Story
It all started in March 2017, when Katja Kafling Wichmann and Tina Hindsbo met up to discuss what to do to celebrate the legacy of George Michael. We are both life-long fans, and after his untimely death we just felt we had to do something...
We had talked about writing a biography, but finally decided against it. It’s a lot of work and there’s no guarantee of publication, let alone success - and could we really come up with a new angle?
Then Tina had an idea, and in March 2017 - next to a pub called George’s - Katja and Tina shook hands as partners in Lovelies.help.
The idea was to start a kind of ‘eBay’ on Facebook dedicated exclusively to auctions of George Michael Memorabilia. But instead of the auctioner making a profit, the money would be sent to a good cause: By auctioning off George Michael memorabilia - donated by GM fans - Lovelies.help fundraises for some of the charity organisations George supported during his lifetime.
It works because GM fans (lovelies) are generally infused with the same generous spirit as George himself. They want their spares to go to other dedicated GM fans who are building their collections, and they love that it’s all for a good cause. It’s 100% win win.
All donations made through Lovelies.help go straight to the charities, and Lovelies.help is run entirely on a volunteer basis.
Lovelies.help went live with the first charity auction on Facebook (@lovelies.help) in April 2017 and will continue for as long as possible - in memory of George Michael who besides being a truly great musician was one of the most decent and generous human beings that ever lived.
We started off by tapping into our own collections. As luck would have it, Ms Gill Read soon came along and donated some of her collection. Since then, she has devoted a lot of time to finding memorabilia bargains and to running Lovelies.help with us.
The success that we now enjoy would not have been possible without all the lovelies that have donated and bid on memorabilia and continue to do so; and we could not have handled the administration of it all without the daily help of Ms Gill Read and Ms Jennifer Baskette-Ridings.
Special mention goes to Ms Andrea Snow, Ms Anne Belise Taylor and Mr Matt Blanco who have donated a lot of memorabilia and supported Lovelies.help in various ways.
Thank you, Katja Kafling Wichmann & Tina Joanne Hindsbo