Must Have Live Auction Item #4: Alcohol

I will start by saying this item is not for all organizations. Any organization affiliated with addiction and recovery or even domestic violance as well as some religious affiliations may want to steer clear of this type of item out of respect for the attendees. 

With that being said, items including an experience related to alcohol usually has a broad appeal. 

Examples of Alcohol Related Live Auction Items

Wall of Wine.  This is where all of the board members or auction committee members donate a bottle of wine (some bottles will be higher quality than others) until you have a collection of anywhere from 10-50 bottles of wine, and you sell it as a package. You will want to print any higher end bottles in your program, and ideally would print all of the bottles in the program so people can see what they are bidding. It is unrealistic and much less effective to verbally list all the bottles when introducing the item.

Wine Tasting. A private and exclusive wine tasting in someone's home with a professional Sommelier. 

Private Brewery Party. Local microbreweries are popping up all over the place (especially here in Minneapolis), but a tour is not enough because really anyone can go tour a brewery. A private tasting party at the brewery for 10+ people with catering by a local food truck (or two) would be an item worth selling on live auction and would provide an exclusive appeal. 

Wheel barrel of Booze. This item is always a hit. It is similar to the Wall of Wine, except it is an actual wheel barrel filled with alcohol. Arrange the alcohol so the higher end items are showing. You could also include glasses and garnishes (olives, cherries, frilly toothpicks, etc) in with the alcohol to fully stock the bar. This is an easy item to fill because auction committee members or board members would all go together to in contributing to this item. The winning bidder gets to take home their new wheel barrel and all of its contents. 

If you have a question about any of these items or want to know if it would be appropriate for you to add one of these items to your organization's live auction, please reach out and I will give honest feedback on your live auction lineup. 

Must Have Live Auction Item #3: Unique Experience

A unique experience is the hardest item to come up with because you often need to think outside of the box and pull your personal connections in for this. There is really no real criteria here other than provide an experience or an item that people cannot access on their own. So, for this post, I will just be listing examples of things I have sold to get your creative juices flowing.

Examples of Unique Experiences

• Character created about winning bidder in a well known author's next book

• Trip to visit and tour Jay Leno's garage (with Jay Leno if the timing was right)

• Principal for a Day

• Trip with a professional sport's team to an out of state game which included accommodations and riding with the team on their plane to and from the game as well as an after party post game.

• Lock in sleepover at a museum with a roof top movie

• Premier parking space for school pickup and drop off

• Batboy (bat-kid) for local professional Baseball team

• Box at a professional sports game hosted by a (well-known) retired player

• Timed shopping spree at a local department store

The possibilities are endless for these types of items. What I would encourage you and your team to do is to plan an entire meeting that is set aside for brainstorming this type of item. Throw out ideas with the freedom of "no idea is a bad idea" and just go with it. Some of the best auction items sound "stupid" in your head before you say it outloud and realize that it could actually happen with the connections in the room. Eventually what will happen is one member will throw out an idea, another member will know someone with the right connections and you will find yourself with a very exclusive an unique idea. 

Must Have Live Auction Item #2: Meal/Dinner Party

These are one of my favorite things to sell ever and every auction should have one. What I like about this item is that you don't have to be well connected to have this item. You don't even need to know a chef, you just need to have someone who is willing to host a dinner party for 6-10 people and cook food and provide wine. This could be hosted at a popular restaurant or even in someone's home.

Criteria For a Successful Meal/Dinner Party Item:

Hosted by a likable person. Not necessarily a famous person. Just someone that people enjoy being around.  If you have a willing participant, but their personality is just a little choppy or hard to be around, no one will bid. 

Multiple Courses. Hors d'oeuvres, salad, dinner and dessert would be enough, but if your chef can do other courses (soup, cheese, whatever else all those extra forks are for type courses) , that makes the meal stand out more.

Wine. Must I say more? Wine or beer pairings included are a must!

