So here is a great story.

Last Thursday we get a call from Hawthorne Scholastic Academy in Chicago. Essentially they had decided to build their own auction system. With 24 hours to go before auction launch they found that the system had been hacked into and half their items were no longer visible.

We signed them up and a very dedicated volunteer works overtime to get their auction live for the next morning (Friday). By Friday 8am they were ready to go and went live. Within 3 hours they had over $12,000 of high bids.

Right now (3 days later) they are over $30,000 with a number of days to go.

Moral of the Story- building your own looks a lot easier than it is and security investment is non-trivial and a must have. Over the years we have spent well over $200,000 on security, redundancy, and backup.

Moral #2; We have a frickin great platform!

Tx for Listening,

jc

On About.com a few days ago Joanne Fritz wrote:

Computing is going to the cloud, donors are flocking to mobile, and silent auctions are migrating to the web. Silent auctions have been around for, it seems, a jillion years. They have become a staple of fundraising. Throw a party, silently auction off a stack of donated items, and voilà…cultivation and fundraising all in one. The only problem is that silent auctions have a whole bunch of disadvantages, such as:

•distracted bidders…with a cocktail in hand and conversation on the lips, how likely are bidders to revisit their bids at the ubiquitous clipboards?

•uncertain results. How many people will show? Will the donated items be attractive? Will people get into the mood and compete with their friends with higher and higher bids?

 •a passel of exhausted volunteers who spent weeks recruiting auction items, stayed up late the night before arranging everything, and then threw a party.

Enter the age of the Internet, plus millions of eBay-experienced online bidders, and we have the online charitable auction.

Click here for full story,

Here are a few folks that are using BiddingForGood’s online auction platform to the fullest potential.

Nevada Public Radio Raised over $198,000 with a total of 1,648 Friend Referrals sent through the platform

John J. Byrne Community Center -Raised an extra $958 using items supplies by BiddingForGood

Boys and Girls Club of Alameda – Raised $270,500 from online sponsors.

These are great examples of who to look to when running a successful online auction. Congrats on a job well done.

thx,

jc

I had our analytics team pull the top 10 item donors (in volume of units) and here is what we found;

1. Hilton family
2. Marriott family
3. Starbucks
4. Starwood Family
5. Nintendo
6. Apple 
7. Mary Kay
8. Four Seasons
9. Ritz-Carlton
10. Cheesecake Factory

I just love the power of the data. Interesting and hopefully helpful.

Tx for listening,

jc

Here is what one of our clients has to say about the state of online fundraising:

Susan Wagner – MECCA

It’s obvious that the current economy has taken its toll on the business sector, and we all can feel how the economic downturn has affected our bank accounts personally. But what about the non-profit community? How are these organizations that rely on both area business contributions and individual donations navigating their way through this economic storm in order to continue providing essential services to the community?

Times have changed, and the ways people choose to raise and donate funds have changed as well. Organizations need to be more creative. The idea of Internet fundraising makes sense. It saves time and energy, not only for the non-profit organization, but for the donors as well.

Changes in technology and social habits have fueled the online fundraising trend. MECCA learned about BiddingForGood at a United Way gathering. The venue has been publicized by Oprah and the New York Times. MECCA Services is utilizing this forum for fundraising; but with a unique twist: the majority of items offered are services, donated from local businesses. This creates a “win-win’win” scenario. Donors get a better deal on things they would be buying anyway. The businesses get free publicity, driving new customers their way. And MECCA, the non-profit, benefits from the proceeds to help support their programs.  

As long as people are tweeting, newsgathering and banking on the Internet, online fundraising is here to stay.

Click here for full story:

 -Shannon Wagner is vice president, Community Affairs, for MECCA, Iowa City-based provider of substance-abuse and behavioral-health services.

It’s is becoming very competitive in the item solicitation arena. Two things are driving this. First, merchants are feeling less flush so charitable donations are getting pulled back. We have two full time sales reps out soliciting bulk item donations and we hear over and aver “I’m doing less item donations this year due to the economy”.  All to say, supply is down.

The second reason is that demand is up– there are simply more folks asking. Fundraising pressure is sky high so more folks are having more fundraisers. And the effect gets compounded because solicitation is concentrated in 5 months of the year (Oct, Nov, Jan, Feb, and Mar). So merchants, hotels, and restaurants get besieged in those months.

What to do?

