Philanthropic potential is fleeting

The lights are low and the buzz is high. Silverware is clinking, people are happily chatting over some light background music while wait staff deftly move throughout the room. The energy is slowly building, and everyone at your event is having a great time.

You can see the energy in this room as people start to network other tables. Time to start the auction!

That buzz permeating your event is philanthropic potential. It is the result of months of planning and preparation, an ephemeral “vibe” that you and your committee work so hard to create. It is fleeting, it is delicate, and if you wait too long, it will dissipate into the ether, unused. Wasted.

It is up to you to capitalize on the philanthropic potential of your event, and make the most of your potential while it is at its peak. This often means cutting your guests’ “social time” short, and asking them to focus on the needs you have asked them to help you meet.

Efficiently utilizing your attendees’ time and attention to help you achieve your mission is your right. If you have properly communicated the message of your event beforehand, your guests will be ready to help your fundraising efforts succeed. Instead of putting your fundraising auction off until the very end of the evening, conduct your auction and fund-a-need while your potential is at its peak.

In many cases, this means conducting your auction and fund-a-need during dinner, not after it. Dessert is the turning point, when people start to get up and leave. If you haven’t done the most important element of your fundraising (for most of our events, this is the fund-a-need) before dessert is served, you’re losing money.

Efficient time management will help you raise more money and will ensure your event ends on time. It will also help attendees form an emotionally-charged long-term memory that they associate with your event. Long-term memories are formed when an experience is paired with an emotion.

No offense to your caterer, but few people will remember the food at your event, unless it is ridiculously good or bad. Everyone, however, will remember the way they felt when your event transcended a mere “gala” and became a life-changing experience. 

This only happens if you capitalize on the potential you’ve worked so hard to create while it is at its max. Because the philanthropic potential of your event is ephemeral, once it is gone it is gone. If you don’t take advantage of it while you can, you’ll never get it back.

Don't over-combine sports packages

One commonly held misconception in the world of fundraising is that more means more. The tendency is to add to an auction lot until it is bursting at the seams with value. And while it does make sense to round out packages, there is a point at which adding more to a package does not result in a higher sale price.

Nowhere do we see this proven more consistently than with sports packages. All too often an organization will take all of their various sports donations and put them into one mega-package, only to see it sell for the same as just one of their experiences would have on its own.

For example, one year a client had a behind-the-scenes experience with the San Francisco Giants for four people that sold for $3,400. The next year they decided to add 49’ers tickets, Sharks tickets, Oakland A’s tickets, and Stanford Football tickets to the same Giants package. The combined mega-package sold for…$3,600.

Would these people overpay to see the Oakland A's? Don't bet your auction on it.

Sports fans are often rabid – the word “fan” is derived from “fanatic” after all – but about their team or their favorite sport. Just because someone is a baseball fan doesn’t mean they are necessarily a football fan or a basketball fan and so on. Combining a bunch of experiences that they aren’t necessarily interested in into one auction lot doesn’t change their perception of value.

Put another way, if a buyer is willing to spend $3,000 on a Giants experience, adding a bunch of other games for teams they don’t care about isn’t going to magically increase their maximum bid. And it certainly isn’t going to maximize the potential of your donations.

Furthermore, the hope that the different sports fans will bid each other up doesn’t yield results, either. Each fan has their own perception of value for the single component they are interested in – which is always less than the value of the package as a whole.

If you have a bunch of different sports experiences donated to your auction, do you and your donors a favor and keep them separate. You’ll make more money, make your donors happier, and you might even get some valuable data on your bidders’ sports preferences.  

How to solicit wineries for auction donations

Wine and wine-related experiences are consistently some of the best-selling items in a fundraising auction. Almost every auction committee we work with is attempting to add more wine to their auction, and the question we get asked most is, “How do I get wineries to participate in our auction?”

Tony Lombardi of Lombardi Wines has helped hundreds of causes over the years.

My good friend Tony Lombardi, founder of Lombardi Wines and former brand manager at Kosta Browne Winery, offered to share some of his insights on this process. In his years at Kosta Browne, he fielded as many as 35 requests a week for donations to fundraising auctions. And while his new venture, Lombardi Wines, may not have the global recognition of KB yet, he still gets lots of solicitations for donations.

And where he can help make a difference in the world, Lombardi loves to do so. “I love working in an industry that is so giving,” Lombardi says, “One that helps raise funds and awareness for so many worthwhile causes, through the donation of wine.” The challenge with so many organizations who do great work seeking donations is narrowing down the list to the few they can support every year. Here are some of Lombardi’s biggest tips for soliciting wineries.

