Blue Healers is not so much an organization (it's just me) as it is an effort to use something that I enjoy (Duke Men's Basketball) to promote something I believe in (helping to provide medical care to those less fortunate than us).
I've had season tickets for the men's basketball games since the 2005-2006 season, when I moved back to North Carolina from Texas and believed that I was then close enough to attend the majority of the games. The games I couldn't attend I auctioned through Duke Basketball Report to benefit medical mission work, back when the late James Armstrong managed both the DBR forums and auctions. After realizing that 5 hours each way was too far for even a dedicated fan to drive to basketball games while continuing to work as a full-time anesthesiologist, I decided that season tickets probably weren't the brightest idea at that stage in my life. But when it came time to renew my Iron Dukes membership, and I learned that the minimum donation for basketball tickets was going up for anyone who didn't have season tickets the previous season, I feared that if I got out I'd never be able to afford to get back in. So I renewed my season tickets with the idea that I'd go to the few games that I could safely and auction the tickets for all the rest. Thinking that it wasn't fair to expect James Armstrong to set up that many auctions for one person, I decided to set up my own website auctioning all of the tickets, bidding against other fans and making my own donations to medical mission charities when I wanted to use the tickets myself. Thus Blue Healers was born. That was the 2006-2007 season and I have been running Blue Healers ever since.
Many things have changed since then. I've gone from having a Duke student drop off the tickets at Will Call for the auction winner, to FedEx'ing the tickets, to now (thankfully!) electronically transferring the tickets. The beneficiary of the auction proceeds went from Medical Ministry International (when a dear friend of mine was working as a full-time missionary for them in Bolivia), to Christian Health Service Corps (when another friend, Tim Berg, was working as a missionary general surgeon through them in Rwanda), to the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons (when Dr. Berg took his talents to Kenya to train residents to serve their own people). And I've gone from relatively simple accounting, when 80% of the Iron Dukes donation was tax deductible, to today's situation, where donations to Duke for the purpose of being able to buy basketball tickets are not tax deductible. That minimum donation to the Iron Dukes has also gone up over the years. I am now considering the total ticket acquisition cost (Iron Dukes donation and season ticket costs) to be a donation to PAACS and deducting that amount from my taxable income as a charitable donation. For this reason, donations made to PAACS are not tax deductible for auction winners and cannot be made through any type of charitable trust when made in exchange for tickets. The amount of the winning bid is considered to be fair market value for the tickets, just as it would be if they were purchased on StubHub or Vivid Seats. Auction winners can, however, have the satisfaction of knowing that those proceeds are going to a good cause.
Last year I added an Auction Total line to the bottom of the auction list, showing the total proceeds from the current bids of all the auctions and then showing that as a percentage of the ticket acquisition cost. It is my goal each year that the auctions raise more than the acquisition cost. Some years (like K's final season) it raises more, some years it falls short. I'm willing to take that risk, believing that PAACS benefits from the exposure as well as the donations themselves. Some years auction winners have donated more than the amount of their winning bids or have alerted me when they've included our auction beneficiaries in their end of the year charitable giving. This type of generosity makes all of my efforts to maintain and run this site worthwhile.
The big change this year will be that Coach Scheyer will now be leading our team. One benefit of that is that some longtime season ticket holders appeared to have retired along with Coach K, allowing me to improve the Blue Healers' tickets (now section 6!). The big change for me is that I have moved and can now make the drive to Cameron in about two hours. I'm hoping to go to a lot more games this year.
I've considered it an honor to help passionate Duke fans attend basketball games while contributing to worthwhile charities. I'm greatly looking forward to this new season.