Help me know how and where to "sell" (give away) my art for charity

February 3, 2020 12:36 PM

I was inspired by this artist who gives paintings to people who donate at least $25 to any charity of their choice. I would like to do something similar but a bit different.

I am a pencil landscape artist. I would like to take commissions--where they send me a landscape photo or pdf and I draw it for them, if they are willing to donate $25 to any charity of their choice.

The artist above uses facebook to show her paintings. I am a bit anti-facebook, but not so much I couldn't be persuaded to go that route. But I am not sure if there is a better avenue to make my pitch? Maybe an Etsy shop? Something else?

Also, I don't want suddenly to get 100 people all at once, as it takes me 3 to 6 hours to draw one 6" x 8" drawing. I need to limit how many and how fast I can take commissions (assuming I get any at all, ha, ha).

Your ideas and suggestions on how and where to appropriately do this are wanted and appreciated.

posted by luvmywife to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

People seem to do that sort of thing on Instagram a fair bit. You could ask people to DM you and then pull the post once you have as many commissions as you can handle. DeviantArt, too.

I've also seen it done in general web communities -- I had a picture of my brother's dogs painted in exchange for a donation to MSF a few years ago. That was based on a fundraiser that was started after a major disaster -- I think the Banda Aceh tsunami, but I don't entirely remember -- on a Ravelry group I'm a member of. So, if you're part of any kind of community where a fundraiser would be allowed in response to a major event or just in general, that might work.

It might even work here on MeFi -- there are things like the Christmas gift drive and such that happen on MetaTalk. If a few different artists were willing to trade work for donations to a charity, you could coordinate through a MeTa thread. Check with the mods first, obviously.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:15 PM on February 3, 2020

I started doing this on my Instagram to raise money for Australian charities — I just put out to the IG universe that if you donate $150 to one of these charities, I will mail you the artwork I just posted. I sold all three I’ve done this with so far! I don’t have a massive following or anything and the purchasers were old coworkers, friends, etc. but it seemed effective. People also were very happy to retweet it when I tweeted the art with a similar message (“donate $150 to purchase this art”). Having an active social media presence and just letting it be known you’d like to do this seems like a good place to start!
posted by caitcadieux at 8:07 PM on February 3, 2020

If it would help to have a third person suggest Instagram, well, I'm here for you. I see many of my art peers doing this kind of thing there.
posted by komara at 9:19 AM on February 4, 2020