People Support People

First and foremost, don’t go in cold. “The key thing,” Lombardi says, “is relationships. I’d look through the many requests we got every day to see if there were any names I knew, charitable organizations within our local community or causes that were near and dear. If there was no direct connection, it was a little easier to deny the request.”

If you know someone at the winery, make some effort to reach out in a personal (and personable) way. Give them a call, or better yet stop by the winery in person. If you don’t live in the Bay Area and can’t afford a trip to visit wineries in person, write a letter and include a hand-written note. Whatever you do, don’t just send a fax.

Popular wineries get five to twelve fax requests a day, and they all wind up in a big pile. Unless your fax is addressed specifically to someone you know at the winery, odds are it is going to wind up in the recycling.

Know Your Cause

This is a good guideline for anyone doing solicitation, but especially anyone soliciting wineries. You need to know what you are raising money for, where the money goes, and the change you are asking people to help make in the world. If you aren’t clearly communicating key information, it will make a bad impression. And you don’t get many chances to make an impression.

Communicate the emotionally engaging elements of your cause, let the winery know who you are trying to help, and how. Your description should be a solid elevator pitch, not a keynote speech. And if your organization isn’t one of the stereotypically emotionally engaging ones, you need to work even harder to communicate why it needs support (a common theme for arts organizations everywhere).

Everyone who works at a winery – from the proprietor to the winemaker to the marketing manager and so on – has personal causes they believe in. Ask them if there are specific causes they support, and then honor that choice.

Know Your Stats

Wineries make donations to fundraising events because they want to do good in the world, but they also donate to fundraising events because it is a proven method of marketing. A crowd of people willing to spend thousands of dollars on a trip to wine country will yield more guaranteed lifetime customers than any advertisement.

You need to know the statistics of your event, says Lombardi: “How many people attend, what the ticket price is, what the most expensive auction lot sells for, how many wine lots there are,” is all data that will help guide a potential donor.  “We’re looking for customers that share the same ideals and a loyal relationship we can nurture over a long period of time.” Wineries are looking for a target market, and yours might just be it.

Build Long-Term Relationships

How you approach people and how you build relationships has everything to do with the support base you build. If a winery doesn’t support you the first year you ask, accept it graciously and move on. Get on their mailing list or find someone in your organization who can get on their mailing list. Send the winery a thank you note for their time, and stay in touch. 

If they do make a donation, be sure to let them know how it helped. Get photos of the winning bidders and email them to the winery with a thank you after the event. Make them feel like part of your event. Better yet, make them part of your event next year by inviting them.

However you go about it, the most important thing to realize is that you are dealing with people. And people always react better and give greater support to people they know. So get out there and build relationships in the name of your event – it’s the best excuse to go wine tasting you’ll ever have.

Display live lot numbers by any means necessary

Every live fundraising auction should make sure the audience always knows what lot number is currently up for sale throughout the entire auction. It is not enough for the auctioneer to announce the number of each lot as they begin to sell it, there has to be some sort of visual display that serves as an anchor for the crowd.

Fundraising auctions are usually rowdy affairs, with people talking at their tables throughout the auction. It is unreasonable to expect each and every audience member to pay strict enough attention throughout the entire event to know exactly where the auction is.

Displaying the lot numbers gives people the ability to tune in when a lot they are interested in is up for sale, and to enjoy their friends’ company the rest of the time (something we encourage, wholeheartedly). Usually this is accomplished through a slideshow presentation projected on to large screens.

The Taste of Howell Mountain event takes place in St Helena in a tent during the afternoon in June: a projector simply isn't an option.

Sometimes, however, it is not possible to have a projector or a slide show. Few projectors can be seen outside during the day, for example. Some venues do not lend themselves to large screens, and some events simply don’t have the budget for high-tech solutions.

It may look a little home-spun, but this flip-chart lot number sign does a very important job.

Our advice is to make the most of the situation in the best way that you can; be creative. Embrace low-tech solutions and find a way to make sure that your crowd remains informed throughout the auction. You can have volunteers walk the stage and into the crowd holding aloft a large numbers (like a high-class version of a boxing ring girl).  If you are in a gymnasium you can use the scoreboard to keep track of where you are.

We’ve even done a number of events that took the most straightforward, low-tech approach possible: a flip chart with each lot number pre-printed on it. Keeping your audience informed will always yield better results than doing nothing. And any auction with more than three lots needs a way to keep the audience informed.