6-10 people. I have found that this is the sweet spot for number of people included in successfully selling an item of this type. 4 people is too few and 12 can be too difficult to coordinate with guests.  

An Expiration Date. This is important so people actually claim their meal with the donor. Usually one year from the date of the event is a good expiration. This is also out of respect for the donor and their time. 

Examples: 

• Chef's dinner at a highly anticipated new restaurant prior to the restaurant opening. 
• Meal prepared by a chef featured on the Food Network (seriously, there is probably someone in your area featured on the food network) 
• Meal prepared in YOUR home by the principal of the school. 
• Meal in the home of a CEO of a fortune 100 company in your area with the CEO and spouse. Meal prepared by catering company. 
• Authentic Italian dinner prepared by someone closely associated by the organization who grew up in Italy - secret family recipes. 
• Dinner prepared by a well known local chef. 

Again, these are all just examples, but the possibilities are endless here. Just start brain storming with your auction committee and pick whatever sounds most fun to you. Contact me if you want to my professional feedback. I will be honest, because I want your even to be as successful as possible.

Must Have Live Auction Item #1: Trip

In previous posts, I have offered the importance of including a variety of types of items in your live auction and listed 5 that should be included to create a well rounded live auction. Now, I am going to go through each category in more detail with the goal of inspiring you and your auction committee as you solicit items for your live auction.

The first item we will focus on in detail is Trips.

When looking for a trip to include in your live auction, you can include a local destination (something in your home state or a close state that bidders could access by driving), a non local destination (someplace to which they would need to fly), or both. For the most part, I would not include more than one of each in the same auction line up.

Things Good Trips Have: 

Open availability. Meaning the winning bidder can plan their trips selecting from a wide variety of dates throughout the next year.  It's okay to have 3 or 4 weeks through out the year blocked off, but other than that they dates should be relatively open.

WOW Factor. People aren't going to pay top dollar (or likely even bid) on something that doesn't have a special appeal to it. Some WOW factor examples:

• Home owned by a celebrity  
• Home on Ocean with gourmet outdoor kitchen
• Home in Central America which included full staff of maids, personal chef and butler for the week
• Unique home such as a treehouse
• Resort which is frequented by known celebrities

Experience is included. The trip includes more than just a place to stay. Examples I've sold:

• Napa trip which includes wine tastings at several vineyards
• Trip to New York with the opportunity to see a late night show and have a meet & greet with the host. 
• Travel to an out of state professional sports game on the team's airplane with the team.

Things Bad Trips Have: 

Limited availability. Want to make sure no one bids on your trip? Offer it for one week out of the entire year. Just because an item has a high "value" does not merit it to be on the live auction. We are looking for items with a broad appeal, one week out of the year is not a broad appeal. I would allow certain exceptions like if somehow you got a box with Madona AND Prince at the Kentucky Derby and it is obviously only available the week of the Derby. Otherwise, I would recommend taking your week in Florida through aunt Cindy's timeshare off the live auction. It doesn't belong there.

Off Season Availability. You will find many donors who are willing to give you donations for their off season. Win for them because it's a tax write off for the time a year they won't be filling their spaces anyway. No one wants a ski trip between April and August.  

What about airfare?

You may notice that I didn't mention anything about airfare in either section. I'll follow up with another post in the future about this topic in more detail, but the short: including airfare does not bring you it's value in revenue nor does it hurt an item's popularity if you don't include airfare in the package. Look back later for deets on this or just email me your specific question regarding this and I'll be happy to give you more insight. 

5 Types of Items You Should Have to Create a Dynamic Live Auction

Over the next several weeks, I will go into detail into examples of these types of items, but for now, I want to introduce the 5 types of items they should incorporate into their live auction.

1. Trips

This could be anything from a trip to a B&B 45 minutes away from your town or it could be a luxury condo in Mexico. I usually like to see a local vacation (something that the winning bidder could drive to) and a travel vacation (some place further away that is different from their local area...beach...ski vacation...Europe...etc).

