Registration open for San Francisco workshop, October 26

Registration is now open for our upcoming San Francisco fundraising auction workshop: Raise More, Right Now: Advanced Fundraising Auction Strategies
This in-depth fundraising auction workshop will be held on Wednesday, October 26th at the Log Cabin in the Presidio in San Francisco, California. It is presented by Stellar Fundraising Auctions, Beth Sandefur Events, Greater Giving and The Lux Productions. 

This in-depth, highly interactive workshop will provide you with advanced strategies to raise more with what you already have. Learn how to get attendees to commit to supporting you before they arrive, new techniques for marketing your auction, new revenue enhancers that encourage spending, and more. Session topics will include:

• Storytelling for your mission
• Creating successful auction lots
• Revenue enhancers, beyond the raffle
• Strategies to refresh your silent auction
• New technologies to stretch your audio visual budget
• Marketing your auction

Hands-on mobile bidding session
Many organizations are looking for information about the most buzzed about trend in events: going mobile. This workshop session will include an overview of Greater Giving’s Mobile Bidding and Storefront functions. We’ll discuss how mobile bidding impacts your event and how you can incorporate raffle and other multi-item sales into your event using storefront.

Expert roundtables
The workshop ends with a 1-hour series of small group sessions with each member of our expert panel. We will break into groups by organization type, and spend an hour drilling down on the topics that matter to you most. Ask questions and get answers that are relevant to the needs of your specific event with experts in the field of fundraising auction planning, implementation and performance.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - the Log Cabin in the Presidio, San Francisco
9:00am – 3:00pm
Check-in begins at 8:30am
Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Click here to register.

Register now for October 25 East Bay workshop

Registration is now open for our upcoming East Bay fundraising auction workshop: Raise More, Right Now: Advanced Fundraising Auction Strategies
This in-depth fundraising auction workshop will be held on Tuesday, October 25th at the Lafayette Veteran’s Memorial, in Lafayette, California. It is presented by Stellar Fundraising Auctions, Beth Sandefur Events, Greater Giving and The Lux Productions. 

This in-depth, highly interactive workshop will provide you with advanced strategies to raise more with what you already have. Learn how to get attendees to commit to supporting you before they arrive, new techniques for marketing your auction, new revenue enhancers that encourage spending, and more. Session topics will include:

• Storytelling for your mission
• Creating successful auction lots
• Revenue enhancers, beyond the raffle
• Strategies to refresh your silent auction
• New technologies to stretch your audio visual budget
• Marketing your auction

Hands-on mobile bidding session
Many organizations are looking for information about the most buzzed about trend in events: going mobile. This workshop session will include an overview of Greater Giving’s Mobile Bidding and Storefront functions. We’ll discuss how mobile bidding impacts your event and how you can incorporate raffle and other multi-item sales into your event using storefront.

Expert roundtables
The workshop ends with a 1-hour series of small group sessions with each member of our expert panel. We will break into groups by organization type, and spend an hour drilling down on the topics that matter to you most. Ask questions and get answers that are relevant to the needs of your specific event with experts in the field of fundraising auction planning, implementation and performance.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - the Veteran's Memorial in Lafayette
9:00am – 3:00pm
Check-in begins at 8:30am
Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Click here to register.

Use your board as a sounding board

Many of our clients have a large board involved with their event and one of them uses the twenty or so board members in a very interesting and productive way.  They assemble a list of probable live auction items and send the list out to each board member and ask them to rate them from most interesting to least.  The results were not only interesting, but they represented a good portion of the attending crowd and even i was suprised by what they liked and what they didn't.  

The other result from the inquiry was that it got board members to suggest enhancements that they could add and even got a few of them to suggest entirely new auction lots that they came up with after seeing what other people donated.  

All in all anything that gets the board more involved and gives them the opportunity to participate is a win-win situation.  It also starts the "buzz" from the top down as the board members start talking up the great auction lots at this years event to friends, family and other supporters who will be or should be attending .  

Tall centerpieces hurt fundraising auctions

Everyone wants their event to look great. The challenge is to strike a balance between form and function, especially when it comes to the centerpieces.

Even though they are see-through in the middle, the paper planes on these center-pieces are obscuring the podium.

As auctioneers, our ability to engage a crowd is dependent upon two things: the crowd’s ability to hear us, and our ability to see them. It isn’t just the bidder’s paddles or numbers that we need to be able to see: we need to be able to look people in the eye, because it reveals a lot about their personality. Do they want to be played with? Do they want recognition? Are they smiling? Do they look to their spouse for the go-ahead between every bid? Are they looking to see who is bidding against them?

There is a lot we need to see from the stage, all of which enables us to raise more money for you in your fundraising auction. Tall, bulky centerpieces that block the line of sight from the stage to attendees’ faces hinder fundraising. They wind up costing you money – usually much more than you paid for them – in lost auction revenue.

If I can’t see the bidder as auctioneer, it means I have to move around on the stage until I can see them. Provided I know they are there, and know that they are trying to bid. But when I’m working around tall centerpieces, I usually just get to see the paddle number, jutting out over a mass of flowers.

If a bidder feels like they aren’t being seen, they either stand up or put their paddle down. Either are sub-optimal ways to get your crowd to engage.

Short, theme-appropriate centerpieces work best. They enable the people in charge of décor to flex their creative muscles without their vision literally getting in the way of raising money. If a designer insists on doing tall centerpieces, make sure they are as transparent as possible.

When in doubt, sit facing the stage at a table and ask yourself, “Could I look the auctioneer (or any other speaker) in the eye?”  If the answer is “no” you have to decide if there is anything you can do about it that night, or if it is an issue you’ll need to address the following year.  Because our goal is to lower barriers to supporting your cause, not build them.

Creating desirable packages for your live auction

Procuring enticing packages is one of the most challenging aspects of organizing a fundraising auction. Solicitation committees often get hung up on comparisons to other events and focus on the lots they see doing well at other fundraising auctions.

And while there is value in learning from one’s peers, we never encourage our clients to focus on specific auction lots. It can be frustrating, and it seldom yields results.

For example: I’ve sold “Breakfast with Bo Derek the morning after the auction” for over $20,000. This was wonderful for the event that had Bo as a supporter, but it is useless to the rest of you reading this right now (unless you are good friends with Bo as well).

Instead, we encourage our clients to focus on the types of lots that sell best and then work to find the most desirable packages in each of those types. There are three levels of desirability across all types of auction lots: Retail, Access, and Relationship:

• Retail is the ground floor of desirability in an auction lot. If your attendees can find a price for it online, they’ll bid accordingly. There are types of auction lots that do fine when sold as straight retail, such as trips. Generally speaking, however, it is the least desirable.

• Access denotes an experience bidders could not enjoy otherwise, something that is not available through retail channels. Lots that offer access engage your crowd to spend more, and make your auction more memorable. 

• Relationships are the hottest selling lots in any auction we do. “People support people” is one of the oldest adages in fundraising, and nowhere does this prove more true than onstage. Relationship lots offer access to a “celebrity,” and the definition of celebrity varies.

Creating attractive packages for the live auction is one of the most crucial elements of the pre-event planning we consult on, and one of the areas upon which we focus the majority of our consulting. As such, we’ll be discussing this and brainstorming desirable auction lots in person at our upcoming workshop: “Raise More, Right Now: Advanced Fundraising Auction Strategies.”