Write up the fund-a-need In your catalog

The fund-a-need is the most crucial component of almost every fundraising auction. The fund-a-need raises more money than any single auction lot and often raises more money than the rest of the auction lots combined.

All of which underscores why the fund-a-need deserves prominent placement in your auction catalog or your written program for the evening.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone attending your event knows what you are raising money for. Take advantage of the opportunity to market your mission in a heartfelt manner, and encourage newcomers to become supporters by enabling a very specific component of your mission. The fund-a-need is your chance to tell your story in a more focused way to engage existing donors and potential new donors alike on a meaningful, empowering level.

A successful fund-a-need doesn't just happen, it is the result of well-orchestrated marketing, reinforced at every opportunity - including in the written catalog.

The catalog provides you with a means for educating people about your fund-a-need: laying out the case for supporting you and quantifying how they can help you change the world. Even if you have a spectacular speaker, or an incredible video, you should still make an engaging case for your fund-a-need in your catalog.

Spell out exactly what the fund-a-need will help you do, and quantify your ask in very specific ways. It always helps to quantify your need in increments that map directly to the levels you will be asking for in the fund-a-need. For example, if you know you’ll be asking for $5,000, $2,500, $1,000, $500, $250 and $100, tell people exactly what a donation at each of those increments will help you do.

And make sure your quantifications carry heft. People are more likely to respond emotionally if they have already arrived at a logical conclusion. Guide them to that logical conclusion in the catalog, so they can get emotional with their paddles when the time comes to make pledges in your auction.

Creative ideas for buy-in parties

The structure and nature of buy-in parties often encourage much more creativity than your “standard” winner-take-all type of auction lots. This is partly because buy-in parties need to be enticing enough for people to be willing to do them with potential strangers.

But it is also because the cost of participation in a buy-in lot is typically lower than your standard auction lot, making buy-ins seem affordable in comparison. People are therefore more willing to spend a “little” on a party or idea that might be cost-prohibitive if they had to buy the whole thing. [If you need a primer on what a buy-in party is, read this previous post: “How to: Buy In Lots in Your Live Auction”]

A Poker Tournament is but one example of a buy-in lot.

We’ve seen buy-in parties created by hosts who had a great idea, and we’ve seen buy-in parties created by cobbling together disparate small components to make something appealing as a whole. Whether you are new to buy-in parties or a seasoned veteran, following are some of the creative buy-ins we’ve seen over the years. Feel free to try to replicate these, but feel even freer to use them as creative springboards for your own unique buy-in lots.

Sushi, Sake & Karaoke

I love this party because it tells you everything you need to know in the title. If you like eating sushi, drinking sake and making a fool out of yourself singing karaoke – this is the perfect lot for you! If any of those things are a turn off, you won’t go near it.

The first time I saw this lot was at a school event, and a well-known family was the host. They had a friend who had a sushi restaurant, and the chef was going to come do a sushi preparing demonstration/class for everyone as the beginning of the party. I’ve seen variations since that just involved eating and drinking. Oh, and singing. Probably poorly.

Other Themed Parties

The vast majority of buy-in parties I’ve seen have been…well…parties! And the themes have been as diverse as the hosts throwing them:

Second Chance Prom

Bust out your turquoise tuxedo and neon prom dress, it’s time to reclaim the prom.

Black Tie Bar-B-Q

Don your BBQ best (think JR in Dallas) for a day of live music, fine wines, bourbon cocktails, and a gourmet feast of Southern fixins.

Sinners and Saints

Mardi Gras. Need I say more?

Martini Madness

1950’s themed party with Don Draper as the role model.

Moroccan Dinner Party

Mediterranean food, belly dancers, maybe a hookah or two.

All Aboard the Love Boat

Dress like your favorite character from the Love Boat, enjoy cruise themed food and drinks. Emphasis on the drinks.

The nature of buy-in parties also gives you a chance to add competition to the mix, and sell access on a per-team basis.

SCDS Grand Prix

Teams of four compete on a go-kart track to see who can record the fastest time. This lot was cobbled together from a few disparate elements: we had two races for 16 people at a local go-kart track; a mobile pizza oven that would do dinner for up to 20; and a few cases of beer and wine. We combined them all, along with a cheesy trophy for the winning team and a T-shirt for the person who had the slowest time, and sold it on a per-team basis.

Four teams of four people, opening bid of $250/team. It wound up selling for over $600/team – a great return on value.

Dip, Duck, Dive, Dodge!

