There’s been some discussion in several places about how to treat the proceeds of an online auction. Are they “sales” or are they “contributions”? The IRS guidelines for completing Form 990 seem to say that the donation does not change its nature from contribution to sale just because you auction it off. Hope that provides some clarification for some of you who’ve asked. Here’s the relevant section. (For those who don’t know, Form 990 is what you fill out every year for a 501(c)3. Most groups do a postcard Form 990 because their gross revenue is less than 50K a year.) Anyway, for those of you who’ve wondered.
 Here’s the full set of instructions, for those of you OCD enough to read IRS instructions.  HERE!