Signature Silent Auction Gift Certificate Made Easy

Signature silent auction gift certificate

good morning to everyone who's joining us today we're gonna wait just another minute or two for a few more folks to join us and then we'll go ahead and get started we're gonna wait just another 30 seconds or so till a few more folks join us and then we'll go ahead and get started thank you good morning and welcome to this installment of the Excel events webinar series today we're going to be chatting about how to run a successful silent auction you you you you you I'm the guy on the left I'm John Kazarian I'm also one of the cofounders of Excel events along with Zack ago peon Zacks can be leading our presentation today with the assistance of Kate woods from filling topia before turning it over to Zack and Kate we share a bit about Excel events just over four years ago Zach and I were hosting a 1,000 person event here in Boston we are unable to find any technology provider that was going to help us with our auction and raffle under say five to ten thousand dollars so we realized that we could actually build our own system and we did just that and we used it and it went so well that we realize you could take this technology and provide it to other organizations in groups like ourselves so that they would have access to the same technology that some of the biggest fundraisers we were using but at a much more affordable cost well over the past four years the platform has grown substantially we've also added a van ticketing functionality and now we're able to be your single provider for all your event fundraising technology needs we've also had the opportunity to work with thousands of events from some of the world's largest multinational nonprofit organizations to individual parent-teacher organizations in small towns across the country one last thing before I go ahead and turn it over to Zack we love creating great content for you to help you raise more money at your next event so if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook you can see all that great content we're putting out there we also love making these sessions interactive so you'll see a chat widget on the side of your screen and I'll say hi to everyone right now so as you have questions throughout the presentation just go ahead send a message and we'll do our best to answer those throughout and with that I'll turn it over to Zack awesome thanks John and thanks everyone for joining our webinar today so I'm sure some of you guys have been in our past webinars this webinar will focus specific on silent auctions and how to run a successful silent auction so we go through a few different things here we'll go through the basics of a silent auction we'll talk about how you can go mobile or utilize mobile online technology for your auction and then we'll get into some more of the logistics so set up an organization of your auction how you can find the best auction items that's where our co-host Kate woods will step in and then we'll finish up and talk about how you can promote your event or your auction both before the event and during and then how you can cover event checkout if you guys have any questions throughout the presentation you can type them right in the chat thread on the side of the window that you're looking at and we will answer those promptly so let's get started this is you know pretty basic but let's go over what a silent auction it most of you in the fundraising space have either executed your own silent auction or been part of a silent auction but really with the silent auction consists of will be a group that's displaying multiple different items these could be vacation packages sports memorabilia gift cards different experiences attendees will then be able to browse those items and submit their bits so it's a silent auction meaning that bids are not called out or you know people aren't holding up a paddle or raising their hand there they're typically in the traditional format written down or as we you know really think is better strategy they may be submitted either online or via a text message if you're using a mobile platform at the end of the auction the person with the highest bid wins the item so pretty simple like I said though let's chat through how we can take your option to the next level so as John mentioned what we focus on is helping auctions go mobile or embrace mobile and online technology we've seen that this strategy has really helped events reach more people and raise more fun the general idea here is that you will kind of avoid those those paper sheets our traditional silent auction formats and instead take advantage of the Internet messaging in social media to raise a lot more money at your auction we found that this increases engagement it allows you to reach more people so going beyond the people at your physical event and it also helps you as the event organizers seem to save time in terms of collecting your items looking at any bitter information and helping streamline your checkout so there's a few other types of mobile and online fundraising formats some of the most popular would be online donation pages peer-to-peer giving campaigns text to give campaigns raffles fund feed and then finally silent auctions of course that's what we'll be focusing on today but really mobile and online technology have kind of encompassed each of these different fundraising formats so let's focus on silent auctions as I mentioned before a mobile silent auction takes advantage of both text messaging and online bidding in terms of the big formats specifically with a platform like excel event your guests can go directly to an auction web page that you may have for your event and on that page you can see an example on the right here your bidders can kind of browse through your catalogue of items they can submit bids and they can also see updates in terms of funds raised or the highest bid for each item in real-time so it's very interactive everything updates immediately people don't need to be