2. Meal/Dinner Party

People love these items. It could be anything from a chef created meal in the winner's home or an exclusive specialty chef's dinner at a hot restaurant in town. These are great experiences for multiple bidders to go together on a great item. 

3. Unique Experience

A "Unique Experience" is something that people can't go and recreate on their own or buy from another vendor. These unique experiences are something that they only get because they are supporting your organization. This one is all about who you know and getting creative. I would recommend sitting down with your staff, board members or auction committee and have a meeting committed solely to brainstorming who they know and out of the box ideas. Remember there are no bad ideas in brainstorming.

4. Alcohol

People eat up (or drink up) these items. This could be an exclusive brewery tour (not one that they could normally sign up for) where they are involved in the creation of a small batch beer, or you could sell a "Wall of Wine," or a wheelbarrow of booze, or an exclusive wine tasting experience. The possibilities are endless. NOTE: This one is not appropriate for many organizations, so keep that in mind if it goes against religious beliefs or if you support recovering addicts. Please know I would only recommend this to you if it did not conflict with your organization's values.

5. Sports

Bidders love the opportunity to support your cause while being able to enjoy their favorite teams. This could be anything from a sports package with a couple tickets to one each major sports teams' games to a meet and greet with a popular player or even a signed jersey. 

For more ideas...

Keep checking back because I will be covering these items in more detail in the next several weeks. You can look for them on my social media accounts where I publish all of my posts as soon as they are ready.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me through the form on my sidebar. I look forward to hearing from you.

Why Having a Varied Live Auction Lineup is so Important

Over the next couple months, we are going to explore live auction item ideas. One big priority for me as a fundraising auctioneer it to ensure that my clients have a varied live auction line up, but before I unveil the items, I want to discuss why it is important to have a varied live auction.

Having too many like-items lowers each item's value.

It is so important to have a varied live auction lineup because it creates competitive bidding. It may seem amazing when your committee comes to you with news that they have secured not one, but two trips to Mexico, a condo in Costa Rica, a resort in Disney AND a B&B in Ireland, and you are not wrong for being exited! However, having 5 trips in one live auction will lower the value of each trip significantly. Knowing they have another trip coming up, their incentive to keep bidding goes down. Unless all 5 trips are completely different and unique opportunities that they could not find absolutely anywhere else, the bidding will lose its competitive edge.

Variety provides opportunities to engage as much as the audience as possible.

This is key. You want you live auction lineup to engage as many people in the crowd as possible. The sports lovers, the animal lovers, the wine lovers, the beach lovers, the mountain lovers, the book lovers...you get the picture. If they don't have something they see in your program for them, you are going to lose their attention. Why is this bad? Because when they aren't paying attention, they are either leaving or talking. If they leave, they are not going to participate in other major revenue generating activities (like the fund-a-need, and if they start talking, they will become incredibly distracting and you are at risk of losing your entire audience's attention. 

Variety is fun.

Duh. People like variety. They like to be on their toes. They like to see different items and feel engaged and energized and variety of auction items will help create a buzz! Remember, the more fun they have, the easier it is for them to give.

How One Little Girl Changed the Course of a Fund-A-Need

This weekend I had the honor of working with the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance. When you first walk in to their Black, White and Teal Gala, you instantly feel the love. Every single person in the room was in one way or another touched by Ovarian Cancer. There were survivors, spouses, children and friends who had lost someone to this disease. Everyone was decked out in the colors of the evening...Black, White & Teal. The room was a sight to behold.

