Question: Online Silent Auction

Has anyone had any experience on how to set up or run a silent auction online? Have you had any favorable or unfavorable experiences with any online auction services? What costs are you incurring? Any sucesses or lessons learned?

Asked by laumi96816

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Rockne writes:
Hi laumi - If you are going to run an online auction, I'd definitely utilize one of the online services, as there's a lot of technology behind making the auction work well. I wouldn't want to build it myself. Here's a link to several vendors: http://www.ptotoday.com/yellowpages/category/auctions/ Our group had good success attaching a one-week online auction onto our live event. The online took place two weeks before the live and helped in three ways: 1) was good publicity for the live; 2) opened up some items for bidders who couldn't make the live event (more $$ for us) and 3) made our live event more manageable, because we had fewer items to slog through at the live/silent event. Hope that helps, Tim

Community Advice

hhiguy writes:
I have checked the URL noted above, and found that the two best sites are not listed. I realize that the listing on the PTO site pay for the links, but you really should check these two out.

If you have a 501c3 tax rating, then you should consider http://givingworks.ebay.com. As you can see this is a way to use Ebay for your online auction. The charges are much less than ebay's normal charges.

Another place you can go to is http://www.biddingforgood.com/. This site charges a percentage if a online bidder wins your auction. It also offers high ticket items for you to include in your auction. They say that items placed for auction on their site normally get about 10%-15% higher revenue, by using the site in conjunction with your live or silent auction.

Stan Cahn
http://fundraisingblog.net

Community Advice

laumi96816 writes:
Hi Rockne and hhiquy,

Thank you for your responses. I will pass the information to our current board. Terrific resources listed from both of you. We really appreciate the information!

laumi96816

Community Advice

Accelevents writes:
Rockne is right on about using one of the online providers. I'm a co-founders of Accelevents and also listed on the PTOToday/Auctions link that Rockne posted. We charge just $1 per bidder. I'd be happy to tell you more about our platform.

-Jon Kazarian
https://www.accelevents.com/