coming back and forth your silent auction item table for example the other format for bidding is text messaging so text messaging is a great way to keep your audience engaged at the physical event if somebody is bid they will immediately receive a text message telling them they've been outbid and informing them what the next highest bid would be for them to take the lead on that item attendees will also receive instant notifications if they've won an item via text message and from there they can you know check out for the event once the auction ends so just to wrap it up kind of the benefits of mobile and online fundraising for your silent auction are that they'll let you reach a larger audience you'll be able to engage your supporters at your event you're gonna make the donation process much easier than just you know the the traditional or paper bid format and this is gonna save time for you so all of these things kind of add up and result in higher funds raised so let's take kind of a deeper dive into the auction format and talk about how to set yourself up for success beyond just switching to a mobile or online platform so where we would start obviously will be with your auction there's a few you know major tips we have here in terms of staying organized the first is going to be how you structure or how you keep track of the items that you're collecting for the auction we've seen a lot of different strategies John and I actually run our own annual event each year and what our team does is we use a combination of Google sheets so basically an Excel spreadsheet that will update live and allow people to collaborate in that sheet all at the same time but we also use our own mobile fundraising platform to collect the items so you'll see an example on the right here this is where you're able to very quickly update and add your auction items as you're preparing for your silent auction so rather than having everything kind of manually stored or even on an excel sheet you could keep your items collected and keep all of the descriptions images starting bid amounts in the platform so that everything is kept track of from there we'd recommend that you break your items into different categories so popular categories would be travel sports music food maybe restaurant gift cards or things like that but typically you can customize these categories so you may have different ones that go beyond these basic for our last recommendation in terms of collecting auction items is to create a deadline for your committee so we find that you know you're always gonna have a few last-minute items that come in there but as long as you give a basic deadline for the committee you'll you'll see that you can stay more organized and kind of stay ahead of the game and you won't be scrambling as much last-minute as you start to approach your auction day so another important part of your setup or the organization of your auction is pricing a lot of people will have different opinions on how to price your items you know you're getting these great high value items either donated or maybe you're using a service like filling topia to find great items but what we've seen here is starting a bit lower with your stuff you're starting bid or the price of the item will actually lead to a higher engagement higher bid frequency and eventually a higher final bid amount on that item so we recommend starting your item prices about 25 to 35 percent of the fair market value of that item as you're setting up your auction beyond just starting choosing that starting bid you'll want to set your bid increment if you're using a mobile platform like Excel events you can set a different bidding chram entire value item will have 100 to $50 increments a lower value item maybe 1 to $5 increments so all of those options are available that's something we recommend setting up before your auction starts and finally you may have different items that make sense be a Buy It Now item it now simply means that rather than bidding on the item your bidders or users can come in and purchase the item instantly so you can use a combination of a starting bid amount or a sign just a flat-out Buy It Now option where you say ok if you pay us $100 or whatever that amount is then the item is yours so you may not use this for all of your items it's a great way to have a different kind of assortment and utilized by it now for a few of the items in your auction so now let's talk about physical setup at the the day of your event or the night of your event a few things we would recommend would first to have you know your item table or your silent auction table in a high-traffic area maybe it's by checkout area of your your event or maybe it's in a area where you know almost everybody who attends will have to pass by the idea is you want to generate decent foot traffic going by your auction so that you're getting the attention on your items we also would suggest having the physical items available so even though we are you know very Pro mobile and online auctions we see that having the physical item that your event can be very helpful so a few things we'll do at our own event and what we've seen as successful is either putting some of the physical items if it's maybe a gift card or a hotel stay or a vacation package we'd recommend still having that certificate there so something physical that you can actually hand out to the item winners or that they can see so that one's like you know that's also a lot of things we forgetting they simply give more information on dimensions and how to get your franchise that's a drawn about a dollar so these are people make or set up the table for sure and that will you know that'll save you some space it'll allow you to utilize those sheets instead of having a ton of physical items on your table so it's a great way to stay organized and allow people to see different items torment so a couple more tips here we would suggest having volunteers to help your guests at the silent auction this may be just helping to drive traffic towards