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How to give Live Auction Packages donated within minutes

3/16/2020

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Many nonprofits don’t have the time, donor base, or, frankly, energy to procure enough auction items for their event. When this happens, there’s something you can do with your auctioneer at the beginning of the event to try and source a few emergency items.

While setting up your event, leave a handful of index cards and a pen or two at each table so that people can keep their response private. The last thing we want is someone shouting out an item they’d like to donate and no one in the room looking interested. Then at the start of the evening, your auctioneer takes to the stage and makes an energetic ask for auction items.

I usually say something along the lines of, “If you have an item that you are interested in donating to the auction, right here right now, write it down on one of the cards on your table and someone will be by to pick it up.”

When we ask this question at an event, we already know there’s someone in the room with an amazing item they considered donating but for whatever reason the ask was never made.

I have gotten some amazing items this way.

At a recent event I got back six cards, three of which had spectacular items written on them. We quietly went back to these donors and asked them for more information about the items as the evening continued. 

Once you start getting a few items, it’s not uncommon for more to slowly roll in. You end up with both new, fresh items to sell this year, and a lead on some great items for the next year. 

It gives you an easy out to not sell all the items that night because you ran out of time. It also gives you information on who in your audience is willing to donate items and what type of items they have. This information is invaluable when it comes to sourcing items for the following year. It builds upon itself making your auction procurement time shorter and more efficient.

Has your nonprofit used this technique at your charity auction? Let me know how it worked for you down in the comments.
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All about Buy-a-Spots | Count me In | Parties

3/9/2020

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There are two ways to raise money during a live auction: Sell one item once to one person for a large amount of money, or sell spots for one item to multiple people at a lower price point. 

Enter the Buy-A-Spot also known as Count Me In or Buy In Parties.. 

The Buy-A-Spot (also called Count-Me-In) approach often raises at least the same amount of money that it would have if the item were sold to one person.

We all know that the holy trinity of auction items are dinners, trips, and experiences. So for this example, let’s pretend that we have a chef-prepared dinner for sixteen people up for auction at our event. Sure, we can sell that entire experience to one wealthy donor for $8,000, or we can sell spots at that dinner for $500 each and raise at least $8,000. With Buy-A-Spots you’re very likely going to raise the same amount of money, but there are more people in the room with the capacity to give $500 than there are with the capacity to give $8,000.

Buy-A-Spots have traditionally been used for silent auction items, but they are becoming more and more popular during live auctions. And for good reason! By including Buy-A-Spot items in your live auction, you immediately start appealing to donors with a lower giving capacity, which means more of your room can participate in the event.

Here’s a few tips for using Buy-A-Spots in a live auction: 

  1. Buy-A-Spot works best for auction lots where the more the merrier is the attitude. It works great for dinners, parties, camping, etc. Anytime you can sell a spot at a table, you can do a Buy-A-Spot.
  2. Pick a date for the Buy-A-Spot event before the auction so you can put it in your program. People need to know what date the event will be on so that they can plan ahead. If you have an item that you think is going to sell like gangbusters, pick a second backup date for after the first one fills up.
  3. Buy-A-Spots are performed by the charity auctioneer during the live auction, but the bidding on these items works a lot more like a Fund-A-Need. Your auctioneer will ask for everyone who wants a spot to put their paddles in the air. This eliminates the competition element present during bidding for a traditional live auction lot and turns it into a communal moment, introducing the pressure that is more often seen during a Fund-A-Need.     

If your nonprofit decides to give Buy-A-Spots a go at your next live auction, drop me a line and let me know how it goes!
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Do You Have Donors or Experience Buyers at Your Event?

3/2/2020

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Nonprofits like to use celebrities, musicians, and special guests as a lure to get people to come to the event and support the nonprofit. I am lucky enough to work with celebrities, musicians, and thought leaders fairly regularly in my work as a charity auctioneer, and I’ve seen these events be both exceptional successes and impressive disasters. 

The problem with having big names at your event is that if your attendees are coming to the event for any reason other than supporting your nonprofit through a donation, they are not coming to support your organization. 

You have experience buyers, not donors.

Experience buyers are those who attend a fundraising event with the goal of meeting the big name guest in attendance. They want to interact with this person; they want the Instagrammable moment, and they’ll pay any price for the privilege.

I get calls from organizations that have these experience-based events all the time. They tell me that their events are super successful, they sell tickets like crazy, but they aren’t raising any money with their live auctions, silent auctions, and Fund-A-Needs. 

This is because they don’t have donors, they have experience buyers.

Unfortunately, this isn’t something that I can fix (which is something I’m very honest about). The attendees at these events don’t really care about the nonprofit the event supports. They only care about the experience they are buying themselves. 

Nonprofits who find themselves in this position have a few options to increase their fundraising at these experience-based events:
  1. Sell more tickets 
  2. Raise ticket prices
  3. Include an upsell

Selling more tickets is fairly self-explanatory. If you sell more tickets, you will raise more money through ticket sales. Raising ticket prices can work, assuming that the attendees won’t balk at a price increase. Including an additional upsell—such as charging extra for one-on-one time or a photo with a celebrity—can also work, and depending on your guest list it can work quite well.

The trouble with experience-based events is that is really difficult to turn the attendees into real donors. They become used to receiving a one-of-kind experience in return for their ticket purchase and they begin to expect that. It’s a hard habit to break. Usually, these events are put on by a third party raising money for a nonprofit. They don’t have a donor list to pull from, so they rely on selling tickets and turning people into donors once they arrive at the event. But that doesn’t work. Donor outreach and cultivation takes a lot of time. There’s a reason that so many nonprofit employees make it their focus. The relationship between the nonprofit and the donor takes time to build. 

Even if the nonprofit invites people to attend these events based on a donor list, it’s still very hard to break out of this cycle because the donors have now been trained to expect an amazing experience with no real pressure to donate. If you are really looking to turn experience buyers into donors, it can’t be done at a special event. It has to be done during one-on-one meetings, but I expect this won’t be worth the time investment for most nonprofits.

In the end, experience-based events are fine. You’ll make some money and your event will be well-known in the area. But, you won’t build your donor rolls and you won’t cultivate long-term relationships with people who want to support your cause. Depending on your goal for the event, that may or may not be a bad thing.
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