How to Create Your Best Silent Auction Ever

The Silent Auction is a tradition that can be very effective for your fundraising goals and very fun for your guests. 

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. 

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.

A good bid sheet should include just the right amount of rows to encourage healthy bidding. You don’t want a bid sheet with 100 rows because if only 10 people bid on the item, then 90 rows are left empty and the bid sheet looks pathetic. 

On the flip side, if you only have 10 rows for bidding, and the item drums up a lot of exciting bids, there will be no room on the sheet for your guests to bid. 

An ideal bid sheet has about 20 rows, allowing for plenty of bids without looking sparse. (However, we suggest ditching paper bids and switching to mobile bidding. See Strategy #16.) 

You want to make sure that you provide sufficient information about your silent auction items, so that your guests can quickly make a decision without having to do any further research. You don’t need to go into super detail, but the information you provide needs to be relevant and 100% accurate.

A Capgemini study titled “Beyond the Label: Providing Digital Information Consumers Can Trust” focused on the information people rely on in making purchasing decisions.

This chart shows the results of that study.

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.