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Online Auctions
If planning a live auction seems like an overwhelming task, consider an online auction instead. In doing so, you will avoid the logistical work of a physical event. Online auctions can be run during the school year or during the off-season to raise additional revenue and attract new, potential donors. Or, supplement a live auction event, generate bidding excitement, and engage donors who cannot attend the live event.
 
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Planning an Online Auction
FORM A COMMITTEE
Form a committee of volunteers that can assist you with the planning and execution of the online auction. Committee members may consist of parents, teachers, volunteers, or interns (possibly a high school or college student). You will need assistance creating and updating your online auction web page, contacting potential sponsors, collection and distribution of prizes and donations, and marketing. Be specific when identifying the roles of each committee member so they are aware of their responsibilities. Create a balance to provide appropriate management but minimize micro-management.
- Auction Coordinator - Coordinates and oversees the auction. Assigns roles & responsibilities to committee members. Each member provides status reports back to the coordinator who ensures that all committee members are working cohesively.
- Web Page Management - Develops the online auction pages, inputs data, closes out auction items, processes payments.
- Sponsor Development - Solicits sponsors and develops positive relationships with these supporters.
- Catalog & Donor Development - Builds the catalog of items to be auctioned online and determines their value. Items consist of donations and acquired goods and services.
- Email Marketing - Promotes the online auction through email.
- Advertising - Promotes the auction through newspaper, TV, radio, and signage.
SET A FUNDRAISING GOAL
By setting a goal, you will be better able to put together a program that helps you reach it. How much money do you want to raise and where will the funds be spent? Knowing this will help you decide on a monetary goal, give sponsors and potential buyers a reason to support your efforts, and provide motivation to all committee members.
In addition to obtaining sponsorships and developing an advertising plan, plan to post a quantity (and quality) of catalog items online that are double the value of your fundraising goal. For example, if your goal is $5,000, post enough items online totaling a value of $10,000.
DETERMINE THE DURATION OF THE AUCTION
An auction can run for 1 to 2 weeks, 3 to 4 weeks, or even several months. Decide if you would like to run an auction continuously throughout the school year or host one that runs for only a few weeks. Promotion methods will be dependent upon the duration you choose.
- Continuous: If your auction will run for several months throughout the school year, plan to advertise constant reminders in school newsletters, newspapers, and other media. Constantly replenish sold items or stagger large catalog items throughout the event - promoting each item with bursts of advertising, as they are placed online.
- Short-Term: If your auction will run for just a few weeks, create hype by planning an advertising bonanza at the beginning and throughout the event, utilize constant reminders, and countdown the days to the close of the auction. Setting a short-term timeframe can create a heightened interest in the event as people will want to participate before the auction ends. Although online auctions running 1 to 2 weeks in length can be successful, most successful, short-term auctions run 3 to 4 weeks, with most bids placed in the last week.
 
PICK A THEME
Consider choosing a theme for your auction. A volunteer familiar with computer graphics or a printing company can help transmit an image depicting this theme onto the web page and all of your printed literature.
- Celebrate the Season: Graphics may depict the season in which you are having your auction and show children building a snowman or a child raking leaves.
- A Year of Growth: Graphics may show three children or trees in a row, each one more mature than the previous one.
- Take the Time: Graphics may show a child holding a large clock. The invitation can say, "Take the time... to spend with friends". The brochure can say, "Take the time...to browse and shop". And have sections of auction items like, "Take the time...to pamper yourself" (spa items), "Take the time...to relax" (restaurant and other gift certificates), and "Take the time...to play" (toys).
- Give Spring a Chance: Graphics may show flowers or budding trees growing out of the snow.
- Reach for the Stars: Graphics may show a child reaching for the star.
For more information on choosing a theme, Sign up and receive immediate access to Fundraising: Success is in the Details, a Free online guide from PTO Ideas featuring 8 essential steps to creating successful fundraisers. Click here.