your auction table or even helping them submit bids or submitting bids on their behalf so really just helping your audience access the silent auction and increase the overall bidder frequency finally something that is a huge benefit of mobile and online fundraising is that every type of bid you receive or fundraise can be updated and will show in real time you will have different options or different views that you can display directly at your event so that people know the progress towards your goal an example is on the right this is a simple fundraising thermometer that will update as people continue to donate so what you would need in this case is your computer and really just a hook up to either a TV screen or projector this is something you can display at your event and keep people engaged as you you approach your fundraising goal so now I'm going to turn it over to Kate Kate Marketing at Phil intopia and she is gonna talk a bit about what Phil intopia does and how you can find the best silent auction items for your auction Thank You Zach thank you John thank you for having me so just if you could flip to the next slide please there we go right so just a real quick background on our company Philip was founded 10 years ago as a consignment travel company supporting profits across the country by providing luxury turnkey and risk free travel packages to help nonprofits raise more money for their cause poor travel is live online and silent fundraising efforts we've got thousands of nonprofits raise money with trips range from $1,000 range upwards to 10 and $15,000 so while filling topia deals exclusively in travel packages there are other types of consignment as well as Doc mentioned such as collectibles or sports memorabilia but for the purposes of this discussion we'll just talk about the travel so how do we work so Phil and topi has gone out and contracted travel packages with various hotels resorts and travel companies around the world we strive to get the lowest rate possible for our nonprofit partners while still getting the best most most flexible availability so we contract these properties on a rolling basis which guarantees package availability and booked ability without the nonprofit having to pre-purchase hotel packages before the event if you could throw the next slide please so what this means for the nonprofit is that you can offer these trips with the peace of mind that not only will be a hundred percent available for your donors when they purchase it but also that you don't need to prepay for the item so in the event that you don't receive a winning bid your organization is a zero obligation to purchase it so we contract a rate with a property and give the nonprofit our reserve price based on what the trip costs us to procure it and then everything your nonprofit receives above and beyond our reserve price is the nonprofits to keep slide please so why would you use consignment as a strategy I think we would all agree that procuring auction items that are a hundred percent donated is generally best but if a doughnut ate him if I don't applause through at the last minute or if you're running out of time to find donations or if you're looking for that one special trip for a themed event or if you just want to add some sex appeal and excitement hear about that's where we would come in so there are a few compelling reasons to use consignment trips or items in your event so when using the right company so let's see when using the right company you are guaranteed a seamless and stress-free experience provide by not having to worry about procuring auction items and more importantly a seamless and stress-free experience for your donor on the fulfillment side nonprofit event organizers are busy enough pre and post event without adding a headache of having to coordinate booking dates and travel arrangements after the donor has purchased an item or travel package so another reason to use consignment is that you know all the availability and package information based on keeping the package details provided by the supplier that will increase your chances of selling the package in your auction so there aren't any surprises on availability you and your donors don't need to worry about for example finding out that Uncle Bob's donated timeshare in Florida is only available for one week in July it won't sell because I'm at pakka's packages are or they should be anyway extremely flexible on what you can or when you can use the package therefore greatly increasing your chances of selling it and making more making incrementally more money for your organization so another reason use consignment is that you're able to offer virtually any trip you can think of based on the theme or type of event you're having so you're not limited to whatever trip someone donates to you even though your organization will subtract the reserve price out of the winning bid you can ultimately make more money for your organization by being able to offer what will sell and not not just what you have available you're also able to sell multiple packages of these trips perfectly find yourself with two bidders running the bidder why not some of them and make W a pot of money this is there's generally supply of these travel packages to sell say for the except for maybe the big award shows so you should take could be able to take advantage of that you're also able to make your event sexy and exciting for example if you've a wine themed event why not offer a package to Napa with the chauffeur-driven wine tour or if you've a golf event want to offer a 5-star trip to the Masters of the US Open and sometimes you can don't you can combine donated and consignment items to make one great package for example donated plane tickets you can combine with the consignment trip to Paris or a beautiful Mardi Gras headdress that was donated it may not sell its own but if you combine it with a fun trip to New Orleans it'll sell so these are just some points to think about when strategizing for your next buck raiser and again