent that cannot be traced, paid for with invalid or stolen card details, and when the card companies realise the payment is reversed and the Giver has to foot the bill. We are looking at mechanisms to address this, however our advice is; go with your gut, if it does not feel right it probably is not and step away. If you have a moment, see what eBay have to say about protecting yourself.

Many thanks for your support and if you have any ideas or comments please drop us a line at admin@giveandbuy.com

Lance Ayerst at Give & Buy

We recently participated in the Volunteer Ireland programme, where we met over 100 people in Stephens Green. Again, everybody thinks www.giveandbuy.ie is a great idea. It was a good opportunity to tell people about giveandbuy, and since then we have seen an increase in ads posted.

Our presidential hopeful Gay Mitchell visited us and was very impressed with our message “Give to charity without putting your hand in your pocket”.

We recently got two new volunteers on board to help us, so our team now has some serious talent. Watch this space, as we get ready for a relaunch.

Aidan Corless at Give & Buy

Gay Mitchell with Give & Buy CEO Aidan Corless at Volunteer Fair

The Peter McVerry Trust (http://www.pmvtrust.ie), one of the many charities you can support when you give or buy good or services at Give&Buy, opened a new hostel with beds for 25 homeless within the last month because the problem of homelessness has reached crisis point.

In 1996, before the start of the “Celtic Tiger”, there were an estimated 2,500 homeless in Ireland. Now, in 2011, after the richest years that Ireland ever experienced, there are approximately twice that number of homeless, about 5,000.

How did our Government deal with this crisis of homelessness? Well, they decided that providing temporary housing did not work, that it would be much better to close down the temporary shelters and build permanent hostels for the homeless. What a great idea! Well, they did half the job – they closed down the temporary shelters but didn’t do any building, turning a real problem into a real crisis.

The numbers of homeless people has sky-rocketed in the last year or so. The Dublin City Council had to resort to giving the homeless people sleeping bags so they could grab some sleep in a doorway or under cover anywhere.

The Government Agencies represent us, you and me. Is that how you would want to be treated if you happened to fall through the net and find yourself homeless? Would you really tell a friend who came to you for help looking for somewhere to live – “look, here is a sleeping bag. Go find a place out of the rain if you can.”? I don’t think so.

The Peter McVerry Trust have an open door policy. Anyone can walk in and will be treated with dignity. They talk to the homeless person, make them feel welcome and find out what is needed and try to provide that. That is the sort of representative that I want and that is why I am prepared to support the Peter McVerry Trust all the way.

Mary Finlay at Give&Buy