Good food is essential to the success of any event. Don't skimp on the caterer. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The whole point of the auction is to raise money, but for some things you really need to hire extra help.  When do you decide to hire, and when do

you decide to stick with volunteers?

It basically comes down to a division of labor – skilled and unskilled.  You need to hire professionals for tasks that are specialized or too complicated to ask a volunteer to do.  Catering, auctioneering and entertainment frequently fall into this category.  You’ll also have a hard time finding volunteers for the less than glamorous positions – like cleanup.  Frequently, it is far more prudent to bite the bullet and pay for these positions – they are far to important to the overall success of the event to be left to amateurs.  Catering, auctioneering and entertainment are all instrumental to the look and feel of the event. 

Your guests’ happiness (and propensity to spend money) ride on their overall enjoyment of the event – and few people enjoy bad food and music. 

An experienced auctioneer is the key to success for a live auction event. (Image: stock.xchng )

And an experienced auctioneer can turn a lackluster event into a high powered spending spree by generating excitement and fervor during the live event.  The key to the success of the live auction is to get guests to bid against each other and experienced auctioneers have experience turning a timid crowd into a hotbed of competitive bidding.  It is absolutely essential that you have a personality that is engaging and to whom the guests are drawn.  A dud of an auctioneer can spell disaster for your live event.

Save yourself the trouble of cleaning up at the end of a long night. Hire a janitorial service to help you out - it's well worth the effort. (Image: stock.xchng

And probably the best investment you could make would be to hire a janitorial crew for the end of the night.  Many event locations have security deposits that require you clean the venue after its use.  Definitely considering spending the relatively nominal money necessary to hire a janitorial service to come in at the conclusion of your event.  It’s incredibly difficult to find volunteers for this postion – and few people who do volunteer will end up sticking around to actually fulfill their promise.  Often, you’ll find yourself and a handful of others at the end of the night, trying to pack up and clean your event space.  You will be exhausted (and maybe a little tipsy) and the last thing you want to be doing is picking up trash and sweeping the floor in your stocking feet and evening gown.  A janitorial service provides peace of mind and allows you to concentrate on packing up your important pieces of equipment and auction items that weren’t taken home that night.  Odds are too that they’ll clean the space faster and better than you could do it on your own anyway.

You are far better off using your volunteers for the positions that are exciting, fun, in the limelight – ones that you’ll have volunteers falling over themselves to do.  But that is another post….

To keep your auction organized you have to divide up your auction into small groups of like items.  It’s the easiest way stay organized while soliciting donations and at the auction itself, your bidders will be able to find what they are looking for.  You can decide the names of your categories one of two ways.  You can have the same category names from year to year that accurately (but dryly) describe what the items are.  Or you can make up new names for the categories each year according to what your theme is.  No matter what you decide to call your categories or how you decide to divide them up, there are a few categories that make up the basis for any auction.

• Live Auction (Premium Items):  These are the best of the best of your auction items – the ones that are going to command the highest prices and cause the greatest excitement during the Live Auction.  At a school, these will often be the class art project.  For other organizations, these will be elaborate vacation items, expensive objects d’art, or valuable collectibles.

Vacation Getways can be a popular auction item. (www.freedigitalphotos.net)

Tickets to sporting events like baseball games are usually a hot item. (Stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

• Studio & Design:  This category includes any valuable piece of artwork or other design piece.  It will often include paintings, lithographs, pottery and handmade jewelry.  These will often be expensive pieces of artwork or other handcrafted artisan pieces.
• Food & Drink:  Almost anything associated with food and eating can go in this category.  It will often consist primarily of gift certificates to restaurants, but can also include wine, bar accessories, barbeque accessories and cooking utensils.

Food items like accessories for the barbeque are usually hot auction items. (stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

• Services:  This is a popular category, often has many items, but they have one of the lowest winning bid prices in comparison to their actual fair market value.  Your constituents will find “a deal” in this category.  Here they can get massages, haircuts, home repair and financial services at great low prices.  This category can often be divided up into several sub-categories based on the type of service provided, such as:
  • Professional Services
  • Beauty and Relaxation
  • Home Services
  • Pet Services 

Attendees like to bid on services they can get at a bargain, like a dog walking service. (stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

• Kid’s Stuff:  Don’t forget the kids – especially if you are an organization that specializes in services for minors.  Parents like to find special gifts for their kids and it’s the perfect opportunity for them to pick up a special gift for other kids who are friends or relatives.  Make sure to have plenty of kid-friendly items on hand.  These items often sell well compared to their fair market values. 
• Parties & Catered Dinners:  There is nothing like a great party – and many people are willing to pay to go to one.  Make sure that your parties center on some special theme and you are sure to attract interested buyer.  You should usually sell a ticket to the party by individual or by couple and price them accordingly.  For small parties, such as a wine tasting, you can sell the party as a whole for one couple to buy in order to invite their friends over for a special evening. 

