Similar thing happened to me a couple years back-I have organized many charity fundraisers-benefiting our local hospital, our ambulance charity, my son's school and even our animal shelter charity where we lived(overseas in Vanuatu) and I was approached by a couple ladies wanting my advice for holding a large second-hand/yard sale to benefit the local Red Cross. Since I have also done a few very large community second-hand sales, I was happy to meet with them and give them advice on how to organize it. After taking notes (and about 2 hours of my time), they thanked me and left. The next month they held the sale, and didn't even follow one of my suggestions! Needless to say, it was a complete flop-I had friends who participated (paying for a table) and ended up haulig 1/2 their stuff back. A few made less than the table cost them. Plus, they didn't even bother to have refreshments for sale-cold drinks etc-and it was during the really hot-humid season. No proper advertising was done (and I arranged it for free for them with the local paper who always does my advertising for free). I mean, I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink!!