BUILD AN AUCTION WEB PAGE
Your homepage is where potential bidders, sponsors, and donors will go to learn about your auction. If building a webpage seems like an overwhelming task, consider working with cMarket, a leading provider of charitable online auction services. cMarket provides the web hosting and also customizable homepage, catalog, and email templates that even a novice can follow.
It's important that the first page visitors see be informative, organized, concise, and easy to navigate. It's a careful balance between providing enough information to attract interest without making the page so cluttered it becomes overwhelming. The homepage should include:
- your school/organization name
- how auction proceeds will be used (i.e. fundraising to build a new $40K student computer lab)
- accurate catalog item descriptions
- catalog items recently added
- popular catalog items, bidding wars
- Auction Open!
- a Call to Action (i.e. Bid Now! Only 2 Days Left!)
- Donate Items button - Some people may want to donate money to your event rather than bid on an item. A "Donate an Item" button encourages participation from supporters who otherwise might not have become involved.
- Sponsor Names/Logos/Links
It's a good idea to create and save homepages and emails prior to the start date of your auction. This will help you stay on your promotional plan path and save you time once the auction begins.
cMarket provides you with the tools needed to put together your online information by providing you with OurAuction Pro template software. Why recreate the wheel when they've already created the templates you need...
- Homepage Templates: Create your own web pages with a step-by-step process. CMarket's homepage templates allow spaces for you to include key information or choose from template pages featuring Coming Soon, Auction Open, and Auction Closed.
- Email Templates: Promote your online auction with the included HTML email templates.
- Build Your Participant List: Utilize the Refer a Friend or Guest Book features to build your participant list.
- Donate Buttons: Encourage donations by utilizing the Donate buttons.
- Catalog Management: Printable catalog, bid sheets, Open/Close dates, bid increments, suggested opening bids, and more.
- Reports: cMarket helps you analyze reports which helps you understand things like, What items are selling and which are not? Is the starting bid too high? Is the bid increment set too high? Then you can highlight the best selling items on your homepage to increase interest and make adjustments as necessary.
- Live Event Features: Process online and live-event winning bids through cMarket and provide live-event absentee bidding and bidder registration.
- Bid Booster: Generates automatic emails requesting that winners increase their bids in the name of charity.
- Bid Extension: Prevents auction "sniping" by automatically extending the bid time by 5 minutes if a bid is placed in the last 5 minutes of an online close.
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AUCTION ITEMS
Designate several (5-8) of your committee members to focus solely on catalog & donor development. Building your catalog and gathering auction items is a time-consuming, tedious, and a critical part of planning an auction. Quality auction items will draw a larger crowd to your event.
Analyze the demographics of your target audience in order to build your catalog. What are their needs, wants, interests, lifestyle, and buying habits? This will give you a better idea of the types of items to include in your catalog. Sponsors and donors will also want to know that you have analyzed the demographics and know whom they will reach.
Every item to be auctioned off should be either a sponsored purchase or a donated item. And remember, no donation should be turned away. In fact, you will find that you can pair several smaller items together to make a package item. Do not limit the number of auction items. Obtain as many as you can get in the time allotted.
Be creative when seeking auction donations. Contact all types of businesses and ask for gift certificates, products, and services. Do not limit your request to the local area. Large companies from around the country are supportive of nonprofit fundraising efforts. Ask parents to donate as well. A chef may donate a night of cooking. A landscaper may donate a few hours of Fall or Spring yard clean-up. A season ticket holder may donate their tickets to a professional game. Be creative!
Following are some creative auction item ideas:
- Resorts & Hotels: overnight stays
- Entertainment: tickets to a theme park, zoo, movies
- Restaurants: gift certificates, dinner delivered to your home 1 night a week for 6 weeks for a family of four
- Service Stations, Car Wash: gas cards, fill-ups on gas, oil changes, car wash or detailing
- Landscaper, Garden Centers: Fall/Spring clean-up, a day of residential landscaping, shrubs, trees, flowers
- Chef: one evening of cooking for a 10-person dinner party in your home
- Parking: Sell the prime parking spot at the school for the school year
- Theme Birthday Party Planning: Offer to plan a child's birthday party including, the cake, decorations, party favors, party games. Specify the number of children. See Theme Party Ideas.
