People ask me to help spread the word about things almost every week. I say yes often, and I say no more often than I would like to. Every so often, though, something reaches me that I would have gone looking for had it not found me first. This is one of those.
The Palmetto Council of the Blind of South Carolina is running an online auction called Kicking for a Cause. It is open now and it closes on September 20, 2026. There are 35 items on the board, bids start as low as ten dollars, and every dollar raised goes to work in South Carolina. You can find it here: https://scblind.betterworld.org/auctions/kicking-cause
That is the practical information, and if it is all you take from this article, it is enough. But it is not why I am writing. I am writing because of a sentence.
The Sentence
Jennifer Bazer, who serves as President of the Palmetto Council of the Blind, wrote to me about why the organization exists. This is what she said:
“I wanted someone who was newly losing their sight, a family member who didn’t know where to turn, a blind person looking for resources, or someone wanting to become more involved to have another door they could knock on in South Carolina.”
Another door to knock on. I have been blind since I was five years old, when my retinas detached, and I have spent more than thirty years working in and around the blindness field. I have run two national organizations. I have testified, consulted, fundraised, and sat on more boards than I can comfortably list. And I am not sure I have read a better six-word description of what a community organization is actually for.
Not a mission statement. Not a strategic plan. A door. Somewhere to go when you do not yet know what you need.
Who Jennifer Bazer Is
Jennifer has been blind since birth. She is President of the Palmetto Council of the Blind and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the American Council of the Blind. She is a social worker by education, and she spent more than ten years in workforce development, most recently leading teams and managing large federal workforce programs and contracts.
I want to pause on that last part, because it matters and it is the sort of thing that gets skipped over in a fundraising appeal. Managing large federal workforce programs is not adjacent work. It is hard, unglamorous, deeply operational work, and the people who do it well understand exactly how opportunity gets built and exactly where it leaks away. Jennifer did that for a living, and then she chose to build something in her own state.
She is also, in her own words, a mother of two teenagers:
“So when I talk about independence, opportunity, expectations, leadership and community, those aren’t simply professional concepts to me. They have been woven throughout my life.”
What South Carolina Was Missing
The Palmetto Council of the Blind was founded in 2023. That makes it young, and Jennifer is direct about what she was determined it would not become:
“I didn’t want another organization that simply existed on paper or held a meeting once a month. I wanted us to build relationships.”
Anyone who has worked in the nonprofit world knows how many organizations do exist mostly on paper, and knows that it is rarely anyone’s fault. Volunteers burn out. Founders move. The meeting becomes the mission. Deciding at the outset that you are going to be a real presence in people’s lives is a much heavier commitment than it sounds, and it is the commitment Jennifer made.
She describes what people actually arrive needing as a kind of ladder, and I think it is worth reading exactly as she wrote it.
“Sometimes what someone needs is very practical: a white cane, locator dots, a magnifier, accessible information or help finding a resource.”
“Sometimes what they need is a connection.”
“Sometimes it is the opportunity to attend a convention, meet other blind people, hear what they are doing, discover technology or resources they didn’t know existed, and come home thinking a little differently about what might be possible in their own life.”
“And sometimes they simply need someone to answer the phone or an email and say, ‘Let’s figure this out.’”
I have been in that third sentence. I have watched a person walk into a convention hall carrying the assumption that their life had just narrowed permanently, and walk out three days later having quietly revised it. Nothing was fixed. Nobody’s vision came back. What changed was the evidence available to them about what a blind person’s life can contain, and that evidence came from being in a room with people living it.
That is not a soft outcome. It is one of the most durable interventions I know of, and it costs the price of getting somebody to a convention.
A Community That Expects Something from You
Here is the line in Jennifer’s letter that stopped me, and the reason I wanted to write this rather than simply forward a link.
“My own experiences have shown me how much it matters for people who are blind to have access not only to tools and resources, but to information, opportunities, relationships and a community that expects something from them.”
A community that expects something from them.
I attended the Oregon State School for the Blind as a boy, and when I am asked what it gave me I always name three things: blindness skills, a sense of agency, and high expectations. The third one is the one people are least prepared for. We are comfortable talking about tools and training. We are far less comfortable saying out loud that a blind child should be expected to produce, to contribute, and to be held to a standard.
When I wrote my doctoral dissertation, I interviewed blind adults who were successfully employed at large American corporations and asked them what had produced that success. Nine factors emerged from those conversations. One of the strongest was expectation, the expectation of family, of teachers, of the people around them. Not encouragement. Not support. Expectation, which is a different and more demanding thing.
So when a blind woman in South Carolina tells me she is building an organization designed to expect something of the people it serves, she is not describing a nice-to-have. She is describing the exact mechanism my own research found decisive, delivered at the level of a state where somebody can actually reach it.
That is why I am asking you to bid.
What Is Actually in the Auction
I looked at the auction board myself before writing this, because I do not like recommending things I have not examined. There are 35 items, and the range is wider than I expected.
