Carolyn Gillis has created online Web sites where people can sell items they don’t want and donate all or part of the proceeds to charity or a school organization. Maule photo

FALMOUTH - Carolyn Gillis is reviving an effort she began 10 years ago to raise money for charity and schools through online classified advertisements and auctions.

When her daughter and son were in grade school, Gillis volunteered at the schools and was on the start-up board for Falmouth Education Foundation.

She cooked for bake sales and stood in the rain for fundraising events. She thought there had to be a better and more efficient way to raise money for the schools than this and having students sell things like candy, candles and wrapping paper.

Then, one day when she came across a Boston Trader sweater that her son had never worn, the idea hit her that she could sell the sweater for at least $50 and share the profits with the school.

She soon organized and printed three classified advertising newspaper-size newsletters where people could sell items and then donate all or part of the proceeds to the schools. Volunteers helped her, and she made a few hundred dollars for each run for the school, but it was a lot of work and took more time than she had.

That idea, however, evolved into an online classified service called Classified Circles (classifiedcircles.org) to which sellers can contribute all or part (from 1 percent to 100 percent) of the profits to a chosen charity, not just schools. More recently, Gillis has started Classroom Classifieds (classroomclassifieds.com) where people can sell items they don’t want or need and donate all or part of the proceeds to schools.

Gillis’ daughter, Melissa, will be a junior in college, and her son, Michael, will graduate from high school next year. Gillis is trying once again to revive the Web sites that are still active but have never gotten off to the full surge she knows they could.

She put the project “on the back burner” while she went to school at the University of Southern Maine to work on a degree in business, but now she is ready to put it on the front burner.

“We haven’t had the big spark yet,” she said this week.

Just the same, about $11,000 in pledges are currently listed on the classifiedcircle Web site. Only about 20 items, however, are listed on the classroomclassifieds.com site where you can currently purchase a ping pong or coffee table, guitar, a golden retriever and a variety of sporting goods items. If you pay the $100 asking price for the ping pong table, in Falmouth, 5 percent will be sent by the seller to a school organization of that person’s choice. A buyer could also make a counter offer.

People selling on the site are on the honor system to send the money to the chosen school group, as are people who purchase items on the Classified Circles site. Currently on that site a woodblock print from the estate of R. Rockefeller is being offered by a Portland resident at an asking price of $5,000. The print was done by Kazumi Amano, who has works in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art. All of the sale price will be donated to the Maine Time Bank.

The National School Foundation recently became interested in Gillis’ idea They placed a link on their Web site to Gillis’ Classroom Classified site and sent out “Internet news blasts” about it. She was also flown to a conference Florida to talk about her project.

The Web sites “have taken over my life,” Gillis said, even though she has gotten some volunteer help. She is trying to find a way to get paid for what so far has been voluntary work. She wants to organize the school classified site as a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and she may do the same with Classified Circles. Then she can seek sponsorships and grants with the goal of getting paid a salary.

She plans to charge school systems $200 to list up to 15 schools and organizations on the site, or one group could pay a $20 fee to be listed. Recently, Ruth’s Reusable Resources in Scarborough was listed on the site.

Gillis said Falmouth schools and school organizations are not charged to be listed on the site, nor will they ever be.

Gillis is working on getting a PayPal-type account on the sites, and she is also working on other improvements, she said.

Former Gov. Angus King is on her advisory board of directors and has called it an eBay for education, she said.

People from Australia and Great Britain have expressed an interest in Gillis’ idea as have people in other states, including California, in the last few weeks.

Linda Maule can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 108 or lmaule@theforecaster.net