Posts Tagged ‘Auction’

5 tips for Attendees at a Gala Auction

We have all been to them. I have been to more than most of
you reading this. As an observer of behavior at these Gala events I have a few
tips for those of you planning to attend a Gala Auction this Fall from a
Charity Benefit Auctioneers point of view.

1. Know your limits on both Booze and Banking:
I have conducted many a Charity Auction and 90% go well and with no “Buyer’s Remorse”. However I once heard about an attendee after one of my Auctions who woke up with a hangover and was distressed to remember he now had a $7,000 puppy. On another occasion an attendee was bidding on a trip she was sure others would love to go on and would therefore have lots of people help her with the $16,700 cost.
The first example loved the dog and kept it as a family pet, but regretted the price tag. He had indulged in the “Free Flowing Tequila Bar” and the bottomless Makers Mark glass a little too much. The second attendee was forced (unfortunately) to renege on her commitment. When her friends did not come through she could not afford the trip and had to back out. This caused not only embarrassment for her but the Charity had to go to the “Back up Bidder” (we always get a “Back up Bidder” at our Auctions) but he was bidding at a lower amount so the Organization received less.
The point is set a limit on what you can bid and make that limit about 85% less than what you can really afford because when I start calling the bid I guarantee I am going to get you excited and you will bid more than your limit. Any good Benefit Auctioneer will so plan for
that. In addition if you are planning to bid on a Live Auction item have a glass of wine, or two but know your limits and do not drink so that your judgment is impaired. Have the Makers Mark
afterwards to celebrate your having the winning bid for the BMW at the Fundraising Auction!

2. Review the items before you go:
Most nonprofits now have some sort of capability to show you picture and descriptions of the Auction Items before the day of the Auction, if not a Technological solution to actually allow you to bid on the items like Qtego or Auction Source. Take a look ahead of time as to what they are offering in the Live and Silent Auction.

Talk about that spending ceiling with your spouse and decide you can really use the Room Makeover or whether you will be in town to take advantage of the luxury suite and sideline passes to the Dallas Cowboys game! Is online bidding an option? Put in your bid so the Fundraising Auctioneer knows exactly where to start.
Also, read the description and ask questions of the Auction Chair or staff before the Auction begins. Sometimes Charity’s do forget to put the number of days or number of bedrooms in the trip to Cancun’s description. A few questions ahead of time will keep you from
having to interrupt the Charity Fundraising Auctioneer during the Gala
Auction.

3. Get a room and park the kids somewhere overnight:
This is not a swipe at couples who like to show a lot of affection to each other at the Gala. I have been too many Galas where the crowd emptied at 9PM right after the Live Auction or Awards ceremony was over. Once I wondered if there had been a bomb threat called in and I had
missed it.

If the Gala is at a ballroom of a great hotel like the Four Seasons or the Hilton Hotel why not take advantage of the evening and stay a while? (Sometimes you can get a reduced rate by mentioning the Charity when you book the room) The children can stay at Grandmas or Aunt Sherri’s and you avoid the late night drive home.
Most importantly you do not have to be in that long checkout line that 347 people are in as soon as the Silent Auction closed. The Non-Profit sometimes hires and pays for a great band and I have seen a band play to 50 people while 300 stood in a checkout line and grumbled or waited in 23 degree weather outside for the Valet to bring their car around. This is disheartening both for the musical performer and the charity. They still have to pay the bill.

4. Check the Menu
Ever have something for lunch and be served the same thing for dinner? How much chicken can you eat? Even if the menu is not published anywhere a quick call to the venue or caterer and they can inform you as to what the fare is for that evening. What if you or someone you have invited to sit at your table has an allergy to mushrooms? Whatis one of your guests is Lactose intolerant and the entrée is smothered in orstuffed with cheese? Make sure the Charity knows if there is a special dietaryrestriction or you may be stopping at the Wendy’s Drive Through (Open Late) on the way home!

5. Wear the right Clothes and Shoes:
I am not suggesting that anyone who reads this shows up to a Black Tie Gala in shorts and flip flops. What I mean by that is my wife has a couple if dresses that simply take my breath away when I see her in them. She also has a pair of shoes that I think she is gorgeous in. BUT,
these are not the most comfortable shoes she has (as she points out to me). How many items are there in the Silent Auction?
Do you plan to spend a lot of time standing and guarding your item? What is the dress of the event? Many Galas state on the invitation that their attire is “Austin Funky Chic” or “Crazy Cocktail”! What does that even mean? I suggest that if you are not checking in or the event is not in a hotel that men dress on the high side and then if the event is more casual when you arrive or not at a hotel ballroom just ditch the coat and tie in the car.

