How to Create Your Best Silent Auction Ever

That may seem like a silly place to start, because nearly everyone in the nonprofit world knows exactly what a Silent Auction is, but since this is a comprehensive guide, we will make no assumptions. We will start at the beginning.

When we think of an “auction”, we tend to imagine a fast-talking cattle or auto auctioneer uttering a chant that sounds like an alien language, with ringmen barking “YEP!” and “HEY!” periodically, and the gavel coming down hard on the lecturn. It’s a high-energy, high-volume affair, with lots of urgencies.

A silent auction is the opposite of that in nearly every way.

During a silent auction, there is no auctioneer barking out commands, no alien language chant, no ringmen, and way less urgency and pressure.

A silent auction features:

• Items that are displayed on tables -- or if the organization is using mobile bidding, the items may be displayed on a digital portal. 
• The Silent Auction typically occurs during the cocktail hour when guests are arriving, connecting with their friends, grabbing a drink and perusing the silent auction tables.
• Guests browse through the silent auction items, reading the descriptions and deciding if they want to bid.
• They make their bids by either writing their bidder numbers on the bid sheets or using their phones to make a bid through the mobile bidding software.
• Each bid is visible to everyone else who is bidding on that item, so everyone knows where they stand in the competition to win each item.
• At a pre-determined and pre-announced time, the silent auction will close -- no more bids will be accepted.
• The silent auction committee will make note of the highest bid placed on each item, and they will organize the silent auction items for pickup at the end of the evening.
• As the guests are departing, those who won silent auction items will make payment for them, and then leave the venue with everything that they’ve won.

The silent auction has a rich set of rituals and traditions that include:

• The Hard Labor:  Although the silent auction requires a lot of work, that labor is one of the reasons that people love the silent auction. It’s a special feeling when you know that you’re taking on a difficult task, working shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of like-minded, passionate people to achieve a noble goal. There’s a lot of value in that experience.
• The Planning Meetings:  The planning meetings are often fun social gatherings that everyone looks forward to attending. Leaving the kids at home, meeting a group of friends for appetizers and a glass of wine or two, is a cherished ritual.  
• Engaging the Business Community:  As your emissaries go out into the world, to ask various hotels, restaurants and other businesses for donations to the silent auction, they’re increasing the community’s awareness of your organization and the impact that it has.
• Organizing:  Organizing the silent auction can be a very rewarding challenge for people who are into details and making sure everything is perfectly executed. They’re making decisions about:
  • Which types of items they’ll pursue
  • How to combine the items they receive into packages
  • How to display the items
  • How to execute the load-in and set-up. 
  • How to organize the items for pickup by the winners.
  • How to breakdown the silent auction area.
  • There are many many details to tend to, and for the people who have the personalities for it, the challenge of managing all those details is exactly why they love the silent auction.
• Execution:  There are probably a few members of your staff and/or your volunteers who have “attended” every fundraising gala you’ve thrown, but they’ve never been inside the ballroom for the program. Some members of your team sacrifice their opportunity to participate as a guest and instead show up hours early to help with the set up. They monitor the silent auction during the cocktail hour, and when the guests go into the ballroom for the program, they do all the work to disassemble everything and prepare for checkout. They’re at the event, and they’re vital to its success, but they never get to enjoy the party as a guest. Those are special people who have a very special commitment to your organization and the success of your event.

The Gala Team is engaged in Benefit Auctioneering. We are experts at live auction strategy, which you can learn about in our free guide "26 Steps Your Nonprofit Can Take to Create the Most Profitable Live Auction Ever!" 

We are also have a truly innovative Paddle Raiser strategy (aka Fund-a-Need) that we explain in detail in our free guide titled, “The Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Record-Breaking Paddle Raiser”. 

In full disclosure, we do not offer Silent Auction services, but so many of our clients have asked for guidance on this topic that we’ve decided to publish this Comprehensive Guide just to help our nonprofit partners find the solutions they’re seeking.

Happy Fundraising!

The silent auction is way too much work for one person to do alone. You need a team of people who are committed to making the silent auction work. Putting the burden of this huge task on one person is a formula for disaster, blame, and resentment. 

Creating a “committee” of people who are working on the silent auction serves better for several reasons.