so even though you do have to cover the reserve for the package but only if it sells you raising more money overall using consignment items could be able to offer trips that people actually want to buy slide please so here are just a few tips on finding the best items tip number one start early reach out to past donors to see what types of trips they are already planning and taking if they're I mean go away next summer do some pre selling by procuring bidders before the event happens and offer a trip to Hawaii in your event think about spending the money that your donors were already planning on spending only now it's spent towards a great cause and they still get the trip they want tip number two frame to the audience know your donors a common mistake we see is organizations offering a ten thousand dollar trip to two thousand dollar audience it might look sexy to offer a trip to the Grammys but it becomes embarrassing if nobody bids on it learn the socio-economic demographic of your attendees and tailor their offerings to that also on an aside whenever appropriate you might want to consider offering a cruise in addition to your other travel offerings if you have cruisers and you're off in your audience cruisers do only that they only take cruises if there is even one in your audience chances are that Cruise is gonna sell so tip number three match the offers to your location be color based company so in Tokyo works with a lot of Colorado and California organizations Coloradans and Californians go to cabo all day long we sell a ton of Cabo trips in the western states but we rarely see Cabo being bid on at events on the East Coast because Cabo takes a long time to get tune isn't as popular on the East Coast a non-profit of Florida for example will offer up in New York City or Boston package and they saw all day so tip number four match the trip to your theme and market the exciting operating right from beginning right along with a forward marketing for the event itself if people geared towards a casino themed event offer the Monte Carlo Las Vegas package along with probably in the same with a country themed event it deserves a trip to the CMAs right to offer the auction items online Alex all events of course weeks or months leading up to the event then you can close them out getting live in person as a Kazak has described so tip number five and match the trips to your audience size if have a larger event offer more in diverse packages for example if you have five hundred people at your event a good rule of thumb would be one travel package for a hundred people and a sound option you may also just want to offer one incredible exciting big ticket item and keep all the attention on it bottom line know your audience and try to do the early legwork to see what will sell so lastly make sure you're working with a reputable supplier ask for references ask about the booking availability of the specific package in any possible blackout periods check the retail values this is very very important make sure they're not the retail provided by your supplier not unrealistically inflated which only leads to disappointment of your winning bidder if they feel that they've overpaid in the end so ask the ask if the property is part of a timeshare program where your donors could be hounded by salespeople and sales tours ask about their booking process and who handles that side please so that's the end of my presentation thank you for having me if you have any further questions for me that's my contact info you can always reach out through Zak and John as well awesome thanks Kayne and like Kate said directly we'll also be sharing all of this information if you guys following the webinar so you'll have her slides and some information on filling topia as well so before I keep going I want to take a minute and answer some of the questions that you guys are asking over here so let's start with with Julia it looks like she has a couple questions one is you know around the concern of people being distracted with mobile bidding during your event my feedback here and one thing we've seen particularly at our event and some of our clients events is that mobile bidding actually allows people to focus more on the event so rather than having to get up and you know walk back and forth to the silent auction table a few times to see if they've been outbid they're able to stay at their table or stay at their conversation and then can take two or three seconds to submit another bid if they've been outfit or not so we've seen it actually helps with with that and is less of a distraction considered or looking kind of at the question about working with older or less tech-savvy guests first off we've actually run a lot of events with much older demographics and they've done really well with text message bidding but in case someone may not have a phone or they may not be very tech savvy or don't want to use the system platforms like ours actually offer a staff or volunteer feature where you can have those volunteers walking around the venue and have them actually either promoting the option promoting the great cause like Mary said over on the chat here or even just helping them bid through the system so we have a dedicated page that allows your staff or volunteers to bid on behalf of those that are less tech savvy so another question I know we're looking at we're going kind of back and forth here and it looks like there's a lot of different opinions on where to start your item prices like I said on average we've seen the best practice is about 25 to 35 percent of the item value but there's success you know across different ranges it really depends on what your items are and who your audience is so a few people here it sounds like Lori Cathy are looking at about starting at about 50 percent of the item value and if that's working out well I'd say continue with with that option we you completely agree with Mary though and see that having people walking around and encouraging people to bid and reminding them why they're