People sell items on second hand platforms because they don’t use them anymore. Unfortunately for ALS patients it’s not that simple. ALS patients have items to spare because they can’t use them anymore because their disease makes it impossible. To raise awareness and funds at the same time, ALS patients sold items they couldn’t use anymore and other people were encouraged to sell items for the ALS cause as well.

In a partnership with www.2dehands.be, the most popular website in Belgium where people sell and buy second hand items, we launched an ALS-dedicated web shop on the platform where revenues were automatically donated to ALS.

We added a more confronting reason to selling things online.

The campaign kicked off with the emotional stories of 5 ALS patients selling items they could no longer use due to the devastating effect of the disease on 2dehands.be. These touching stories were featured in 45” TV commercials on VAR, impacting 30” radio spots and banners on 2dehands.be, all leading to the platform www.2dehandsvoorALS.be and the webshop on 2dehands. The movie also invited people to fight the disease by offering second hand goods as donations or buy the personal items of ALS patients who no longer can use them.

The campaign gained national visibility. The PR-coverage was enormous, with the biggest newspapers and magazines of Belgium featuring our story both online as offline: Het Laatste Nieuws, De Standaard, Libelle, GVA, ATV, … On top of that the e-newsletter and bannering campaign on 2dehands.be allowed to effectively reach ca. one million potential buyers and sellers.

More than 100 items were offered for sale on the platform, and the selling and buying still continues. We not only created a whole new way to raise money for ALS on a structural basis, For Sale Because of ALS also resulted in raising awareness for what ALS is and the necessity to raise funds for the research.