• SHARE THE LOAD: The work of collecting items is spread out among many people, so the burden on any one person is not so great.
• MORE IDEAS: More people means more ideas about creative items that might be appealing to your guests.
• MORE RELATIONSHIPS: - More relationships with more potential donors means more possibilities for high-quality donations. 
• SHARE THE KNOWLEDGE: Have you ever been part of an organization who had one person who organized the whole silent auction, and when that person retired or quit, suddenly the organization lost the institutional knowledge? Having more people involved, means that you’re always training the next leader of the silent auction.
• FRAGILE HUMANS - We’re all human beings subject injury, illness or family emergencies, so spreading out the silent auction burden means that you don’t have to worry that the illness of one person could bring your whole process to a halt.

The Scleroderma Foundation has published a useful Event Committee Job Descriptions. This document does a good job of describing the responsibilities that people on the event committee will have. 

When your silent auction committee members are actively working to collect donations, arm them with a one-sheet overview about your organization and the event.

Include the names of past donors and suggestions on the kinds of items you are looking for. 

A lot of organizations create long solicitation letters that no one reads, which can be a huge silent auction saboteur!

Make your solicitation materials full of graphics, images, bullet points and a clear call to action. Keep in mind the KISS rule when creating these materials – Keep It Short and Simple -- shame on you if you were thinking of a different word for that final S in Kiss. :-)

Remember, people are busy! 

By taking the time to make a clear and readable short one-sheet, you are respecting their time and making their decision easier. 

Just like your volunteers don't like ambiguous direction, neither do your donors! 

The more clear you make your requests, the easier it will be for them to make the decision to donate. 

Also, many people and business owners want to donate to nonprofits but they get asked all of the time so it can be difficult to know when to say “yes” and when to say “no”. 

By creating clear solicitation materials, you give them a clear picture of the other organizations that have donated to your cause and the audience that will be seeing their items up for auction. 

Overall, having clear, concise and simple solicitation materials will help bring a potential donor closer to making a donation to your silent auction event.

EXAMPLE:  Here is a great sample solicitation letter published by Winspire.

Your Board Members and sponsors are connected in the community. They have relationships with hotels, restaurants, spas, etc, and they can make introductions or requests on behalf of your organization.

In The Fundraising Authority’s Silent Auction Guide, author Joe Garecht writes:

“The single best way to approach this group is to call them. 

Eventually, you will be sending letters as part of an auction mailing, but for this group of people who are already connected to you, it is best if someone from your staff, board of directors, host committee, or a volunteer actually picks up the phone and calls to ask for a silent auction donation. 

Calls like these are relatively easy, because this group of people already knows your organization and supports your work. If this is an annual silent auction event, the call is even easier, because the person you are calling will be aware that you are having a silent auction. 

Calls to this group would generally go something like this:

“Hi Jim, this is Marti from St. Paul’s Church. How are you? I’m great, thanks. Listen, we’re getting ready for our big annual silent auction, and you’re such a great supporter of our Church, I wanted to get your help. Would you be willing to donate an item for us to auction off? You would? Great! Thank you! Do you think your company or any of your friends might be willing to donate an item as well?” 

Some of the people you call will have a great item. Others will need your help to think through a list of items they could donate. Still, others won’t have an item but will be willing to ask others to donate to you. 

The key with these calls is to make as many of them as you can… the more people you call and talk to, the more items you will have for your auction.”

How many times have you been in line at the grocery store and you grabbed a pack of gum or some mints or a candy bar, because it was right there in front of you at the checkout counter?

There’s a lot of research that demonstrates that it’s not hard to “trigger” a buying impulse in shoppers. In an article on Chron, reporter Sophia Harrison explained that placing items near the checkout counter can increase revenue and introduce shoppers to new products.

Harrison quoted a study which showed that 38% of shoppers purchased something they had never purchased before.

This point-of-purchase behavior is relevant to your silent auction, because it reflects a particular pattern of behavior -- someone buying something that they didn’t walk in the door intending to buy.

If we’re forensic psychologists trying to learn the “profile” of an impulse buyer, it would help to think of the characteristics of the opposite -- the buyer with a plan.

Here’s an example: 

Suppose you need a gallon of milk.