Those are my 5 tips. Maybe you have some more or different ones. My overall point is that wth a little advance planning your night out will be magical and special. You’ll have a fantastic time at a great Gala while supporting one of your favorite Charity’s Non-Profits, or Private Schools.
Come join us at the Gala!!
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Examples of High Dollar "Ego Items"

“Ego” Items gain importance in School Auctions.

I read an article on the Wall Street Journals Website about how important PTA Auctions in New York were becoming in this age of Education Budget cuts.
It mentioned a parent volunteer that had been involved in her child’s school for years all the way back to Pre-K. Beacon School on West 61st in Manhattan is a New York Public School that is a high quality alternative to private education and in order to stay current and competitive raises money for the wide variety of extra curricular activities, arts programs and sports teams.

The School has decided that the annual school auction — the crown jewel of Parent Associations — is the best way to raise a lot of money in one night. They work and plan all year to prepare for the Auction with a six figure goal in mind There items were inspired and I thought I might share them with you. We always talk about “Ego Items” in the Auctions we work on and these are excellent examples!

Internships: Nothing seems to garner parents’ attention like internships. At the Dwight School on West 89th Street in Manhattan, parents had the chance to help their kids bypass the interview process and purchase a summer internship at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, donated by Maureen Case, president of specialty brands at Estée Lauder Co. Starting bid: $6,000. And besides reaping work experience, the Bobbi Brown intern is paid $400 a week.
A $10-an-hour internship with the white-collar criminal defense group at law firm Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, donated by partner Edward Little, started at $2,500. A research internship with Professor Ray Horton, director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School, started bids at $2,000—but the internship itself is unpaid.
A student at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn will work on a CoverGirl ad at Grey New York this summer, donated by the advertising agency’s executive vice president Alice Ericsson. Students at Manhattan’s Upper West Side Anderson School will get a glimpse of what it is like to work for Google or the United Nations with employee-run private tours of their offices.

Celebrity Appeal: Adrian Grenier, an alumnus of LaGuardia and star of HBO series Entourage, will invite a guest to stay in Los Angeles for three nights at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and have lunch on the “Entourage” set.
News junkies at the Collegiate School on West 78th Street in Manhattan bid on a conversation about foreign affairs with CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour and her husband, James Rubin, former assistant secretary of state. Rob Brown, Poly Prep alum and star of HBO series “Treme,” will take auction winners to lunch.
At Loyola School in Manhattan, crime writer James Patterson will use the winning bidder’s name as a character in an upcoming thriller. For politicos at Staten Island Academy, New York Sen. Andrew Lanza auctioned off a private breakfast meeting. Eye-Catching: Manhattan’s Mandell School head Gabriella Rowe will lead 12 people on a duck-hunting expedition in Melbrook, N.Y., followed by a round of scotch and cigars. At LaGuardia, parents bid on the chance for famous male voice-over artist and alum Les Marshak to record the outgoing message on their answering machine. At Bard High School Early College on East Houston Street in Manhattan, a bidder scored a walk-on part in Broadway musical, “Hair.”

Other “Ego Items”
Brooklyn Friends School parent and dog psychic Christine Agro auctioned off a one-hour consultation for the downtown Brooklyn school.

Car lovers at Staten Island Academy started bidding at $4,000 for five hours driving a collection of sports cars, such as a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano and Lamborghini LP560. Emergency Tuition:

In case Wall Street hasn’t rebounded fast enough for some families, bids also border on the charitable. At Loyola, where tuition starts at $28,000, parents bid on temporary assistance to families that have experienced a “recent and dramatic change in financial circumstances” and can’t pay tuition, according to auction materials. Other options include providing support for scholarship students to attend an in-house SAT-prep program.

What I did not see in the article was the mention of a “Paddles Up” program or a “Fund a Need”.
I also noticed that an actor not a professional Auctioneer conducted the Auction.
The result? $140,000 for the weekend Auction. This is not a paltry sum but one that could have been doubled with a few ideas and a professional fundraising Auctioneer advising the committee on item order, logistics and techniques.

One quote that stuck out from the article I read:

“This is a sophisticated New York crowd, if people want to go on a fancy vacation, they’ll buy their own vacation. We have to scour for connections to things that you can’t buy,”

This is on point. The wealthy can buy all the jewelry, trips and automobiles they want. Want to get them excited? Show them something they cannot have.