- Pie of the Month: Someone that likes to bake pies, can bake and deliver one pie a month for 12 months. You may want to specify that these can be delivered for holidays, birthdays, or any special occasion.
- Dessert of the Month: Similar to the Pie of the Month, but the buyer can specify the type of dessert.
- Babysitting: Babysitting services for an afternoon or evening
- Legal: a lawyer could donate one hour of legal advice
- Accounting: an accountant could donate personal tax preparation services
- Hair Stylist: free haircuts for each member of your family up to X number of haircuts
- Fashion: a two-hour fashion advice session, modeling the session after the TV show "What Not To Wear"
- Home Decorating: a four-hour home decorating advice session
- Home Organizing: a 6-hour home organizing session (specify if supplies are included)
- House Cleaning: a four-hour house cleaning session (specify vacuum, dusting, bathrooms, windows, and if supplies are included)
- Theme Gift Baskets: Each classroom assembles a gift basket. Pick a theme for the basket and have each parent in the classroom donate 1 item. See Gift Basket Ideas.
- Street Dedication: If your school is on it's own private street, name the street after someone for one year. A sign will need to be printed and mounted.
- Preferred Seating: Front row seats for graduation or any school performance. Specify quantity.
- Points: Donate credit card points for someone to cash in for airline miles. Be sure to check with the credit card company first.
- Car Wash: Wash, vacuum, dust, and clean windows of one car once a month March through November.
- Mowing a Lawn: Cut the grass at a local residential home once a week from June to July.
- Principal for a Day: A student will shadow the principal for an entire day, making announcements, visiting classrooms, etc.
- Gym Teacher for a Day: A student will shadow the gym teacher for an entire day, organizing gym class events.
- Student Crafts: Utilize art class time and the expertise of the art teacher to create a class craft. Vases (painted or decopaged using small squares of colorful tissue paper), a piece of unfinished furniture decorated with student handprints, or packs of printed note cards personally hand-drawn by the students. See our Simple Craft Ideas. This is a way to make something inexpensively, but the value to parents is high because their kids talk about it at home and tell their parents to buy it. The idea is to have as many students as possible participate in a single craft. An item with a cost of $200 could sell for $1,000 if a few families are bidding against each other. This concept works best for the oldest class in the school that will be leaving the school because parents will want to have this momento from their child's school.
- Centerpieces: make a table centerpiece for each holiday that occurs during the online auction
cMarket can also help you obtain catalog items. They offer a catalog of items that you can place in your online auction. These may be items unavailable to you through your current list of donors (i.e. baloon rides, sailing, vacation packages, local & regional dining and attractions, sports memorabilia, etc). In choosing items from cMarket's catalog, you will also reduce the time spent soliciting items on your own. If the item sells in your auction, a fee is paid to cMarket. If the item doesn't sell, there is no cost obligation to you, the item simply returns to cMarket.
ADVERTISING
The success of your online auction will depend upon the amount of traffic you can draw to your web page. Think about whom makes up your target audience. The beauty of an online auction is that your target audience extends well beyond just school parents. Also advertise to friends, family, alumni, local business people, churches, recreational teams, and attendees of your live auctions. Advertising options include:
- Flyers: Distribute flyers to parents and staff of your own school or those of all local schools. Be sure to contact the principal or PTO president for prior approval and request that they hand the flyers out to the students for you.
- Newsletter: Publish reminders about your online auction in the school's newsletter.
- Website: Post an advertisement and provide a link on the school's website, directing them to the online auction.
- Newspaper: Place advertisements in the local newspaper.
- Letters: Contact local businesses. See Sponsorhips.
- Email: Send periodic email reminders to friends, family, and people in the community. cMarket can help you reach out to your community using HTML email. Learn to segment email and export lists.
- Radio & Community TV
- Posters: Ask to hang a poster at local schools, businesses, and local sports events.