actually at the event in the first place should hopefully weed out some of those people that are just looking for a quick discount obviously people are here to donate to a good cause so they should continue to bid and we've seen people actually will almost a little bit more than what the fair value of the item is just because they know that you know that additional amount is really going towards a good cause so let's see I'm just looking through a few more of the questions here so Stacy great question about getting people aware of the event before that's actually one of the benefits of a mobile or online auction so with an online auction obviously you will have a web page as well as a phone number that you can direct people to in order to start bidding the webpage does really well in putting any information on about your event on it or showing the items beforehand so people can start bidding but a tool like Excel events actually allows you to promote your event as well so the first way you can promote it and I will actually get right into it as a perfect lead-in so the first way we would recommend is to start early with your promotion so we'll send this link out and send out this article but this is a kind of an article we've written about different ways to promote your event as you can tell from the title there's almost 40 different ways that we recommend but really the idea is to start early this is what Stacy is asking about how do we get the word out beforehand so we have a couple major tips here the first is to build an email strategy so having an email communication strategy with your with your attendees is can be very successful if you have this contact information or you have your donor management system we would recommend building a strategy around promoting your silent auction so we have a an example over on the right here a few best practices with your email strategy r1 to start promoting your option a - you can start highlighting your best items so maybe you'll have a cow down on your in your email to drive some urgency or you can even show your fundraising progress in these emails what we recommend is including your option link or links to specific items in each of the emails that you send as well as including any kind of tracking links so you can create a tracking link to see where your traffic or where your bidders are coming from a couple more examples here you'll see these are examples of emails that promote specific items so this is something that does really well you take some of your high ticket items and you include them in an email with links directly to bid on and then you'll see here on the right there's a or the bottom right here there's a link to the full catalog of item items so this is a great way to start promoting your event ahead of time to answer your question specifically Stacy Excel events has a great email tool where you can actually upload any of the contacts that you have for your event or in your you know donor relationship management system and you can build custom emails similar to ones I'm showing you on screen here that you can send out to your your attendees to start promoting the auction so a great question you know promotion is something we definitely would recommend beyond just this email tool that we have and promoting via email we also suggest promoting via social media so again because we're giving you a specific link to your auction and because we're giving you that you know that online or mobile element we'd suggest that you utilize social media to promote your event it's as simple as taking the link to the web page we create for you and sharing it across social media this could be on your own personal Facebook or Instagram pages or Twitter this could be on your organization's social channels or you can enlist your volunteers and supporters to share that link as well the idea is that you're reaching more people by utilizing social media you don't need people to be physically at your event to start bidding they just need to have access to Internet or to their phone and they can look at your items and start bidding one thing we would recommend here is you're promoting your auction or promoting your event to sell tickets is that you start off by promoting directly to your friends and we these are people that are going to definitely you know want to support your event they would be a great base to start with and they'll generate some early interest for you and then our last tip here with promoting via social media is to take advantage of your supporters your supporters can be your best event or best cause promoters so using a system like Excel events we give you the tools to allow your bidders or your ticket buyers to share their experience instantly so that once they bid or if they see an item they like they can share that experience on social media and drive some additional interest in your auction or in your event so we would definitely suggest using a tool that does something like that so great question Stacey was a great lead-in to the next section that we had here so I will kind of move on to the last stage of our webinar here and it's often checkout and acknowledgement so most of you know event checkout can be pretty cumbersome it can turn a lot of people off and it can take a long time we have seen that using a mobile or online system really helps streamline checkout and has your attendees leaving on a high note rather than being a little frustrated with the checkout process so a few things I mentioned this before but a few tips with silent auction checkout and acknowledgement is to have the physical item or something physical to give out to the winner if it's you know sports memorabilia or a signed photograph or tickets of course you'll have that physical item on hand if it's something less tangible maybe it's a trip or maybe it's a you know an experience put together a certificate you know it's as easy as creating something in in Word or in PowerPoint and having that so you can physically hand the the winner something