For those of you who have done silent auctions before, what do you think of minimum bids and bid increments? Last year we set the min. bids at about 15-20% of the FMV, with stated increments. Wanting to improve upon that this year, our committee has come up with a couple of possible options. First, we could set the min. bids slightly higher at 25% across the board and put predetermined bid increments on the bidding sheets, but that would require more manual labour (handwriting predetermined bids on the sheets). Last year, bidders rarely paid attention to the suggested bid increments.

Another option is not putting bid increments on the sheets, neither predetermined bids nor suggested amounts, but setting the min. bids a bit higher overall with gift certificates at 50% of fair market value and goods at 25%.

Pros and cons? Good or bad? Thoughts? Anything?

Hello,
My experience is that non-profits want and need to raise money. Therefore, auction committee members need to be sure that bidders increase the bidding at a steady pace. Standard practices are to start the bidding at 30% of value.

If you run an automated auction with an auction software, then creating the bid sheets with predetermined bid increases is quite easy. If you run a manual auction, then find a bid sheet (or create one) that allows you to increase in 10% increments all the way up to 150% of value, which is termed the "guaranteed bid". Use Excel or other spreadsheet to create worksheet of bid increments (whole dollars) for all price points. I used one for 4 years before we went automated.

Having worked on about 20 auctions in the past 9 years, I can say that the most successful ones are those that have pre-set bid increments on their bid sheets.