The Insight Vision Center

Founded in 2000 by the Walker family, the Insight Vision Center provides economically disadvantaged youths with treatment for vision problems. Their fundraising programs raise money to sponsor children who have visual-related learning disabilities, and provide patients with comprehensive examinations and therapy through interaction with local schools and their community.

For their second cMarket online fundraiser, The Insight Vision Center used their acquired experience building and running an auction on the web. They applied specific techniques that they learned from their first auction, and employed auction site features to help them move closer to reaching their revenue objectives.

The Center took full advantage of cMarket's services, by browsing and offering items from the online consignment store. They supplemented their auction with 12 items from cMarket Place to ensure a more appealing catalog and to entice bidders with exclusive items outside of those donated to the Center. Email communications also proved to be an effective promotional vehicle for the Insight Vision Center as well. Prior to their auction, the Center had already started advertising their fundraiser by reaching out to the community through a series of emails. They solicited contributions online and illustrated the various ways that their constituents could donate to the auction and benefit the organization. They drew specific attention to cMarket's "Refer a Friend" feature on the auction pages to spread awareness and get others involved.

Rounding out the Center's online auction efforts was their ability to keep participants well informed of how the monies raised would be used. They referenced the Center's programs that would benefit from every winning bid, and provided a link back to their own website in the Call Out Box on the auction site's homepage for viewers to obtain more information. The Insight Vision Center advanced their online fundraising efforts by making the most of cMarket's features and services - resulting in second successful auction.