Charity auctions are a great way (dare we say, one of the best ways) to fundraise and expand your donor base. Hear us out: you get valuable donor information, donors feel engaged and excited with the thrill of the bid, and at the end of the night, all go home satisfied they gave to your cause.
The cherry on top is that silent auctions easily translate to online silent auctions. That means you can still engage with your donors and spice up your nonprofit’s fundraising opportunities despite the virtual constraints of a global pandemic.
In this article, we’ll share some ideas, tricks, and best practices mostly for online silent auctions. But if you’re in an area that has reopened, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with in-person auction ideas, too.
Table of Contents
Planning Your Nonprofit Silent Auction Fundraiser
About Auction Items for Nonprofit Silent Auctions
How to structure your charity silent auction event
Planning Your Nonprofit Silent Auction Fundraiser
As the incredible event planner you are, you know a good event starts with a great framework.
It’s the foundational questions you ask for every event you plan that are going to inform your decisions on where this silent auction will head. So check out our 9 step guide on building a virtual event for more on questions you should be asking, like, “how many guests do we want to host?” and “what is our budget and how much money are we looking to raise?”
Beyond that, there are a lot of moving parts to silent auctions and, while you’re the most awesome event planner your organization has, you can’t be everywhere. This is why we highly suggest forming an auction planning team and delegating the following roles:
- An item team: responsible for planning item offerings, contacting businesses for sponsorships and donations, and coordinating the acquisition of those items in time for your auction.
- A logistics team: responsible for handling winner notifications, any item shipping, and delivery.
- A software team: responsible for keeping all your critical technology up and running. Consider having one of them available to assist bidders with any technical difficulties throughout bidding and purchase.
- For in-person events, you’ll also want to plan for a guest interaction team consisting of an emcee and volunteers or staffers to work guest registration, table setup, and item wrangling.
Another thing to consider when it comes to planning your auction is that you don’t want to be vying for your donor’s attention. Schedule your event so that it’s not competing with another fundraiser at the same time. One way to ease this tension for your supporters is to give auction attendees the option to either bid or donate directly to your cause.
About Auction Items for Nonprofit Silent Auctions
The two biggest questions any event planner has when it comes to silent auctions are how many items to offer and what items will be popular and drive up bids.
Choosing the right auction items
Obviously, you want your auction to be successful at selling items, and a great way to do that is to create a seller’s market. Stick with the general planning rule of 1 item for every 4-5 guests.
When it comes to planning the items for listing, we recommend turning to your donor database to look for items or themes of interest for your supporters. As a Soapbox Engage user, all of your donor interactions are captured in real-time in your Salesforce database. No need for manual entry or complex report running.
However, if your database is still new, you can supplement your information with the interests of the demographic groups your donors tend to fall into. Look for themes that resonate, alluring experiences, or valuable items that will grab people’s attention.
We recommend varying both the item’s market value and the item experience. Focus on having only one or two high-value items that will draw donor excitement. Traditionally these have been travel experiences or high-priced items like jewelry.
But don’t feel limited to just those categories, check out this list for more details on auction item ideas!
HOT TIP: When planning item listings, think about the difference between an item’s market value and its perceived value in the eyes of your donors. Items with high perceived value are always going to be more popular, and it’s that perceived value you’ll market to them. This is an area where knowing your donor base is crucial.
For instance: A two-day couples getaway is going to have a lot more perceived value for new first time parents than advertising the item as an Airbnb a block from the beach. (Even more so if you can figure out how to include child care.)
Silent auction item procurement
When it comes to item procurement, have your team contact local businesses and community organizations to sponsor your event and donate items or services. Asking local organizations to help not only strengthens your community outreach, but it helps keep costs low.
HOT TIP: If a local business offers a lower interest item or service for auction, you can steer the conversation towards a cash donation that you’ll use to acquire a higher perceived value item.
How To Structure Your Charity Silent Auction Event
We recommend keeping the auction itself short, no more than 2 hours in length. However, you’ll still want to keep the pace quick to capitalize on the excitement of the auction.
One way to keep things moving is to batch your items into groups and stagger the closing time of those groups by 15-minute increments. Staggering is especially helpful if you have more than 35 items in your auction.
HOT TIP: To increase the excitement, you can create a sense of mystery by staggering item batch openings as well.
Naturally, you’ll want the least expensive items to close early in the event and leave the most valuable or attractive items for the end. Advertise those most important items with banners and every bid group with big countdown clocks.
Promoting your charity auction
On the topic of promotion, let’s talk about directing donor focus.
Your one or two main attraction items are going to be the draw of the auction and the main focus of your promotion. Have your promotion team design custom invitation email campaigns using Soapbox Engage’s Events app that features these items.