Dodgeball! Eight Teams Enter, One Team Leaves!! Buy-In Tournament for 8 teams of 10 players each Held at a gymnasium that donated the space, with food, a keg of beer, and a round-robin tournament of dodgeball. For adults.

Balls of Fury

A bocce Ball Tournament, replete with food and beer.But I've also seen Beer Pong parties as well. These are obviously aimed at a crowd of people who know each other well and like to party together. Hard.

Poker Tournament

Pulled pork, lots of beverages and a night's worth of Texas Hold 'Em. It is good to have a grand prize of some sort for the person who wins the tournament. I hosted a poker tournament for my son's school and first place won a stack of EA games and a cheesy trophy made up; the person who lost all their money fastest got a T-shirt declaring such.

Amazing Race/Scavenger Hunt

These are sold on either a per-couple or per-team basis. These types of events really need a group of organizers who are deeply committed to setting up and running them; either extremely dedicated volunteers, or even professional scavenger hunt companies.

Not all of these ideas are appropriate for every event, obviously, but I believe that buy-ins of one type or another will work at almost every event. I’ve done plenty of high-end events that included buy-in parties that opened up at $1,000, $5,000 or even $10,000 per spot to attend them. The key is to create an event that is appropriate to your crowd and the culture of your event.

If you would like to implement buy-in parties in your auction, the best thing you can do is find some willing hosts and begin brainstorming ideas. If you ever have any questions, feel free to contact us directly. Otherwise, we’d love to hear about some of your creative buy-in parties in the comments below.

How To: Buy-In Lots in the Live Auction

One of the growing trends in fundraising auctions is the use of buy-in parties as live auction lots. Also known as “count me ins,” “sign-up parties” or “buy-a-spots,” buy-ins are auction lots sold on a per-spot basis (usually per-person or per-couple, but sometimes per-table, or even per-team).

Buy-ins can be a valuable addition to a live auction because they effectively lower the cost of participation in your live auction without reducing the amount you raise as a whole. This makes your auction feel more egalitarian and encourages more people to participate while maintaining or even increasing your bottom line.

And, contrary to what many believe, the price for a buy-in lot does not have to remain static. If there are more hands in the air than slots available, the price goes up until supply and demand balance. We’ve seen buy-ins lots start at $250 per person and sell for $1,900 per person for nine people! It doesn’t take a mathematician to recognize how big an impact that can be.

The annual Lobster Buy-In Party is one of the biggest sellers at the Boys & Girls Club event in Sonoma. Attendees can buy an auction lot for only $200 - and we offer 100 spots. That is good (and easy) math.

There are four keys to creating a successful buy-in lot: Date, Allure, Price, and Pre-Sales.

Date: Any buy-in lot needs to have a fixed date set in advance and publicized to your attendees. It is difficult to coordinate a dinner when one winner is in charge of working out a “mutually agreeable date.” It is nearly impossible to coordinate a dinner when eight couples are all comparing schedules and have equal shares of ownership. Set the date in advance and publicize it.

Allure: Successful buy-ins also have an element to them that is alluring enough to encourage people to hang out with potential strangers. It can be access to a venue, access to a guest of honor, or simply an activity that sounds fun. But in every case, potential attendees need to look at the lot and think, “Yes, I’m in!” without concern for who else is going.

Price: Set your opening bid at a level you are comfortable selling each slot for. If a donor insists that their lot sells for $500 per spot, you should start the bidding at $500 per spot. As mentioned earlier, the price need not remain static, but you need to plan realistically. If you have a party for 75 people, the price isn’t going up. That’s just too many hands for your auctioneer to keep count of to know if demand is higher than supply. But if you have a party with 20 or fewer spots, there is the potential for the price to go up – as long as your crowd is into it.

Pre-Sales: When the auctioneer says, “Now who wants to do this, let’s see those paddles!” it is extremely important that a few paddles immediately get raised. It lends the lot momentum and also proves that the experience is going to be fun. “Oh, hey, look: the Golds are going to be there. Everyone knows how cool they are, this is going to be a great party!”

Buy-ins are ideal in the school environment because of the built-in community to be found amongst parents. But we’ve also seen successful buy-ins at everything from Cal Shakes’ Gala to the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Wine Auction.

If you have never had a buy-in lot in the live auction before, your crowd is going to need some education both before and during the event. Make sure they understand the concept in advance. Get a few people or couples to commit to attending in advance, so the lot has momentum as soon as it goes up for sale. And most importantly, make sure your auctioneer takes the time to describe both the lot and the process, and commits to the process wholeheartedly. Buy-in lots can be daunting at first, but when successful they can bring in many new bidders and help you raise a lot more money.

