AnniesBid.com, founded in July 2011, is the first completely charity-driven penny auction site. With every bid placed, the site raises more money for their sponsored charities. AnniesBid gives away over 50-75% of auction profit by giving $0.10 per purchased bid to their featured causes. Bidders know exactly how much is going to a charity with each bid they make. They can even see how much they've donated in the "My Account" section. They can also track how much money is actually raised by everyone bidding for AnniesBid charities by checking the "Featured Causes" page.

Currently, OperationSmile is the Featured Cause for AnniesBid. OperationSmile provides safe, effective reconstructive surgery for children born with facial deformities such as cleft lip and cleft palate. More than 200,000 children are born with a severe cleft condition each year — often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places these children are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a normal life. AnniesBid aims to raise $10,000 for OperationSmile, and currently, they are at 91.2%, with $9,120 raised!

Once AnniesBid reaches their goal for OperationSmile, they will be supporting a new cause. Causes are voted on by the bidders, who can suggest causes to receive these contributions. AnniesBid then selects a group of causes from the suggestions to appear on a monthly ballot. Bidders can participate in voting by adding the Cause Voting application in Facebook and “liking” the cause that they would like to be chosen as the next Featured Cause.

The amount of contributions that causes receive depend on the users of AnniesBid. Contributions are directly correlated to the number of auctions they run, the volume of bidding and the final sale price, as well as whether people choose to share news of their auction wins and resulting donations in social media.

Aside from supporting wonderful charities, AnniesBid is, by itself, a fantastic penny auction site. They have earned great reviews on the various reputable penny auction review sites and forums, such as the PennyBurners Penny Auction Forum. They also feature the ultimate safeguard for bidders: the "Buy it Now" feature. With this excellent feature, bidders cannot lose money since even if they are not the highest bidder. Instead, they can receive a full credit for all their unsuccessful bids by using "Buy it Now". However, parts of the credit will still go toward the featured charity.

Representatives of AnniesBid regularly interact, personally even, with users on their Facebook page, run contests there and in Twitter, and have conversations. They are currently approaching 5,000 registered users and hope to keep this personal approach up even when they're past 50,000 or even 500,000! To date, they have run two months of auctions smoothly, shipped items in a reasonably quick period of time, and raised money for a great cause in the process.

If you have not yet bid at AnniesBid.com, you should definitely check them out! Not only can you win exciting items like the new Amazon Kindle Fire and popular Gift Cards at a deeply-discounted price, but simply by bidding, you help out a great charitable organization. The PennyBurners Team stands behind AnniesBid and supports their mission whole-heartedly. We hope you do, too!