We also recommend redirecting your social media followers to an interested-attendee form hosted on your website when drafting your social media campaign. This way, you can turn social media followers into (let’s call them future) donor data.
While we’re on the topic of websites, your main goal of the auction is to raise money for your cause, right? Bring your supporters and interested attendees into that excitement by putting a tracking bar or thermometer on the main page of your website to display your fundraising progress.
HOT TIP: We mentioned earlier giving attendees the option of bidding or donating to your cause during the auction. You could add your donation tracker to your website a week or two beforehand with the option to donate early towards your cause. Now you’ll be bringing interested attendees into the opportunity to fund your mission and, people who can’t attend the auction for any reason will still be able to support the cause.
Engage your auction attendees
A happy guest bids high and returns eagerly. You’ll want to plan for a top-notch guest experience both in and around the auction.
The three most important parts of this are making the listings attractive, easy to navigate, and exciting.
We buy with our eyes before we take out our wallets. So, prioritize large enticing photos of the items and experiences you’re listing. If manufacturer-created advertising is unavailable to you, create the highest quality photos you can with your budget.
Next, if you’re hosting a virtual auction, make sure that the website and software you’re using displays large images, has a “click to enlarge” feature, and an attractive user interface.
Since we’ve brought up the topic of bidding process navigation, the golden word here is “mobile.” Nearly half of all online traffic is with mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc). You can expect that some of your guests will be using a mobile device. Make sure the software and website you’re using hosts and displays well on mobile.
HOT TIP: Consider creating two short video tutorials (no more than 10 minutes each) on how to register for your bidding software and how to bid on an item. This could be very helpful for a not-so-technically-inclined donor who still wants to participate in the auction excitement!
Finally, be sure to verify that your email notification system for winners is up and running, letting bidders know how to redeem any items they won. We recommend testing this out in the office before going live.
When it comes to increasing bidding eagerness, we talked a bit about creating a seller’s market. But what about creating a seller’s atmosphere? Here are some great ideas on how to do that:
- Preserve the value of your bids by starting items at no higher than 40% of their worth and mandating bid increments of 10% of the item’s fair market value.
- Give bidding guests the opportunity to “buy now” on a listing with an increased percentage of the listing’s market value.
- Consider allowing the option of showing how many bidders are interested in a listing and currently bidding on that item.
- You can add a leaderboard showing top overall bidders by engagement, number of bids (regardless of their success at winning the item), number of items won, or some other metric. By offering a mystery prize to the leaderboard winner you can drum up some healthy competition throughout your auction--and competition usually means more money!
- Create a social media hashtag and encourage bidders to share their experience on social media for a chance at a listing giveaway at the end of the night.
In-person auction ideas
When it comes to in-person auctions, many of the above ideas apply. But we did have a few extra thoughts for live auction events.
First, your sound system is a critical necessity. We want you to have great--and we mean really great--sound available to mark the start and close of your auction and to describe exciting listings available throughout. Great, however, doesn’t always mean loud. When scouting venues, pay attention to how your venue’s ceilings and walls are set up. High ceilings and hard walls can distort sounds, and that means all your emcee’s hard work comes out muffled and their great jokes fall flat.
Second, this may seem small, but secure your bids by placing pens next to every bidding sheet. Protect the identity of your guests by offering them a bidding identification number they can use. And while we’re on the topic of bidding sheets, keep them simple with just two columns: “who are you and how much are you bidding?”
Finally, we recommend organizing your items not by type or experience (“sports”, “around town”) but instead by color. Guests will have an easier time finding the table with the bright red balloons and streamers, and the vague category inspires interest and mystique.
Now you’re ready for an amazing fundraising auction for your nonprofit or charity! And the great news is that you can transition this event from in-person to virtual (or back to in-person) should the need arise!
Here are three more resources to help take your fundraising to the next level.
- How To Organize A Virtual Walk Fundraiser: Just like virtual silent auctions, walks and runs are an excellent fundraising event--both in-person and virtual! Head over to this blog to learn all the ins and outs of organizing a successful virtual walk fundraiser for your nonprofit!
- How to Add a Donate Button on Facebook and Grow Your Fundraising: Not long ago, Facebook added a feature that lets you put a “Donate Now” button on your organization’s Facebook page. This blog post has some helpful insights, into the pros and cons of this feature and step-by-step instructions on how to add a “Donate Now” button to your page!
- 5 Simple Tips To Improve Donor Relations: The cost of acquiring new donors is increasing, which means it’s much cheaper to keep your current donors than to bring in new ones. Improving your donor relations is one of the best ways to improve your donor retention, but it does take some strategy. This blog has some great insights into how you can boost your donor retention.
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