If you want to participate for the price of a sandwich, you can. Bidding opens at ten dollars on several items, including a Westbrook Brewing gift card, a DoorDash gift card, a Wingard’s Market certificate, a bath and body care set, and two novels by Daisy Russell. Fifteen dollars opens the bidding on Tidal Wave Auto Spa car wash passes, a set of titanium cutting boards, and a signed softcover and eBook of Words of Life by Ann Chiappetta.
In the middle of the board there are gift cards to Starbucks, Walmart, Target and Hamburger Joe’s, a 75 dollar Mountain Mist certificate, a Columbia Fireflies fan experience package, two dōTERRA essential oils wellness collections, a REVIVE essential oils starter kit, an Oh Clementine luxe gold jewelry set, a custom watercolor pet portrait by Amanda House, a sparrow note card collection by Laura Senn Day, a pound of gourmet chocolate fudge, and four hand-poured premium candles that at the time I looked were the most fiercely contested item on the board.
There is an autographed Dawn Staley basketball, which I suspect will not stay quiet for long.
And there are four travel and experience packages for anyone in a position to go big: Discover Amazing Asheville, a personal cooking lesson from a top chef, Unforgettable Glamping Near the Mountains, and Country Music in Music City.
Two items in particular tell you what kind of organization this is. One is a 100 dollar Ambutech electronic gift certificate. The other is called, simply, the Low Vision Entertainment and Independence Basket.
Those sit on the same board as a basketball and a getaway to Asheville, and that is exactly right. The people Palmetto serves are not a category. They are South Carolinians who need a magnifier and also want to go to a ball game.
There is also a year-round shop with no bidding at all, where a fixed price gets you a Palmetto Council T-shirt, a Blind Pirate Soap Company gift set, or a camping stay at Shenandoah Crossing Resort: https://scblind.betterworld.org/campaigns/palmetto-council-shop
I will also name the businesses that donated, because they did not have to and because the disability community notices who shows up: Ambutech, BarkBox, Blind Pirate Soap, dōTERRA Essential Oils, Hamburger Joe’s, Mountain Mist, Oh Clementine, REVIVE Essential Oils, Tidal Wave Auto Spa, Westbrook Brewing Company, and Wingard’s Market.
What Your Bid Actually Buys
This is where a lot of fundraising appeals go vague. Jennifer’s does not. Here is where the money goes, in her words:
“Funds raised help us provide white canes, locator dots, magnifiers, accessible materials and other resources; offer assistance to members; support education and outreach throughout South Carolina; and provide opportunities for members to participate in state and national conventions.”
White canes. Locator dots. Magnifiers. These are not expensive items, and that is the point. A white cane is one of the highest-return purchases in the whole field: it is inexpensive, it lasts, and it is the difference between a person who can leave the house alone and a person who cannot. A ten dollar bid on a gift card is not a symbolic gesture in that economy. It is a real contribution to a real object that goes to a real person.
And then there are the conventions, which brings us back to the third rung of Jennifer’s ladder. Somebody goes, meets other blind people, finds out that technology exists that they had never heard of, and, in her phrase, comes home thinking a little differently about what might be possible in their own life. I have watched that happen more times than I can count. It is the closest thing to a reliable lever that I know.
Jennifer frames the whole thing in a way I want to underline, because it is the correct frame:
“It is not fundraising simply for the sake of raising money. Every bid helps give a relatively young organization the ability to reach farther, provide more resources, create more opportunities and be there when someone in South Carolina reaches out.”
That is capacity, not charity. You are not relieving suffering with a bid on a car wash package. You are extending the reach of an organization that answers the phone.
Four Ways to Help, Closing September 20
Jennifer offers four, and I am passing all four along because not everyone can do the first one and the fourth one genuinely matters.
- Bid. 35 items, bidding closes September 20, 2026: https://scblind.betterworld.org/auctions/kicking-cause
- Shop. Open year-round, fixed prices, no bidding required: https://scblind.betterworld.org/campaigns/palmetto-council-shop
- Donate. If bidding is not for you, give directly at https://scblind.org
- Share. In Jennifer’s words, even if someone is not able to contribute financially, sharing the auction and shop with others is a wonderful way to help. Forward this. Post it. Send it to one person in South Carolina.
Questions, or an item you would like to donate, go to info@scblind.org 📧️
Back to the Door
Somewhere in South Carolina this month, a person is going to be told by a doctor that their vision is not coming back. Somewhere in South Carolina this month, a daughter is going to start searching for what to do about her father, and she is going to find very little.
Whether there is a door for those two people to knock on is not a matter of fate. It is a matter of whether a small organization founded in 2023 has the resources to keep the lights on and somebody available to answer.
The auction closes September 20, 2026. Jennifer put it more simply than I can:
“People can bid, shop, donate or simply share our story. All of those things help.”
Go get in the game: https://scblind.betterworld.org/auctions/kicking-cause
Dr. Kirk Adams, Ph.D.
Advocate, Leader and Keynote Speaker on Disability Inclusion & Leadership
Leading the Way to Accessible Innovation
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American Foundation for the Blind
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To create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired.
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