Next up: creative ideas for buy-in lots.

How'd they get those?

Did you ever go to an auction where one of the lots was tickets to something that you knew had been sold out for months?  Of course some of those are the result of somebody associated with the organization donating them, but others are simply you being clever about getting your own "tickets".

Board members, committee members and staff who have black, platinum and gold credit cards are offered pre-sale and advance tickets to major events long before the public gets a crack at them. Some even offer a list of what's going to be available in the future right there on the monthly statement. If any of these offerings are a good fit for your attendees, ask them to purchase some and reimburse them. Better yet, get them to "underwrite" them as a donation to your auction.

The other method is to have somebody track the top ticket websites so you can be ready to purchase those hard to get seats when they go up for sale at 12:01 on a Wednesday night eight months before your gala! You pretty much know when your event is going to be held so you can focus on those performances that take place after yours. So by the time your event rolls around  you are the ones who "got those tickets".

The other component to consider is if you have an out of state vacation home or hotel/resort donation, see if there are any choice offerings that take place in the same location as the lodging. Together they might just be one of the best auction items of the night! 

Revenue enhancer: the golden paddle

One of our favorite revenue enhancement additions to fundraising auction events is the Golden Paddle. Simply put, the Golden Paddle is a chance drawing to win a credit that is good only in the live auction. The credit is represented by a golden paddle that the winner uses to bid with in the auction – letting the auctioneer and everyone else in the crowd know who they are and what they are up to.

Make sure your Golden Paddle stands out in the crowd. The brighter and louder, the better.

I’ll try to make this more clear by way of an example: sell 100 tickets for $100 each, generating $10,000 for your event. Take $5,000 immediately off of the top, and apply it towards your proceeds for the evening – that’s pure profit. Take the other $5,000 and apply it to the Golden Paddle – you aren’t losing this money, you’re just making sure it is spent in the auction.

This doesn’t just generate $5,000 for your event, it has the potential to generate a new bidder who can help drive the prices up on lots of other items. At the very least, it adds to the amount an existing bidder is willing to spend. We’ve seen lots of people who won the Golden Paddle immediately “get it” and use their windfall to bid lots of other people up in the live auction. When this happens, you wind up making a lot more than just the $5,000 they have to spend – because they increase the price on multiple items.

You shouldn’t set the Golden Paddle amount to be higher than the amount typically spent on any one item in your event. You don’t want your big bidders to be priced out by someone who spent $100 and got lucky. You also don’t want your Golden Paddle winner to dominate the auction and buy a large percentage of the items. You want someone to be able to push your big bidders up to their limits, and possibly buy one high-end item or two low-level ones.

So crunch the numbers and alter the metrics to work best with your event. We’ve seen Golden Paddles raffles where 100 tickets were sold at $50 each and the paddle had a credit of $2,500 on it. Alter the numbers to best fit the culture of your event.

There are just a few things to note. The winner must be present to win. The paddle is only good in the live auction – and sometimes the fund-a-need, depending on whether or not you want to funnel the money towards that restricted bucket of funds.

And finally, make sure the actual Golden Paddle is very flashy. Have your craftiest volunteer or staff member create it, challenge them to come up with something so over the top that it can’t be ignored. We advocate LED lights, sequins, glitter, gold paint – whatever they can come up. So that way, every time your Golden Paddle winner bids the whole crowd knows – and thinks to themselves, “Next year, I’m going to win that Golden Paddle!”

Get attendees to (willingly) give you their contact information

Does your event face the challenge of getting attendees to give you their contact information? Do you have a lot of guests who sit at purchased tables who give you nothing more than their name and the name of the person whose table they are sitting at?

One creative solution we’ve seen to this challenge is to incentivize attendees to give their contact information by offering “free” entry into a raffle in exchange for their contact information. Use pre-printed slips that are handed out to every attendee, asking for name, email address and telephone number. Make all information mandatory in order to be eligible to win.

Then use a small prize from your silent auction, or solicit a small prize specifically for this raffle. One year an organization used a fine bottle of wine. The next year, they offered up a weekend getaway at a local resort (see the photo below). Their fish bowl of entry slips was full to the brim. And so was their contact database.

You can’t cultivate donors if you can’t get in touch with them. And donor cultivation is one of the three main reasons to hold an auction, right behind raising money and tied with messaging. So if you find yourself struggling to get contact information from your event’s attendees, give them good reason to give you their information. Then follow-up and give them even more good reasons to give you their support year-round.