Paddles Up

Paddles Up/Fund a Need

The “Paddles Up” or “Fund a Need” is a technique of raising money at your special event. This technique is based on a simple formula:

500 people attend your event. At this event you have 10 live Auction items and 50 silent Auction items. If each item is sold to an individual attendee to the event, then that would equal 60 individuals that contribute more money to your organization as a result of coming to your Gala. This leaves 440 individuals (Let’s say for sake of argument 220 couples) that leave only paying the price of a ticket for admission and contributing no more to your Organization. There are other reasons for them to attend and if you have told the story correctly, you may gain much more from some of these couples in the future but why not ask them for to become a stakeholder now, while you have them in attendance? This is where the “Paddles Up” concept comes into play.

If your Auction is ordered in a “Bell Curve” system then the perfect place to conduct this appeal is in the middle, directly after your best item is sold. As you sell your highlight item (Let’s say it’s a new Lexus) for $25,000 the crowd cheers and applauds. The energy in the room is high.
The Auctioneer then says,
“Ladies and Gentlemen I’d like to pause the Auction for a moment and bring us back to why we are here. I’d like to ask Betty Jones to come up and speak to us for just a moment. Please give her your attention.”

Betty then speaks for a moment or a well done video is introduced and shown. The key here is not more than 3 minutes of an appeal is made. Once the “Heartstring Pull” is finished the Auctioneer takes the stage and says,
“Now ladies and gentlemen its time for a little program we call “Paddles Up! I am going to call out a dollar amount. If you will contribute that dollar amount directly to support the __________________ program I want you to raise your bid number up in the air. I’ll read off your bidder number, the number will be recorded and that dollar amount will be added to your Auction bill at the end of the evening.
Let’s start at $5,000. Who will give $5000?”

Now what you have done to prepare for this is asked an influential donor to start you off. He raises his paddle after a slight pause, about 3 seconds.
“Great! Bidder Number 53! Who will join him?” says the Auctioneer.
From this point you ask again but at a lower amount. The Auctioneer asks again but this time for $2500, then $1000, Then $500 and finally $250. The key is that first gift. If you had a donor who begins at $5000 by the time you reach $500 Bidder cards all over the room are gong up. People are saying to themselves,
“Well, all if that guy can give $5,000 I can give $500!”

Let’s do a little more math. Remember those 220 couples? Well let’s say that 30% of them step up and give an average of $500. That’s 66 couples at $500 each for $33,000. The power of exponential giving is tremendous. You may have 1 or 2 at $5000 and a few at $2500 and $1000 but the real money starts adding up at the smaller amounts. You can even begin a smaller first call amount. Say $1000, $750, $500, $250 and drop all the way to $150. 125 donors giving $150 is $18,750.

This technique is good for small and large auctions. Big black tie galas or small golf tournament final dinners are good places for this appeal. Anywhere you have a crowd of individuals assembled. There are some limitations and procedures of course. All the attendees have to have a bidder card and that means an Auction. You can’t just conduct this appeal at every board meeting and the appeal works better if you can be specific about the need being funded. That’s why this is sometimes referred to as “Fund-a-Need”

Good Luck! Drop me an E-mail at michael@austinauctioneer.com and let me know how this works!!