I received this e-mail from an old colleague of mine, Larry McFadyen, and thought I’d share it.

“As you may or may not know, Jay (my son) has been signed by Milton Keynes to play Ice Hockey up there this season. This is the ENL1 level and is pay to play, so I have come up with a novel idea for fundraising, and decided to use eBay. Ebay unfortunately need an “actual item” to be sold, so to get around this I have set up an “autographed picture” for sale.

These can be purchased for a low cost of £5 or if you are feeling generous, you can buy more than one. All these funds will help to cover the costs running at @ £5-600 per season.

As you all know me, and I have probably fixed something of yours etc. I thought I might as well try my luck and email my address book is search of sponsorship. If you can / want to help out, the link is below to the eBay item. If you do not, that is fine too, I will just redirect your calls to voicemail ( only joking ). If you or your company want to help out in other ways, just mail me here on through the eBay page, and I apologise if you receive this email / message more than once but it was bulk sent.

And here is the link.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Jay-Mcfadyen-Sponsor-Autograph_W0QQitemZ290342962698QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Sports_Memorabilia_ET?hash=item4399ca060a&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Take care and thank you for your time.
Larry”

Here’s the eBay link again – Jay McFadyen Sponsor Autograph.

Some might think it’s cheeky, others just delete the message without a second thought, but I think it’s a really innovative use of both eBay and Social Networking (Larry pinged e-mails through Facebook and Windows Live Messenger) – and really, we all know the “IT Guy” like Larry that we turn to for advice and fixing stuff on our home computers without every paying them for their time – so when was the last time you did something to help them in return?

Wishing Larry’s son Jay all the best in his Ice Hockey career! :-)