The live auction was lively and the fund-a-need started like all others. They showed an inspiring video (which I always recommend) about a young girl and her dad who had lost her mom to ovarian cancer earlier that year. After losing her mom, she wanted to do something to make a difference. So this brave 8 year old girl, went door to door asking for donations to give to MOCA. It was a beautifully inspiring story and we were blessed to have her at the event. I started the fund-a-need like most others: $5000, $2500, $1000, etc... I got down to $100 & $50 and fewer hands were rising than normal. At this point, I asked the young girl how much she raised going door to door: $35.77. Instead of stopping at $50 donations, I turned to the audience and asked who would like to honor this young girl and her mom by matching the efforts she had done to raise funds. In a crowd of 400 people, nearly every bid paddle went up to commit to give $35.77. 

While the cause of the night, ovarian cancer, is an inspiring and personal cause that everyone in the room felt led to give financially. At the end of that fund-a-need, people weren't raising their hands for MOCA (I mean they were), but they were raising their hands for one girl who wanted to make a difference in honor of her mother. They stood behind this young girl who had a vision of making a difference and dreams of a day where no other boys or girls will have to lose their moms to Ovarian Cancer. This one girl's efforts multiplied beyond tenfold (more like two hundred fold). It was an honor to facilitate this group effort to make a difference. I pray that this sweet girl, will remember it forever.

Fall Fundraising Auction Season Wrap-up

It has been a strong fundraising season in the Twin Cities. It was one of the most rewarding seasons for me as I was able to watch client after client shatter previous fundraising records. While, being 8 months pregnant during one of the busiest seasons of my career was wildly exhausting, it was also incredibly special. I will cherish this season of life.

I just wrapped up my final auction of the season and am taking time off over the Holidays to have a baby but will be back on the auction block at the end of February. I will update once my new bundle of joy is here and am looking forward to a strong spring season. Contact me with any questions or my 2015 availability.

Also, if you are looking for a place for your end of the year tax write-offs, I know of many deserving and incredible organizations that would be willing to help you out ;-)

What To Do With Unsold Silent Auction Items

Last week I answered a common question I get from clients, "Can we sell unsold silent auction items before or after the live auction?" My answer was "NO!" However that leaves us with a conundrum: what can we do with unsold live auction items??

Lots of things!

1. Remove minimum bids: You can decide at a certain point in the night that any silent auction items that have not been bid on, no longer have a minimum bid. It may be that for some of those more quirky donations, the valued minimum bid may have been too high to entice any bidders. If your concern is just getting those items out of your hands that night, this is the best option.
2. FIRE SALE: Hosting an online fire sale on your organization's auction site after the  auction is a great way to manage any items that did not sell. This works with organizations that opt to use mobile bidding software. Companies like BidPal will work with you to create a specific auction site where people can register for the event, get updates and bid on items before or after the auction (if you choose to make it available). You will most likely get more revenue from this than you would with our option #1.
3. Sell the items at an external site (like ebay or craigslist). This takes more effort, but it opens up your bidding audience to people looking for those specific items. I wouldn't take the time to do this with all the items, but if you have anything that is of higher value, but requires the bidding of specific tastes (art, jewelry, furniture, sports memorabilia, etc), this would be worth your time to try to reach those people for the sake of your organization.

If you have questions about your silent auction, I can work with you to answer those as well as things related to your live auction. 

Unsold Silent Auction Donations: Put on Live Auction?

I write my blog based on questions I get from clients. A recent (and common) question is "Can we sell unsold silent auction items on the live auction?" My answer is always NO! I see how this could seem like a good idea given that silent auction items tend to raise 60% of their retail value on average while live auction items routinely exceed their retail value so why not try to get that sort of profit for donations that missed their chance in the silent auction?

Here is my reasoning:

1. If the items did not sell in the silent, the chance of them selling in the live auction is very slim.
2. We need to be very conscientious of donors. If their item did not sell in the silent, we do not want to draw attention to it or sell it publicly for far less than it is worth.
3. If it's done prior to the live auction, it will impact the value of the true live auction items and if it's done after the live auction it can leave the audience with the impression/memory of the auction being unsuccessful. 

Check back next week to see what to do with silent auction items that don't sell.