- Signs: Display an A-frame sign at the school's entrance or in a location visible during drop-off and pick-up hours as a constant reminder to families.
- Announcements: Announce the online auction at other school events to remind people to participate.
Why not invite 100,000 people to your next fundraiser?
Reach an even larger audience through cMarket. By opting in to BiddingForGood.com, your online auction has just multiplied its potential bidder list by the thousands! BiddingForGood.com brings together all of cMarket's charity auctions in one place, supporting hundreds of non-profit causes nationwide with thousands of different items up for bid each day.
Executing an online auction requires little printed marketing material. Negotiate with a local printer for either a discounted rate or perhaps the printer would be willing to donate to your fundraising event.
SPONSORSHIPS
Sponsors are a key element in reaching your fundraising goal. Sponsors are businesses and individuals that donate money, products, or services to help offset the cost of the auction. By analyzing the demographics of your audience, you are better suited to determine who your market is. If your market is primarily young parents, seek sponsors related to toys, baby items, grocery stores, family entertainment, or family services (landscaping, house cleaning, car maintenance, etc.) Some additional ideas for obtaining sponsors include:
- As a school, you automatically have a vast network of parents available to you. Utilize these contacts and have them ask their companies to sponsor the event in some way. If a parent works at a restaurant, ask them to donate gift certificates as an auction item. A landscaper may donate a day of residential landscaping as an auction item. A printer may donate printing services to support your advertising efforts.
- Send letters to alumni asking for support in the form of cash, products, or services.
- Send letters to businesses, from small merchants to large corporations, requesting sponsorship. These do not have to be limited to your local area. You will find that many large resorts across the country offer donation programs to non-profit organizations where they will donate an overnight stay. Zoos, theme parks and other entertainment entities may donate tickets. You will need to request these in writing on school letterhead several months in advance.
- Follow-up all requests with phone calls.
Always note the name of the sponsor beside each auction item to recognized their generous donation to yoru fundraising event (i.e. A $100 gift certificate for XYZ generously donated by XYZ Corporation). Display the sponsor's logo and provide links to their website beside an auction item, on emails, and on the auction home page. Or, sell sponsorship spots on your homepage as additional sources of revenue. CMarket offers sponsorship support by providing ten sponsor promotion spots to sell or offer as value-adds.
COMPLEMENT YOUR EVENT
Run an online auction in conjunction with a live auction to give additional exposure to both events. Live auction items can be previewed online prior to the live event, which may assist in selling an increased number of tickets. Use the online bids to elevate your starting bids at the live event. Your catalog can consist of a section of live-auction items and a section of online-auction items. Also, promote the online auction at the live event. If you have two similar items place one online and one in your live auction. If you find there to be a bidding war during the live auction, then after bidding is complete, announce that a similar item can be bid for online. Also, sell leftover items online.
For more information on live auctions, see our Auctions page.
TAX NOTICES
Tax notices will need to be sent to sponsors and buyers so they have a written record of their donation. Send notices to:
- Sponsors: Specify the value of their donation and that they did not receive anything in return for their contribution. This information can be combined in your Thank You letter. See sample below.
- Buyers: If a guest purchased an item for $1,000 but this item had a value of $200 (i.e. a piece of unfinished furniture decorated by a class), then the $800 difference is considered a charitable contribution to your school.
THANK YOUR SPONSORS, BIDDERS & VOLUNTEERS
Please remember to always send a thank you note to any company that sponsored the auction or contributed a product or service. A thank you note can also be sent to the winning bidders and committee members. Let them know how much money you were able to raise for your school due to their support. If this is an annual event, you can also let them know the date of next year's event.
A letter can also be written to your local newspaper, thanking your sponsors and guests for a successful fundraiser. This will serve as additional publicity for your corporate sponsors as well as publicity for your auction.
