CONTINUE READING: How to Create Your Best Silent Auction Ever

Nothing can stump a charity auction event planner more than trying to price auction items. It can be hard to put a price tag on merchandise, especially if the auction item is “priceless”. 

The good news is we have learned from errors of the past and can help you get this right from the start! 

If you set your silent auction opening bids too high, chances are most items will sell below fair market value. 

Remember that most people come with a budget for the night. 

Opening bids that are too high will automatically disqualify some people from bidding. It’s always good to start bidding low and allow competition to drive up the final prices of the items. 

A low starting bid always gets people excited that they will leave with a “deal.” And because the price is low, lots of people will be eager to bid, and you’ll trigger competition, which is the true engine that drives values through the roof. 

Once people are excited about the item they are bidding on, they are more likely to continue to bid. 

Here are some pointers for how to price your starting bids: 

• For donated items, we recommend a starting bid at 30% of the item’s fair market value and any bid thereafter should go up by 10% of the fair market value. 
  • For example, the opening bid for a $100 item should be $30, and the bidding should go up in $10 increments. 
• For consignment items, we recommend starting the bidding at 10% above the cost of the item to the charity. If the item costs the charity $100, then bidding should start at $110. 
  • Please note that this advice applies only to consignment items in your “Silent “Auction. We explain in Step 14 of our Live Auction Guide that it’s often more profitable to start consignment items in your “Live” auction items below the reserve cost and let the competition of the bidding drive the prices up.
• For “priceless” items, such as an art project created by your child’s class, or something sentimental that just can’t be tagged with a price, a good pricing strategy is to start the bid low to allow the guest’s emotional connection to the item determine the value and drive up the price. 
• Many auctions have “Win It Now” prices stated on their bid sheets for those guests who want to ensure they become the immediate “winner” of the item. The “Win It Now” price should be a premium price equal to about 150% of the item’s fair market value. We do not recommend a “Win It Now” price be offered for priceless and sentimental items, but it works well for accessories, vacations, memorabilia etc.
  • Remember, when allowing a guest to "Win It Now," the bidding will most likely never exceed whatever “Win it Now” price you set. Use this option wisely!

Limiting the number of items available for bid at your auction may sound counter-intuitive; after all, the more items you have the more money you’ll raise, right? 

The reality is that too many silent auction items can overwhelm your guests, and cause them to disengage in the silent auction.

There may not be enough people to bid on all of the items, or your guests might be nervous about bidding on too many items for fear of winning them all and going over their budget for the night. 

A good rule of thumb is to have no more than one item per five guests. 

So if you have 500 guests, you would have no more than 100 silent auction items.

Remember, your guests have to see all of the items, and bid on their favorites in a relatively short amount of time during the cocktail hour. If you have too many items, they don’t have time to look at everything.

And you have to remember that some of your guests won’t place their “first” bid until they’ve seen everything that you have to offer. They don’t want to commit themselves to Items #1, #2 and #3, eating up their spending budget, and then discover that they really wanted to bid on items #51, #52 and #53 instead.

So they’ll walk the entire silent auction looking at EVERYTHING you have to offer before they go back and start placing bids. If you have too many items, they don’t even have time to review everything let alone get into competitive bidding wars.

Remember, competition is the fuel that drives values. You’ll make more money with fewer items.

If your silent auction committee has done a great job and has gathered 500 items for your silent auction, and you’ve got 500 guests coming to your event, then you’ve got to start putting together bundles to create interesting packages and get your total number of items down to 100.

A few years ago, Mobile Bidding was the hot new wave of the future. Everyone was talking about it, wondering if guests would understand what mobile bidding was, speculating that guests wouldn’t embrace it, worrying that mobile bidding wouldn’t raise as much money as a traditional silent auction.

But now, mobile bidding is a proven game-changer.

If you are not using mobile bidding in your events, you are officially living in the past, and the price of living in the past is lower engagement with your donors and less fundraising revenue. 

For organizations who have not embraced mobile bidding, one of the biggest fears is that their guests will not want to bid on their phones.

But this fear is completely unfounded. Your guests overwhelmingly arrive with their cellphones in their purses and pockets, and they are completely comfortable using their phones for bidding.

According to Pew Research “the cell phone has been the most quickly adopted consumer technology in the history of the world.”

Here’s the reality -- he guests walking through the front door at your event used their cell phones to do one, or two or ALL of the following:

• INVITATION - Many of your guests originally received the invitation to attend via their cell phones.
• PINTEREST - The used their phones to share photos of dresses back and forth with their friends while trying to decide exactly what to wear to your event.
• INSTAGRAM - They took photos of themselves before they left their homes, announcing to the world that they were about to go to your event.
• GPS - They used the GPS on their phones to figure out exactly where they were going, and to decide if they wanted to drive or call for a ride.
• ALARM SYSTEM - They used their phones to arm their home alarm system as they left.
• UBER or LYFT - They used their phones to summon drivers to drop them off at your event.
• TEXT & PHONE CALLS - They used text messages and actual phone calls to chat with their friends en route and coordinate their arrivals.
• INSTAGRAM, TWITTER & FACEBOOK - During your event, they Are posting photos and comments about the event, sharing the experience with their networks.

We have moved firmly into the digital age, and your guests use their cell phones for EVERYTHING! As a matter of fact, if you don’t use mobile bidding, you’re denying your guests the opportunity to bid the way they really want to bid.

You may believe that your guests would prefer to just write their paddle numbers down on a sheet of paper. It may be true that certain elderly audiences may resist the mobile movement, but overall nonprofit attendees prefer using their phones.

Their cell phones give them

Here’s how you can tell. 

