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Gala Auction Tips, Tricks and MusingsThoughts and ideas we share with clients. Your mileage may vary; we hope you'll find this helpful, or at least thought-provoking!
October 12 More Event Theme IdeasMany clients ask us for event theme ideas. So, we've gone through the archives, and found lots of event names and ideas. Do you have others? Please add them!
September 26 Roadshow PicturesWe've had a GREAT time on the road, and met so many wonderful volunteers, staff and team members!
Pictures are posted from Southern California and Northern California roadshow seminars. Thank you to all the folks who took pictures of their fellow teammates and volunteers. Enjoy! September 24 Let Go of Perfectionism (part 2)Bid NumbersIt may be convenient to sell pledge/multi-buyer items to guests prior to the event. Maybe it's a bottle of wine for their table, or some other special opportunity. Guests need to have a bid number to purchase these items. We hear "but if I give them a bid number now, then I can't have the bid numbers for all the guests in perfect numeric AND alphabetical order." (When you auto-assign bid numbers to your entire guest list, Auction! happens to do it in alphabetical order.) Truly, why does this matter? Having bid numbers align with alphabetical order could be convenient, but there is no inherent need or requirement for this. Give out bid numbers as you need to do so, and don't fret about the ones that "aren't in order." In fact, when you have guests with similar first & last names, such as "Jane Bell" and "Judy Bell," assigning bid numbers in alphabetical order can hurt rather than help on clarity. Bid SheetsLengthy, cute, "flossy," and entertaining item descriptions are wonderful, but if your guests left their reading glasses at home, they'll appreciate short, specific and "to the point" descriptions in a larger font size. They're more likely to bid when they can read what they're bidding on. Consider keeping long descriptions reasonable concise. This is especially important, since most guests won't spend more than three or four seconds reading your bid sheet before bidding or moving on. PrioritiesRe-direct your targets for perfection--focus on:
Then your guests will be glad to come back to your event and continue their support next year! One of our clients put this in a great way at the end of her email "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." (c) 2007, Auction Systems Inc, all rights reserved Theme IdeasDuring our Roadshow seminars this summer and fall, we've encountered a great deal of interest in theme ideas. What themes work well? Can you give us some ideas?
So here are some themes that we've heard on this trip, and we'll add more as we get a chance. Feel free to send in your ideas!
Tell us your favorites--we'll add them also! February 27 Seattle Seminar ExperienceLast week we had a booth at the Northwest Development Officers Association Winter Conference in Seattle. We met lots of folks working on behalf of their non-profits, and also got to hear some truly energizing sessions by NDOA members about auctions and events in general.
On the next day, we held a "roadshow" session; we invited clients and prospects to learn more about ways to improve their events and to share their suggestions. April Brown, auctioneer, and author of "Money is Marvelous" and Alison Hart, Marketing Communications Mgr at Auctionpay joined us to share best practices as well.
It was a pleasure to meet some of our clients in person, and get to associate faces with the email addresses and voices over the telephone; we had a great couple of hours together. We invited our guests to share their Best Auction Ideas & Biggest Auction Challenges. We thought you might like seeing these too:
Best Auction Ideas: --Raffle - winner gets choice of live auction item --Landscaping package - hours from landscaping architect, plants, tools, labor --Parking spot closest to school --"Homegrown" items, such as lunch & movie with the principal --Live auction runner that has bidder sign form for final bid, then takes form to checkout/data entry --Hire someone else to do this. --Special project appeal --Do you mean in addition to buying Auction! software? Best thing so far. (from Barbara: "Wow, thank you!") --Start REALLY early in planning Biggest Auction Challenge: --Getting better auction items --Procurement --Getting people to bid higher; our auction has been a place people have come to get "a deal" and often items go for under value. Obvious solution: Professional auctioneer! I'm sold! --Rapid post-event recognition for donors, volunteers, buyers, supporters, attendees, etc. --Because of competition, it has been getting harder to get attendees --Getting enough people to attend --Holding to deadlines --Donor fatigue --Generating more income(!) and higher value items --Bottleneck checkout line --Doing it on totally volunteer group Our guests had some great suggestions and challenges, and we'll do our best to tackle some of these as we continue adding stories here. It was great visiting Seattle (and we loved the seafood and the coffee, too!)
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