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Fundraising Auction Lessons Learned in 2009

Lessons Learned 2010

It really does not matter what business you are in. When you stop learning, when you say” I have seen it all” when you decide you can’t be surprised you start down the road to disaster.

The end of the Fall Auction season means the end of an Auction year and it always invites reflection and evaluation. 2009 is no different. So I thought I would take a moment and post some lessons that Sherri and I have learned from working with Non-Profits this year( in no particular order) in the Charity Auction arena. Maybe you will find some of this useful. We hope so:

1. Spend the income not the budget. We worked with a client that has a huge Gala of close to 1000 attendees normally. They knew early on in the planning stages that attendance would be off at least 20% maybe more. They reacted accordingly, booking a smaller ballroom, selecting a less extravagant menu and cutting costs of non-income producing line items in their budget. They realized less income but the bottom line was not affected as negatively as it might have been had they not paid attention and “Hoped for the best”.

2. The Event is worth having. Two well known non-profits in our area cancelled their Galas in 2009 saying, ” Now is not the time to be extravagant and have a big party.” Already they have realized the well-meaning mistake in this thinking. Many of the the individuals that normally would have paid $500 per ticket to attend did not merely send in the money when asked and now, as they search for sponsors for 2010 or try to form a Gala Comittee the inevitable question is asked. ” Are you going to have this event?”
In hindsight a wiser descision would have been to have the event but scaled back from a “Black Tie” to a “Boots & Beer”type of gathering. Auction items could be more “Hunts” or “Experiences” and less Diamond Tarias and Cars.

3. The After-Action meeting is key. Sherri and I are almost evangelical about this. The temptation is always to sigh a sigh of relief when a big event is over and then move on to the next grant presentation or Golf Tournament. This does a great disservice to your volunteers and gala chairs for the coming year. A thoughtful after action meeting within 10 days of the event is a chance to honestly and candidly discuss the strengths and weaknesses and reccomend changes for the coming year. If the income your event produces is so vital to the organizations mission when why not invest the few extra hours to conduct a “Post Mortem”? Schedule this meeting before the event even happens so everyone knows about it and make attendance as cumpulsory as you can when working with volunteers.

4. Be Proactive and don’t assume. If were concerned about how the deepening financial crisis might have affected your 2009 year check out the example of the Helen Hayes Awards, a nonprofit organization that supports Washington Theater. They sent a letter the week before their October event to supporters who had not yet responded to the invitation. It urged recipients to engage in “wholesale therapy” at the auction by bidding on exotic vacations and experiences that would build lifelong memories for their children.
A Russian Dream package that included two business-class tickets to Moscow, an eight-day luxury cruise on the Volga River and three nights at a five-star hotel in St. Petersburg, went for $10,000 at the live auction. A good deal for the bidders and a good item for the organization since it was donated outright.
They did not listen to the nay-sayers or the few “Grinches” ( Excuse the Christmas references) who probably said no one would come and no one would bid on these high dollar items.

5. Know your Market and watch the news. We were selling trips to Cancun and Mexico City for top dollar in January. Then came H1N1. As you would expect the bidding stopped. We advised several of our clients to change the trips to places like Denver, Aspen and even Vermont. Those experiences continued to sell. Those are popular destinations for Texans since the geography is very different from what people can find here. Fur coats never sell to well here as its not to cold that often and (in Austin at least) the political sensitivities can be problematic. If you are using a trained professional Charity Benefit Auctioneer who is serving as a consultant to your committee as well as a bid caller they can help you steer clear of problem items.

6. Don’t be Shy, Make your Case. The need for services of organizations like Food Pantries, The Boys and Girls Clubs, or The Austin Childrens Shelter do not diminish during tough economic times, they increase. Don’t be shy about making your case in the media and at your event. You can do this without sounding like chicken little. Gently remind people that they get to go home to a warm bed, a full pantry and to a loving family. There are many people who tonight do not have that priviledge. Sherri and I saw “The Blind Side” recently. In the movie Sandra Bullocks Character is speaking to Michael. She is telling him about his new room and its furniture and he says ” I never had one before” She asks of he means a room of his own, and he says, “No… a Bed.” Tell the story. Calmly and with emotion but tell it.