Auctioning off parties, like a wine tasting, is usually highly successful.(stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

• Treasures:  This category encompasses the widest variety of items.  In fact, when an item doesn’t fit anywhere else, you can often make the case that it’s a “treasure”.  It includes gadgets such as DVD players and cameras, clothing and accessories such as scarves and purses, special items for the home and garden such as rugs and small appliances, and other unique individual items that are sure to become someone’s treasure.  You can sub-divide this category as well in order to bring order to the wide variety of items:
  • Household Items
  • Gadgets
  • Clothing and Accessories
• Staff Offerings:  This category works particularly well for schools – though other organizations will profit from it if used appropriately.  Families love to buy items created or services provided by the people with who their children spend many of their days.  Special lessons or activities given by a staff member can create a wonderful, memorable gift for a child.  At one school, the staff offerings had the highest winning bid amounts compared to the fair market values – almost 120% of value!
• Wines:  Many people will look for special, unique or rare vintages of wine at an auction.  It’s the opportunity for them to try something new or find an old favorite.  You can make this a separate category (from Food & Drink) if you are going to have enough items to warrant it.
• Baskets:  There are so many great ideas for baskets at an auction and people love to buy them.  Creative, unique baskets sell the best.  People will buy them to pick up a collection of items they’ve been wanting to try – such as a Bath Basket – or as a gift for someone special – such as a Tea & Reading Basket for a friend.
• Entertainment:  This includes everything to enjoy a night out on the town – movie tickets, concerts, the ballet and the opera.  This category also can have items related to entertainment memorabilia, such as autographed photographs, promotional items and other collectibles.  

Tickets to musical performances usually get several bids before finally selling. (stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

The theme is going to set the tone and mood of your event, starting with the very first words your audience hears about it.  Depending on what type of fundraiser you are planning, your audience may hear about it many months in advance or hear about it for the first time when the receive the invitation. 

Themes based on cultural influences (like Florence, Italy) can create strong, cohesive messages (www.freedigitalphotos.net)

With a school auction, for example, you are going to start talking to your parent body (who are the primary attendees) very early on in the school year despite the fact that the auction won’t be scheduled until sometime in the spring.  The reason for the early notification here is that your parent body is the primary source of volunteers, as well as the primary source of donation items.  When it comes to your donated items, your parents will either donate items themselves or they will pound that pavement to solicit items from local businesses they patronize, as well as from their families, friends and business associates.  

You should always start the fundraising early on and all that ties into the messaging around the event.  You want the event look to be consistent throughout the communications you have with your constituents.  If you have a volunteer team that solicits local businesses versus soliciting your constituents directly, you are still going to want to have consistency in the look and feel of the materials that go out because there will be overlap amongst the various groups with whom you are communicating.  If any of your business donors decide to attend the event or participate in other ways, it’s important that they feel they are at the same event they donated too.

Holiday or parties, like Mardi Gras, also serve as good themes for a fundraising event. (Stock.Xchng, www.sxc.hu)

This goal requires communication from your marketing team, your solicitation team, as well as your decorations team as early on in the planning process as possible.

The first step in determining the look and feel of your messaging is to determine what the overall look and feel of your event is going to be – the theme.  There are a different ways you can go for your event theme.  You can pick a cultural theme (Asian, Italian, French, etc.), a party theme (Mardi Gras, etc.) or an inspirational theme (Reaching for the Stars, etc.).  You can also choose to go with symbols and motifs for your event theme. 

Whatever you choose to do, the key is that your marketing team and your decorations team are on the same page.

One example at a school auction, the graphic designer determined the theme with her inspiration for a French Provencal theme centered around Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night.  The materials incorporated a version of Van Gogh’s painting.  When the guests arrived at the auction,

A school auction used Van Gogh's "Starry Night" as the inspiration for their event. (Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org)

the decorations team had pulled it all together with a beautiful French Provencal look, with the color scheme based on the colors of the painting itself – purples, golds, greens, and black. 

The next year, the auction committee selected their theme based on a culture, choosing an Asian-inspired event.  They then looked for a symbol to center their theme on within that broad category.  They selected a Chinese proverb that they felt was pretty symbolic for their community.  The proverb said “Learning is a treasure that follows its owner everywhere”.  When the theme was handed over to the design team, they came up with a very beautiful calligraphy version of the proverb and designed a gorgeous red materials plan.  Everything was red with white or black calligraphy.  It was very elegant and very well designed.  When carried out at the event by the decorations team, the linens, the signs, the decorative items all incorporated that calligraphy and the red, white and black color scheme.  They also utilized Asian style-decorative items, such as bamboo, to pull that theme through the event itself.

Overall, this school made conscious decisions to create complete events, where the thematic elements were consistently presented in all the materials from the solicitation forms to their final event decorations.  This kind of cohesiveness creates a incredibly powerful message for both the donors and the event attendees.

Companies and organizations that are looking for help keeping their event on schedule, on budget and successful will benefit from hiring an event consultant.

Event Designers can be well worth the investment if you don't have the manpower at your organization to plan the event. Night-of only coordination is a less expensive option. (stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu)

If you hire an event consultant at the beginning of the planning process:

• The event consultant will provide fresh eyes and innovative ideas for encouraging your donors to give and give big.
• Fundraising events demand a lot of attention to detail and an experienced event consultant can keep your organization focused, so that things don’t fall through the cracks.
• Experienced fundraisers will also be able to direct you towards untapped resources in your community that you may not have realized you even had.
• A full service event consultant will help you build a cohesive theme, from the invitations to the decor to the food and beverage to the music.  Events with strong themes present themselves better, amaze the guests and inspire the donors to give in support of the organization.

Maybe your organization can’t afford or justify an event consultant to help with planning the entire event.  There are other options available.  At the very least you should consider hiring an event consultant for the night of the event.

If you hire an event consultant for night-of coordination:

• The event consultant will provide experienced hands at dealing with the logistics of setting up, running and breaking down a large-scale fundraising event.
• You’ll be freed up to join the party and you won’t have to fight to convince volunteers to spend their time working, instead of having fun with the rest of the guests.

Whatever you decide is the best option for your organization, the investment is worth it in the long run and will be recuped by the increase in donations that result directly from having an experienced fundraising planner onsite.