• You drive to the store specifically to get this gallon of milk.
• You don’t get a cart or a basket, because all you need is a gallon of milk.
• You go to the refrigerated aisle and grab a gallon of milk.
• You walk to the front of the store and go to a self-checkout counter.
• You scan your gallon of milk.
• You put your gallon of milk on the scale.
• You’re ready to make payment and checkout.
• When suddenly, your eyes fall on Rihanna on the cover of “Cosmo” next to the headline “I’m open to love, but guys have to earn it.”
• You grab the magazine, run it across the scanner, and throw it into your bag. 
• You walk out the door with a gallon of milk and a copy of Cosmo.

Your thought process in buying these two items is totally different.

Buying the milk was the purpose of the trip. 

The sudden impulse to buy the magazine came from a completely different part of your brain. You didn’t “need” that magazine. You didn’t walk in the store intending to buy that magazine. But something about its proximity to the checkout, its cover image, it’s headline, its price, etc. triggered an impulse to buy that you couldn’t resist. In less than 3 seconds grabbed that magazine and bought it.

For your silent auction to be successful, you want your guests to make decisions in the “Cosmo” part of their brains, not the “Milk” part of their brains.

To trigger that, you need to offer items that can be understood immediately without any deep thought. They need to be simple, attractive and priced properly.

Psychology Today published an article tiled “Five Reasons We Impulse Buy”, and all of the reasons are relevant to the silent auction experience for your guests.

According to Psychology Today, people make impulse purchases because:

• They love shopping - People enjoy the experience of shopping. They like perusing merchandise, finding things that they love and value and purchasing them. We buy things simply because we enjoy the act of shopping.
• How do you leverage this in your silent auction? - Create a fun shopping environment. Create attractive bundles full of interesting items that have value and will add something to the lives of the people who purchase them. Don’t clutter your silent auction with junk. Find good items.
• They have a fear of missing out -The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a real thing. A Psychology Today article titled “The Science of FOMO and What We’re Really Missing Out On” says that FOMO has always existed, but it’s been exacerbated by the onset of Social Media. The fact that we can easily “see” what our friends are doing makes us we feel FOMO more strongly.
• How do you leverage this in your silent auction? - Make sure your silent auction is in a location that’s visible to everyone, so guests can see other people shopping and get that FOMO feeling. If you’re using mobile bidding the push notifications whenever someone gets outbid also produces FOMO that can promote competition and increase revenues.
• They rely on heuristics -- Heuristics is a fancy way of saying a mental shortcut that helps us make conclusions based on very little information. For example, it’s dangerous for us to automatically trust EVERY strange dog we encounter, but it can be paralyzing and inefficient to fear EVERY strange dog we encounter. So our brains accept the heuristic that certain breeds are friendly, and/or a dog wagging its tail is friendly, so we quickly and automatically trust some dogs despite the fact that we don’t know that particular dog.
• How do you leverage this in your silent auction? - Stay on the well-traveled path and let heuristics work for you. Stick with brands that people recognize and trust, the destinations that are familiar and the details that are typical. It’s way easier for someone to say “Yes” to a 7-day vacation in Cabo San Lucas, than to say “Yes” to a 7-day vacation in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They’re both lovely vacation spots, but one is extremely familiar to most of your guests, while the other is unfamiliar. When you’re looking for quick decisions, stick with the familiar.
• The desire to save - Our consumer economy has a quirk that must seem odd to people who don’t live in this same type of hyper-consumer environment. In other cultures, people buy things because they need them, and they recognize that they’re spending money. In our culture, we often buy things because of how much money we’re going to “save” by buying it. You could go to your local grocery store and buy a roll of paper towels for $2. Or you could go to Costco and buy 15 rolls of paper towls for $20, and you’ll brag about how much money you saved! The $18 additional dollars you spent is not the number that sticks in your head, it’s the 67-cents per roll you saved by buying them in bulk.  How do you leverage this in your silent auction? - Everyone loves a sale! The good news for you is that all of your silent auction items start out with a significant discount. If you’ve got an item with a retail value of $100, you have a starting bid of $30, so this item is a steal. Another way to leverage the power of the consumer mindset is to bundle things together. You want your guests to think “Wow! Look at all the great stuff in this basket. If I win this thing, I’m going to save sooo much money!!”

In a Robin Report article titled “FOMO & The Retail Experience” author Judith Russell said that consumers are addicted to sales the way addicts are addicted to heroin. Russell wrote, “[Sales] stimulate the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that controls the pleasure center of the brain.” She says that nearly 25% of Americans are addicted to buying things on sale.