7. Technology is here, Use it. Utilize the online component to your Charity Auction.
A real estate agent in California recently bid $20,000 at a local school district auction for a luxury bathroom renovation. She figures she bought goods and services worth double that amount. The package included an architect and contractor, a custom-made vanity and a stone slab to top it, most of the tile and a $1,500 store credit on a shower door.
She said in an interview that she was “not in a financial position” to make a $20,000 donation to the school district without getting anything in return.
To make sure she was the successful bidder she paid the “get it now price” at the school’s online auction. This particular Auction was hosted by Bidding for Good, part of cMarket, a five-year-old company in Cambridge, Mass., that supplies charities with the technology to run auctions and other online sales, in exchange for 3 to 9 percent of the proceeds.
Charities can choose to limit access to their own supporters or, as most do, open the auction to other bidders, who can shop by charity or by product category at biddingforgood.com.
Don’t forget Auction Software from suppliers like AuctionPay and Auction Tracker. If you are still using excel spreadsheets to track your ticket sales, Auction items and “Paddles Up” donations consider scheduling an appointment with representatives from an Auction Software company or more than one. Auction Software makes the whole event more efficient, easier for volunteers and ultimately more successful.

8. Care and Feeding of Volunteers.
When an organization hires people to work for them, they pay these individuals a fair wage, and have the right to expect a fair days work for their money. If they do not deliver they can be sent on there way with little ceremony.
But it can be different in the Fundraising Auction field. Many Organizations are required to rely on the volunteers selected by the Organization to be their ring crew, clerks, checkout and more. These valuable volunteers reflect directly on the Charity. One of the most important aspects of the gala auction is the staffing. Besides the planning committee, a staff of ring-workers, clerks, bid assistants, check-out helpers and general runners are all needed. These are most often the volunteers referred to above. Many organizations and volunteer committee chairs make the mistake of treating a volunteer worker like an employee. Of course volunteers have committed to do a job and they need to be held accountable, but it is worth a few minutes to review how you treat these valuable individuals.
Are they treating these volunteers like paid employees?
How are they recognizing them?
How sure are they that the person will help next year?
How much would it cost them to hire replacements?
How often do they say “Thank you?”
A little consideration goes a long way in helping you hold on to those key volunteers that make your event run smoothly and efficiently year after year.


9. Don’t Whine, Sell Wine! One of the most successful Auctions we participated in this year was a Wine Auction for a charity that provides life saving heart surgery to children from developing countries.
46 lots of Fine wine sold for a total of $98,556. Thats an average of $2,142 per lot. Some of these lots were only worth $500-$700 but with a good sommelier to introduce each lot and a good Auction team to solicit the bids they realized 300% of value on some lots. Wine Auctions are becoming more and more popular.
One of the more popular items is a custom barrell of wine. Consider one of the newest wine experience in the North Fork’s Wine Country. Bella Vita Vineyard provides the equipment, knowledge and premium grapes to help members produce a fine local wine. Dedicated in giving members a complete education in the vine to wine process. Resulting in a custom barrel of wine to share with family and friends. Membership is about $3500 and can sell at Auction for twice or three times that. Could your local winery offer this?

Sherri and I had a great time, conducting over 30 Auctions this year for great organizations in Dallas Austin and Houston. We learned a lot and will continue to learn with each Auction we conduct. I would offer one final peice of advice in warning you to beware of the Vendor of any kind that says, ” We have seen it all” If you are not learning your forgetting.

Have a great Holiday!!!

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Auction Tips

Tips for a Successful Live Auction

1. Use a great sound system

2. Maintain a smooth flow all night long
A. Simple Check-in/Check out
B. Start Live Auction Early; Avoid long winded speeches
C. Close Silent Tables before live auction starts
D. Hold live auction first, entertainment later

3. Live Auction – 1/2 Hour
A. 12-15 items plus a paddle raiser
B. Attention spans are limited

4. Paddles Up & Special Appeal
A. Specific Need
B. Start where you know the money is
C. High to Low
D. Middle of the Auction

5. Avoid Commercial Art
A. Art seldom sells well at a fundraising Auction
B. A Piece with sentimental or unique value may be the exception
6. Don’t use minimum bids
A. Minimum Bids stifle bidding and set a Psychological price ceiling
B. Listing the values of the items in the program limits the bidding

7. Don’t accept High Price consignment items

8. Use simple Language in Catalog- Bullets not Paragraphs
A. Listing the values of the items in the program limits the bidding

9. Use Large readable bid numbers

10. Keep Table Decorations Low

11. Use Large NAME TAGS whenever Possible

12. Volunteers do not drink- ( Until Later)

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Paddles Up

Paddles Up/Fund a NeedThe “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 …

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