I was asked to participate in a “Bloggers For Charity” initiative by Michael James on Money in the hopes of raising money for the holiday season. Sounds good to me, but since I’m lazy, I’m just going to plagiarize Canadian Capitalist’s post and make a few modifications. (I’ll use the “it’s for charity” defence.)

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Mark Goodfield a.k.a''the Blunt Bean Counter recently had a brainwave: what if a bunch of bloggers got together and drummed up some extra support for charities by auctioning off a guest blogger spot. Since it's a great cause, I jumped on board.

Here are the rules:

1. I'm auctioning off an opportunity to write a guest post on this blog.

2. All bids are to be submitted in confidence to preet.banerjee@gmail.com with a short note on the topic of the guest post.

3. The auction will close on December 16, 2011 and the winning bidder will be contacted by e-mail.

4. The winning bidder is required to donate the amount of the winning bid to their favourite charity between December 17th and December 31st, 2011. The donation will likely be tax deductible to the winning bidder as long as it is made to a registered charity. We may I will certainly ask for a copy of the receipt with personal details redacted to confirm that a donation has been made.

5. The guest posts will be published on January 17, 2012.

6. While I'm open to featuring a guest post on any topic, it would be great if the post has charities as a central theme. The guest post cannot be an advertising piece but I'd be happy to include a short sketch of the winning bidder in my introduction. If it means a higher bid, and thus a higher donation to charity, I’m happy to accept any blog post with the only caveat that I have final say on what gets published. That means, it can be an ad. We’re all grown ups, we know ads exist, but again if it leads to more money being donated I think we’re all okay with that. Make sure to include what you intend to write about with your email bid.

7. Very important: The winner will have to send me an outline and get my approval for the topic and nature of their guest post before making their donation. I don’t want to run into a situation where the winning bid is a lot of money and you make your donation but the post is not approved.

There you have it. Let the bidding begin!