A silent auction is just a big “Sale”.

Everything is offered at a discount!

Rose tinted glasses - Psychology Today says that we tend to see ourselves in a more positive light than our actual reality. Most of us think that we’re better than average drivers, and most of us think that we’re better than average parents. 

1. Photos of our vacations make them look more fun than they actually were.
2. Photos of our children make them look more angelic than they actually are. :-)
3. The story of that time you nearly drowned while learning how to surf in an 8-foot swell sounds funny and romantic when you’re re-telling it, but it was terrifying when it happened.

How do you leverage this in your silent auction? - Remember that your guests will look at your items through rose-colored glasses as long as you paint a pretty picture. When you tell them how much fun they’ll have, they’ll see themselves having fun. When you tell them how beautiful the sunsets will be, they’ll imagine how beautiful it will be. When you tell them how great it will be to rejuvenate their marriages, they’ll picture themselves holding hands.  Your descriptions plus their imaginations will drive your silent auction revenue through the roof.

The Fundraising Authority sells a great Silent Auction Handbook (for $27) that answers all of the nuts and bolts questions about organizing, setting up and executing your silent auction. 

On the subject of set-up, The Fundraising Authority guide offers a formula to estimate the amount of table space that you’ll need. In simplest terms, you’ll need about 2 feet of table space per item. You want to make sure that everything is visually appealing and and thinking outside the box for beautiful displays.

Make sure there is plenty of lighting, extra pens, and easy to read and understand bid sheets. 

Organize your items by category and space them out well to avoid having your bidders feel cramped and crowded.

If you are using mobile bidding, do your homework! 

Not all mobile bidding technologies are equal. Find a great company that will work best for your attendees (See Strategy #16). 

If you’re looking for some quick recommendations on setting up your silent auction, check out a great article published by Winspire titled “3 Tips for Attractive Functional Silent Auction Tables.”

As we explained in our comprehensive LIVE Auction guide, publishing or announcing retail values in the live auction can really undermine your fundraising.

The Silent Auction is a different animal, but in general, we believe the same rule applies. There’s often very little to gain and a lot to lose when you publish retail values.

For example, let’s say you have a package called “A Romantic Night in the City” that includes a night at a trendy hotel, dinner at a popular restaurant and a couples massage. 

We believe it’s a mistake to say, “Okay, one night at that hotel is $200, the dinner gift certificate is for $150, and the value of the couple’s massage on their website is $250, so the retail value of this package is $600.”

And then publish that retail value on the bid sheet.

When you publish that retail value, you put a cap on the bidding, and you trigger a different emotion in your guests. The most profitable silent auction items are those that trigger competition and an “I-want-to-win!” mentality in the bidders. The least profitable auction items are those that trigger a discount-seeking mentality in the bidders -- “I’m looking to get a great deal on this.”

Just to be clear, we’re not suggesting that you lie to your guests. If there are gift certificates in the package that have a specific value and that value is “relevant” to what it’s going to cost them to redeem it, then you need to share that value. However, if the value is irrelevant, then you shouldn’t share it.

Here’s an example of a relevant value:  If you have dinner for 2 at XYZ Restaurant and the certificate is worth $150, then you need to share that, because the actual cost of the meal really depends on what you order. If they order some expensive wine, the price will exceed the value of their gift certificate and they’ll have to come out of pocket to pay the balance.

Here’s an example of an irrelevant value: A one-night Friday or Saturday night stay at a swanky hotel in a King suite for two people. Yes, there’s a “value” for that, but it’s irrelevant. The certificate is good for a one-night stay, so when the winner redeems it, it will pay for a one-night stay.

So if we return to the example of the Romantic Night in the City package, your description should share that they’ll get a night in the hotel, plus a couple’s massage and dinner for two at XYZ restaurant (up to $150).

Notice that we’re only sharing the retail value of the “relevant” gift certificate -- the one that “may” not cover the entire expense, because it depends on what they order. We do not share the retail values of the “irrelevant” gift certificates -- the hotel stay and the couple’s massage.

Remember, the emotions we want to trigger during silent auction are “impulsiveness” and “competition”. We are not trying to trigger savvy shopping.