June 9, 2005 | Read Time: 2 minutes
When the Jewels for Charity Collection Tour came to Coral Gables, Fla., jewelry shoppers purchased $30,000 in vintage gems in the span of a few hours — and all that money went to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On other days, jewelry purchases on the same scale benefited Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; the Henry Mancini Institute, a music charity in Culver City, Calif.; and Santa Barbara County’s United Way.
Selling jewels to benefit charity was the idea of Michael Kazanjian, executive director of the Kazanjian Foundation, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Head of a family jewelry design and brokering business, his organization is part museum and part auction house, accepting donations of rare and expensive jewelry to appraise and sell.
People who donate the jewels for sale get to choose what charities will be the beneficiaries of their gifts; they also get a tax deduction for giving the jewels to the Kazanjian Foundation, since it is a nonprofit organization.
Mr. Kazanjian says his organization’s approach has been particularly appealing to people who keep their jewelry hidden in safety-deposit boxes in part because they don’t want to sell the pieces and create the impression that they “need the money.”
The Kazanjian Foundation previously sold gems to underwrite scholarships at colleges and universities. However, in 2002 the foundation changed its mission to helping other nonprofit groups maximize the value of gifts of jewelry they received. The foundation’s costs are underwritten by the Kazanjian family.
“We were realizing that all this jewelry is out there and seeing all these charities that are short of funding, and there is an immense need to augment donations,” Mr. Kazanjian says. “So let’s see if we can tap into this treasure chest of unwanted jewelry.”
He said he started investigating the idea of noncash gifts to charity when he saw organizations in Los Angeles soliciting used cars to benefit charity. “But when I looked into what charities really get from the car donations, it was as little as 18 cents on the dollar,” says Mr. Kazanjian. He sought to obtain status as an operating foundation to allow 100 percent of the jewelry’s sale price to be donated to charity.
To attract attention — and potential buyers — the foundation collects jewelry for a traveling exhibition. Everything in the collection tour is for sale, although some baubles — such as the 78-carat diamond tiara that Madonna wore when she married Guy Ritchie, and pieces once owned by the entrepreneur Howard Hughes — travel with the exhibit as sideshow attractions and if sold would not benefit a charitable organization.
Still, the inclusion of the celebrity pieces remains vital to the success of the tour. “We depend upon finding and acquiring celebrity pieces because that’s what motivates the public to come view the collection and hopefully buy,” Mr. Kazanjian says.
For more information about the Jewels for Charity program, go to http://www.jewelsforcharity.org.
