Glad to hear that you have taken up the cause outside of this context as well. As to what harm it does, the answer is none at all. In fact, it is an awesome op

Glad to hear that you have taken up the cause outside of this context as well. As to what harm it does, the answer is none at all. In fact, it is an awesome opportunity for that person and I would have loved to have been in that position myself. However, the rub for me is not so much what harm does it do, but what good does it do to have one more rich kid at the dinner? Obviously, Bing gets a big ol' donation, so that is most certainly a huge benefit. I don't know, it just feels weird to me. How about sponsoring a programming puzzle (or series of puzzles) or something like that next time and the first person to solve it gets to go to the dinner? I would put $1,000 into that (as the Bing donation). Bing gets the money, the person who solved the problem is obviously interested in going, it takes care of the "rich parents" debate, and the overhead for managing such a contest is limited to the upfront creation of the question and parsing of the results. Truthfully, my personal feelings here are primarily rooted in envy. I did not have parents who had the ability to pay for such an opportunity, so had this auction applied to me, I would have been looking for a way to work my way in somehow.