Reposition the “ask” away from a charitable donation to offer the advertising/marketing value you deliver. The fact of the matter is that charity auctions do three things marketers love;

1. They reach a fabulous demographic with 2-3x the avg. household income. These folks have purchasing power.
2. They reach these folks thru their trusted causes. Trust is in a society-wide decline so being associated with a non-profit brand that a bunch of affluent donors trust is only good
3. And most importantly- charity auctions reach these affluent donors precisely as they are making purchasing decisions- the holy grail of marketing. In essence the message to the merchant is- our folks are going to be buying in your category- why not make it you?

You deliver a great audience to these marketers. And when you position the “ask” as a marketing program (i.e. they get something out of it) that helps drive customers to their business from your community) this means they have a rational for supporting.

And yes, I’ll make a plug for online auctions- when the merchant is going to be online with a click-able link to their website driving traffic and helping Google search rankings this is a far sight more compelling than sitting on a clipboard.

Tx for listening,

jc

I love to call out some of the folks who have really made the system work for them. Here are a few more in the last 2 weeks;

• Museum of Contemporary Art Miami raised $79,926- a respectable sum.
• Saint Ann School had 208 emails sent off the refer-a-friend tool to bring in more bidding
• Rancho Bernardo High School had 46 items donated thru the Donate Item feature
• ITMSF raised $980 from items we provided (or almost 2x their annual subscription fee)
• Sonoma Vintners and Growers Alliance raised 65% of their $$$ from our BiddingForGood community

There is no magic to all this. It’s just a supply vs. demand math issue.

Tx for listening,

jc

I’m just looking at what our product advertising sales team is bringing in this month and there is some really good stuff. A one month membership to probably the highest end fitness club in the country, hotel stays in Orlando, tickets to professional soccer (professional soccer is always a winner for families with kids), and more. All in all, over $250,000 worth of stuff available for our clients with the click of a mouse.

This program is one of the best innovations we’ve made. Marketers are looking for new ways they can reach consumers. Online fundraising auctions reach a great demographic just as they are purchasing items. We can see from our weblogs what sells well and what does not. Why not create an advertising program that enables marketers to do this in scale and because it’s all on the Internet everything is measurable (a marketer’s dream).

We make the items available with the cause getting the vast majority of revenue (67%) while we take 33% to cover the cost of getting the stuff (the reps gotta eat). This also covers our costs of managing the inventory, developing the micro-site we build for every advertiser, and the folks who develop the reporting for the marketers.

This is a huge change from traditional “consignment” where folks sell overpriced travel and sports memorabilia packages which our weblogs show the causes get approx 20% of the revenue. In our model the cause gets 67% from dollar one. A MUCH better deal.

And as we like to say- IBM (more Items + more Bids = more Money).

Tx for listening,

jc

From Paulette’s Point of View (Paulette Maehara, President and CEO of AFP) writes:

In AFP’s latest Holiday Giving Survey, conducted mid-December 2009, we asked participants to compare their giving totals for the last three months of the year in 2009 to the same time period in 2008. Just 34 percent of fundraisers said they were raising more money—a very low figure compared with past surveys. However, compare that number to holiday giving in 2008, when just 23 percent of organizations were raising more money that year than compared to 2007.

Most signs indicate that 2009 was, in general, a better year for fundraising than 2008—even if by just a little bit. It certainly wasn’t a great year by any stretch. But the survey confirmed what we have been hearing from members throughout 2009. Slowly—very slowly—but surely, giving is coming back.

These little increases have led to strong increases in fundraising optimism. When asked about estimated 2010 fundraising results, 59 percent expected their organizations to raise more funds in 2010 than in 2009. That’s the highest level of optimism among fundraisers in two years.

According to Barry Welford’s blog, online auctions allow charities, colleges and universities to tap into their unique resources, target a wide range of bidders, and use tools that eliminate the need to lug items for bidding to and from the event venue.

The Internet removes the barriers of time and geography. This is particularly important for higher education, because alumni are dispersed. With the Internet a fund-raising auction can reach a much larger audience of alumni, including those who could not travel to a silent auction event and those who could not make it because of time constraints and/or scheduling difficulties.

Obviously, the fundraising potential of an event increases dramatically if one can target bidders in several different time zones and walks of life, rather than simply those who can attend an on-site event.

It seems quite clear that as with so many other events and processes, the online version of the auction brings many advantages over silent auctions and even over live auctions and all at a reduced cost. That’s an unbeatable combination.

For full blog from William, please click here.

More to come…

Kaijsa