***TOYS 4 KIDS DONATIONS THREAD***

[mab812]

This is the second annual Christmas Toy Drive organized by Sparky999, thepizzlefosho, and myself.

This is a charity effort to help sick and poor children this christmas. Given Black Friday, we know it has been a tough year for all, but remember that even a couple of dollars goes a long ways in terms of what we can accomplish. Check out the Results from Last years event here.

It's very simple, you donate money, we go and buy toys and make sure they get to kids who need them.

Closing deadline for donations is 8th December, so spread the world!! I'm going to be doing this out of Vancouver, Canada.

Payments can be sent to

mab812 on stars

Please PM that you've made a donation so that I know who's who.



Last Years Toy Drive was a major Success:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...thread-936385/

Last Years Donation Thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...thread-928759/

[mab812]

I'll get this going with a $200 donation.

[sparky999]

Last year I was living in U.K. this year I'm living in Melbourne, Australia and am happy to do the same thing for Australians this year if there is enough interest.

Payments can be sent to me on stars

sparky1007

or you can go to the website below and choose the actual gift that you want to donate and which charity you want to do it through. Obviously make sure you post pics here if you decide to donate through the website.

http://simplygiving.com.au/corporate_home.cfm

We are aware that we are likely going to raise less money this year as facilitating payments has become a lot more difficult. We hope that a lot of you will take the initiative and find a local charity in your area and go and actually buy the gifts and donate yourself, again pics are a must!!

I will match mabs donation of 200, if there are enough Australians that donate I will do a shopping spree again and post pics.

I can also take donations on iPoker through Will Hill, Moneybookers and direct bank transfer to my Australian account if that helps anyone PM me for details.

[thepizzlefosho]

Guys I've decided not to be a point man for US players wanting to donate this year because I simply don't feel comfortable dealing with a ton of player transfers. Getting money from poker sites has become somewhat of a pain, and the upside of getting all of the donations lumped together just doesn't seem to out weight the serious personal hassle.

That being said I plan on buying several hundred dollars worth of toys and donating them to the local toys for tots. If you are interested in doing a similar thing I highly recommend contacting your local toys for tots and seeing what you can do to help.

here is the main website:

http://www.toysfortots.org/

The fact that the organization is run by the marines is really a selling point imo because you know they work efficiently and the older veterans really enjoy volunteering to help spread some holiday cheer. you can find last year's donation thread and see the pictures I took including the certificate that they sent me made out to the 2p2 MHFR community for their donations. They were really impressed that poker players made such generous donations and one veteran told me that it was groups like us that restored his faith in people.

I plan on taking pictures of my toy buying and posting in the thread to encourage other donators. Trust me buying the toys will be one of the most fun and rewarding things you do all year. If anyone would like to make a donation but can't figure out how to do it in their specific locale send me a PM and I'll do what I can to help.

Happy Holidays!

[StungEm]

I would be willing to be the US point man if everyone agreed. I'm creating a facebook page for it now and already have the information out to a couple skype groups I'm a member of. I started by donating at least $250 myself and have a few donations within the first 10 minutes.

I should note my limited reputation off the bat.. I have many friends that will vouch for me that you have heard of in the community. It's a bit late at the moment but I will ask them to comment in here or speak to a mod asap. Newmanmi is one that says it's ok to use his name, but I would just like to ask the others before putting their name out there.

Paypal seems like the easiest way based on no transfers between Merge skins and the current situation with US players.

**Below is the message I have out there to explain it **
I'm doing a Toys 4 Kids Donation and would love any help you guys could give. It's very simple.
1. We all donate money (paypal or money in person would be the easiest). I'm starting by donating at least $250.
2. I go buy toys. Anyone is welcome to come shopping with me, ideally those who donate.
3. I take pictures of shopping carts full of toys, toys being purchased, the hopefully very long receipt and lastly pictures of the toys donated. (Sounds like I'll be unable to get pictures of the kids with the toys for safety and other reasons.)

Tomorrow I will finish researching when the deadline is to donate, if I can find a place that will give discounts on the price of the toys based on an amount spent and if you'll be able to write off the donation on your taxes.

This is not a spam or organization, I am doing this on my own and would love any help to get this started and rolling. I think I have enough poker playing friends and people on here that can make this very positive for kids in need. Being an adult, I now have the money to buy the stuff I want, but there are many kids out there who don't have that option.

[StungEm]

I have found a company that will give me 5% off the wholesale price and ship everything to me for free so I can then take pictures of the items and deliver to the correct location. Won't have the fun of buying the toys myself, but we won't get the adjust profit creating prices of in store purchases and should be able to get quite a bit more toys.

