When a celebrity teams up with a charity, amazing things can happen. New donors can emerge. New sponsors can appear. Media “buzz” is especially easy to generate. Yes, a celebrity does seem to have that magic touch for generating more of everything.

Would you like a way to reach even more potential donors and sponsors? To have final bids on your celebrity “experience” reach just as high as they can go? Then you need eBay in your fund-raising toolbox.

Many charities have turned to eBay to auction off a celebrity experience or items with much success. Even Oprah Winfrey took her Angel Network auction to eBay earlier this year. Items sold benefited the Angel Network causes. The auction overall raised about $83,000. Items auctioned off included chairs from The Oprah Winfrey Show that sold for $64,000. Clothing items such as one of Oprah’s Chanel sweaters sold for $11,000. Ski gear that was autographed by Oprah sold for $7,600. The power of eBay is clearly strong for charities with celebrity items and experiences up for auction.

Jill Finlayson, author of Fundraising on eBay and former Senior Category Manager, states that celebrity experiences are top sellers on eBay. “Experiences do very well with non-profits. You can do them very large scale with celebrities, or you can do them at a much smaller scale such as San Jose did where you get to turn on the Christmas tree and flip the switch and have that experience, or maybe meet the major,” said Finlayson. Some experiences will have mass appeal, and others will have a real local appeal.

Finlayson encourages not-for-profits to turn to their board members for ideas for experiences to auction off on eBay, often they can come up with terrific, creative ideas. “They may know athletes or people might want to have lunch with them (the board members). Starbucks had a bid to visit the original Starbucks location and a tour and lunch with the chairman. If your board members know people who own or work at companies they if they can get items donated from companies so that people can bid on “get the first one that comes off the line”, even if the item is available in the stores within two weeks, this can be something very valuable. This is the equivalent of going to the theatre on opening night.”

Currently on eBay one popular celebrity charity auction is the Gwen Stefani The Sweet Escape Tour VIP Experience. The winning bidder will get to sit in the front row and meet Gwen after the show. All proceeds from the auction benefit Orangewood Children’s Foundation & Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC). Dates for her April and May 2007 concerts are listed, so there is more than one chance for someone to win. As of this writing bid were in the 2,000 range and are still going on.

Another popular celebrity auction involved many celebrities for the charity Sixdegrees.org. Sixdegrees.org is an organization that celebrities can create an online badge describing the charity that they support and raise money for that charity. Non-celebrities and charities themselves can also create badges to raise money for charities.

Six degrees held a celebrity auction with items from a wide variety of celebrities on eBay including Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Heather Graham, Tara Reid, Perez Hilton and Elle Fanning. Their auction items were very popular and their website had a link to their eBay auctions so their supporters knew about their eBay auctions.

Whether you are auctioning off a celebrity experience or items, online auctions are a powerful fund-raising tool that can connect you with many potential bidders.