The next time you’re at the airport, you’ll notice a strange new phenomenon. For decades, there’s always been a huge line of taxis waiting to carry passengers to their hotels, offices, and homes.

Now, the taxis are still there, but the passengers have changed their behavior. 

Instead of walking to the taxi line and immediately stepping into a waiting cab, the passengers are using their phones to call Uber and Lyft, and they’re waiting for their specific drivers to arrive.

Think about that. 

We love solving our problems with our phones so much that we’re willing to ignore an immediate ride in a taxi and wait for our individual driver to arrive. 

Your guests like using their phones.

So you can understand how frustrated your guests will feel when you tell them, “I know that you’re using your phone to manage your home alarm system, your transportation, your nanny cam, and your social media networks, but you can’t use your phone to bid on items in our silent auction, because we’re not willing to accept the reality that people like using their phones.”

If you allow them to use their phones to bid in the silent auction, they’ll reward you with more vigorous bidding and more revenue generated.

Some organizations will say, “We don’t want to use mobile bidding, because we don’t want our guests to spend their entire night looking at their phones. We want them to pay attention to what’s happening on the stage.

Here’s a news flash:  A significant segment of EVERY audience is on their phones. There’s nothing you can do about it. Everywhere you look people are looking at their screens, so rather than fighting against it, you should simply embrace it and add mobile bidding to your event.

If you want to learn more about mobile bidding, Capterra has published a great comparison chart, that shows some of the features and links to the major providers.

Locally, in Denver, our favorite companies to handle mobile bidding are GiveSmart, Auction Event Services (AES) and Bolder Events.

We’ve worked with each of these companies dozens of times. They’re very experienced, very reliable, very well trained, and their technology is very stable. When we walk in the door and see that GiveSmart, AES or Bolder Events is running the show, we know that we’re in good hands.

When you’re choosing the proper time to close your silent auction, there are several factors to consider 

• Time for Final Bids - If you have a paper silent auction, then you need to close it either before your program begins (when you want the audience’s full attention), or you need to create a 10-minute break in the program during which your guests can go back to the silent auction tables and make their final bids.
• Done Before the Live Auction - you need to close your paper silent auction before you start the live auction. You don’t want people to leave the room during your live auction to go bid on their silent auction items.

• Time for Final Bids - If you’re using mobile bidding, you can send notifications to your guests letting them know when the silent auction will close. You can send a count-down clock to their phones, so they know exactly how much time they have to get their bids in.
• Done at the end of the Live Auction - If you’re using mobile bidding, you don’t need to end the bidding before the live auction, because no one has to leave the room to place a bid. Since only a tiny fraction of your audience will bid on live auction items, the rest of the audience can bid on the silent auction during that time. You should plan your silent auction to close at roughly the same time as the live auction.

• Remember that your guests have to check out, which means that your silent auction team needs time to organize all the silent auction items for pick up. 
• For example, if bidder #324 won four items in the silent auction. Those four items need to be identified and put together so that when #324 checks out, you’ll have all of her items ready for her.

Your silent auction bid sheets hold a wealth of data that could help you raise more money during your next fundraiser. 

When the event is over, and after you catch your breath, take the time to put on your accountant’s hat and analyze the silent auction data you collected. 

Those silent auction bid sheets contain a wealth of information about your guests. 

For example, suppose you had 100 items in your silent auction, and each item had an average of five bids. That’s 500 total bids, which is a substantial amount of information. From this information, you might be able to glean a wealth of data, such as:

• Which guest(s) bid on the greatest number of items? (e.g. Jane bid on 12 different items)
• Which guest(s) had the most total bids? (e.g. Mary bid 27 different times)
• Which guest(s) bought the highest priced item of the night?
• Which guest(s) bid on the most items while winning the fewest (e.g. Ken bid 7 times, but didn’t win anything).
• What percentage of your total audience participated in the silent auction? (e.g. we had 500 guests, and 54 of them placed at least one bid during the silent auction)
• Which item(s) received the most overall bids?
• Which item(s) received the fewest bids?
• Did the location of the items in the silent auction have any impact on the number of bids that they received? (e.g. the items on the table in the farthest corner received the fewest bids. The items on the table nearest the ballroom received the most bids).
• What “type” of item was most popular in the silent auction?
• What “type” of item was least popular in the silent auction?
• What was the average selling price of the items compared to their retail values? (e.g. on average the items sold for 60% of retail). You’ll learn which members of your audience enjoyed the silent auction most. While we tend to focus all of our attention on the winning bidders, and while it’s true that the winners are among your best supporters, some of your non-winning bidders are equally as significant. They tried to win and drove the price up – in turn, driving up how much money you raised! 
  • Here’s what you might learn from your bid sheet analysis… During your silent auction, Kara purchased a spa package for $50, and Elizabeth paid $50 for a free night in a hotel. You appreciate both women, and you send each of them a thank you note. If you categorized your givers based on “level” of giving, you would put Kara and Elizabeth in the same category, because they both contributed the same amount of money. 
  • However, after analyzing the data from your silent auction bid sheets, you discover that Kara bid one time on one item, and she won the item because no one bid after her. On the other hand Elizabeth bid on four separate items, and placed a total of nine bids. The only item she won was the $50 hotel certificate, but she was instrumental in driving up the value on three other items. 
  • The data would show you that although Kara and Elizabeth contributed the same amount of money, they were very different bidders. They did not have the same impact on your event. This may be way more detail than you’re interested in learning about your guests, and we’re not suggesting that every group needs to dig so deeply. However, the point is that this type of valuable, actionable data is available. 
  • Before you throw away those silent auction bid sheets, consider whether it’s worth taking a look at the information and mine them for fundraising gold. 
  • One of the best things about mobile bidding is that you can get all of this information as a report.