[thepizzlefosho]

stungem:

I think it's great that you're volunteering to do this, and that you've already put effort into getting the maximum from your donations. I would ask that you talk to jloc and the OPs in this thread (sparky and mab) as well as post references or have your refs post in the thread. The type of thing we're doing in this thread is generally not encouraged by 2p2, and part of the reason we were able to pull it off smoothly last year is that myself, sparky, and mab were well known 2p2ers with known SNs on the big two poker sites. We had established reps in this community and 2p2 at large that gave us some trust.

I'm glad someone is stepping in to take the role of collecting and distributing donations from US players, but in the wake of so many poker related scams I think it would be in the best interest of this venture as a whole that you go through some kind of vetting process. The last thing I want to see is mods get concerned and shut down this thread when your intentions are good.

[thepizzlefosho]

also to stungem:

part of the value of collecting all of the donations is that you'll be able to deduct the full value on your taxes. As such you should be matching people's donation so that you aren't just free rolling them. For example:

example: you donate $250 and collect $1500 in donations. You donate $1750 worth of toys to charity and deduct it on your taxes. Assuming you're in a 25% tax bracket (possible higher) you'll pay $437.50 less in taxes having only donated $250. Thus you'll net $187.50 for the effort. Granted this isn't a lot of money, and I'm not suggesting that you're doing this purely to make a couple hundred bucks. But it certainly isn't in the spirit of the effort.

what I did last year: we raised about $1600 and I donated $1600. Total donation was about $3200. So I deducted that on my taxes (assume I as 30% tax bracket) resulting in me paying $960 less in taxes. So my net donation was like $640 bucks.

point being that if you're not going to do something similar people would be better off just donating by themselves and deducting from their own taxes instead of sending funds to you.

[StungEm]

Good points.

Newmanmi, Damn Ringer, SA16 have already vouched for me. I have a few others in mind, but have not reached them as of yet.

One benefit of working with me is that I already have a company that is going to give us 5% off of the wholesale price which will obviously get us quite a bit more toys for our money. I have also talked to Toys R Us who said 10%, but can only do based on the shelf prices. He even told me to go with the 5% wholesale at other place because we get more for our money.

As far as the taxes go, from the people I've talked to, I'm under the impression that we can all individually write off what we donate and I wasn't planning to do one big write off myself. Maybe I'm getting bad information? I've asked the Sergeant Marine that runs this and the store that is taking the order and they both said everyone could just write off their own portion. Maybe I should call the CPA?

[StungEm]

It's been about 12 hours since I said I'd do this and have reached $500 in donations so far. Far beyond the pace I expected, as I assumed getting people to vouch and proving my credibility would understandably be step one.

[zachvac]

Originally Posted by StungEm

As far as the taxes go, from the people I've talked to, I'm under the impression that we can all individually write off what we donate and I wasn't planning to do one big write off myself. Maybe I'm getting bad information? I've asked the Sergeant Marine that runs this and the store that is taking the order and they both said everyone could just write off their own portion. Maybe I should call the CPA?

I'm almost positive this is right but can't hurt to call your CPA. For example when Stars was doing their Haiti donation thingy I sent it to Stars to donate (plus they matched) but I wrote it off individually on my taxes. It shouldn't matter who writes the checks it should matter who the one doing the donating is. If I ship him money and he ships it to a charity I'm the one who donated it so I'm pretty sure I'm the one who writes it off.

Also haven't really done any monetary transactions with him but I've talked with StungEm a bit on skype and stuff and don't have any reason to believe he's anything but legit.

[StungEm]

Originally Posted by zachvac

Also haven't really done any monetary transactions with him but I've talked with StungEm a bit on skype and stuff and don't have any reason to believe he's anything but legit.

Oh go figure, Zach forgot right before black friday when he needed Stars money and I shipped him $1-4K (can't remember size) for his FTP money. Must be nice to have been able to get that money back and not be 7 months and waiting...

[thepizzlefosho]

I think if you take the time to get receipts for every transfer as well as the final donation and send them to each individual, people can probably individually deduct the donation on their taxes. Otherwise in an audit no IRS agent is every going to give someone credit for a charitable donation when they ship a few hundred bucks to a person on paypal or a poker site.

that being said this still might not be acceptable to the IRS, so I'd talk to a CPA. Last year doublefly and I discussed this and decided it would be better for all involved if I just did a matching donation and deducted from my taxes instead of trying to write receipts for everyone. It ends up raising more money for the cause and saves you a lot of personal headache in trying to keep track of receipts.

[Le Gonso]

Guys hold off on sending $ for a bit

StungEm I apparently put a user note on your account when I was a Markeplace mod and when your account was inactive for a while. I don't know specifically what the note pertains to (I can't view it now and don't remember you offhand), it could be something irrelevant but I'd feel better if the active mods look back and see what that was all about before you take more donations.

Thanks -

[StungEm]

Oh ok, this was a while ago right? I think I offered some money for some computer questions so I didn't have to spend time researching stuff. I think this was a no no.

Please look into it so we can move on, I appreciate the help mods.