MAINTAIN A DATABASE
By planning an auction, you have just gathered invaluable information for next year's event. Rather than start from scratch each year, keep a database of your sponsors, donors, parents, volunteers, and any other valuable information. You will want to know exactly what each sponsor donated or which parent was the contact in obtaining specific donations so that you can easily approach them next year for assistance. Also keep track of the value and sale price of each auction item so you can better estimate your fundraising goal next year.
cMARKET
For more information on cMarket products and services and to recieve your free download of cMarket's '50 Auction Tips', click here.
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WEBSITE
For more information on building a school website, see our Website page.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Charitable-Auctions is a non profit organization dedicated to helping other nonprofit organizations raise money with no out of pocket expense through their online auction website.
SAMPLE THANK YOU LETTER TO SPONSORS
Date
Company Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Dear Company Name:
We would like to express our sincere thanks for your generous support of the (School Name) School's Fundraising Auction that took place on (date). This event was a huge success. We were able to surpass our goal of $18,000 and raise over $20,000 purchase a new playground for our children.
The commitment and generosity of our community continue to amaze me. We hope you will join us when our auction re-opens again on September 15, 2006.
Please let this letter serve as a receipt for your donation for which you did not receive anything in return:
__________________(state donation here)___________________
Thank you again for your generous support. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (phone) or (email).
Sincerely,
Your Name
Auction Coordinator
SAMPLE THANK YOU LETTER TO BUYERS
Date
Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Dear Name:
We would like to express our sincere thanks for your generous support of the (School Name) School's Fundraising Auction that took place on (date). This event was a huge success. We were able to surpass our goal of $18,000 and raise over $20,000 to purchase new playground for our children.
The commitment and generosity of our community continue to amaze me. We hope you will join us when our auction re-opens again on September 15, 2006.
Please let this letter serve as a receipt for your purchase and generous donation. Your purchase included:
Item / Value / Purchase Amount
____________________________/$______________/$_______________
____________________________/$______________/$_______________
____________________________/$______________/$_______________
Thank you again for your generous support. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (phone) or (email).
Sincerely,
Your Name
Auction Coordinator
SAMPLE SPONSORSHIP REQUEST LETTER
Date
Company Name
Address
City, State, Zip
Dear Company Name
The (school name) of (city, state) will be hosting a benefit Online Auction beginning (date). We are working toward raising funds for a new, state-of-the-art playground that will consist of swings, slides, monkey bars and other amenities for our children.
The state of the current playground area is in disrepair, as it is now 26 years old. Our fundraising goal to purchase new equipment is $20,000. This includes equipment, installation, and playground mulch, a requirement for a safe play environment. This auction will bring us one step closer to providing a safe environment for our children. We are asking for the assistance of our community to make this happen. We are asking for your help by becoming a sponsor. Your generosity would be greatly appreciated and acknowledged at our event.
- Platinum Sponsorship - a donation of money, product, or services worth $3,000 or more: Platinum sponsors will be highlighted with a logo promotional display on our auction homepage, including a link to your website.
- Gold Sponsorship - a donation of money, products, or services worth $1,000 to $2,999: Gold sponsors will be acknowledged with a listing on our website, including a logo.
- Silver Sponsorship - a donation of money, products, or services worth up to $999: Silver sponsors will be acknowledged with a listing on our website.
We are asking for donations in the form of cash, gift certificates, products, and services. Anything that your company can contribute would be greatly appreciated. The auction is being marketed to men and women, primarily ages 25 to 65 with children or grandchildren in the school system. However, the auction is also open to anyone in the United States through online search engines. We would love to make this a successful event but we need your help to make this happen and ultimately raise the funds for our school.
Please return your tax-deductible contribution to the School Name, Street, City, State, Zip, Attn: Auction Coordinator Name, Auction Coordinator. If you have any questions, I can be reached by phone at (phone) or by email at (email). Thank you, in advance, for your support.
Very Truly Yours,
Your Name
Auction Coordinator
PTO Ideas has provided you with ideas for planning an online auction. This information should not be used as a legal reference and may not be all-inclusive. We suggest consulting with the head of your school, an accountant, or any other essential professional.
Information pertaining to cMarket has been provided by cMarket, should be confirmed by cMarket, and is subject to change.
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