we'd also recommend that you organize your items either alphabetically or by category at your auction table so that it's very easy for your volunteers to grab the item and give it to your your winners once they've paid and then finally using a mobile bidding platform like ours would allow your your guests to pay me from their device or for their computer so or sorry from their their smartphone so the idea here is that once the auction ends your winners will immediately receive a notification they can click on a link that we will send custom to them and then and then they can pay immediately using their credit cards so that the checkout is seamless when they come to your auction table all they need to worry about is picking up their item they will receive an instant confirmation and then on the backend your team will be able to see instantly who has and hasn't paid for their items so that's really how we help streamline the checkout process we're happy to give you guys some more information on this we actually are about to publish a new blog post on our website specifically about event checkout so feel free to check that out in the next week or so and then the last thing I want to touch upon real quickly is what do you do when your auction ends so your auctions over people have paid they've received their items you've raised a ton of money now it's time to make sure that you thank and acknowledge your bidders they can call it is important it shows that you're you know you're really connected to your cause that you actually care about your donors and want to build a relationship with them rather than just take their money and so there's a few ways that we would suggest thanking your your auction winners and your bidders as well so if you want to thank all of your bidders usually email is the best way to do so you can personalize these or send you know a larger email out to everybody but for your auction winners especially those who maybe bid on multiple items or a bid on a very high-value item a direct phone call or even a handwritten note goes a very far away or very long way in terms of showing your appreciation so that's something we would definitely recommend doing it will help build that goodwill with your donors and ensure that they come back to bid on your future options or attend your future events or maybe even just start submitting donations throughout the year rather than just during your event each year so those are you know that's really all I have in terms of tips here if anybody has questions we're happy to go through some more questions I know looks like we have a good conversation going over here on the right so feel free to type any questions you have we have a few few more minutes here like I said I just extend my life providers all over the nation to directly following the wet head on and we're always available to answer yes a little 24/7 we're always here to answer questions we also want to thank everyone who joined us today and you know that this is part of an ongoing webinar series so we do run these informational sessions often we love to have you join us again for upcoming sessions and it looks like there is another question that just came in from exact you want it back great yeah looks sure it looks like we have a couple here so first Stacy question on live auctions so this is a question we get a lot you know it's it's an interesting concept because live auctions we found typically do best in their original format you know having an auctioneer having people fall out or raise their their hands to bid but one way our system can help with your live auction was two ways the first is we get the option as you're adding your option items to display certain items as live auction items only what this does is allowed to display your your live auction items on a certain section of your auction page and it tells your bidders that come to your website that these items are reserved for your live auction meaning they can't bid online or bid in a silent auction format but it will help you advertise those items as you approach your event and then people know what type of items to look out for at the live auction so that'd be the first way the second way is you can use our system to help pay for those or to help charge or process payment for your live auction bids so that would be my suggestion suggestion obviously adding those items ahead of time as a live auction item will help you advertise those and get a bit more attention on those items so one question here from Rebecca you mention two item sheets how do you access and create those so great question what our system does is automatically create these item sheets for you as you enter your chin items in our system so our system will ask you four different things the item name the starting bid amount maybe the bid increment an item description and then images all of that information will be automatically built into the machines we create for you and then we will also add simple bidding instructions up to these are automatically generated you can download them as an individual sheet per item or you download an entire catalog that will include you know five to seven items per page so this is something our system creates automatically we do give you the functionality to customize those sheets before you download them so that should be really helpful again we play your funky download button at the top and that will allow you to do it and also to customize other sheets before you print them well great guys I think that wraps up it looks though those are all the questions we've we've had so again feel free to contact us directly with any other questions you have we will share out Kate's information as well it's again for a successful webinar Kate it was great to have you on we're glad you could help out and give some great advice no thank you so much awesome guys well thanks again for attending we will follow up with this information over the next few minutes thanks again okay well thanks to Zach and Kate for hosting cloud