See if this scenario sounds familiar: your school community holds an annual gala auction, at which the classroom projects produced by the students are always a big source of excitement and bidding. Your school community also contains families who never attend the gala, but complain that because they can’t (or don’t) attend it, they never get a chance to bid on these precious items.

Putting these items up in an online auction for a week before the event is one answer, but then you have a difficult decision to make - conclude the auction for these items before the gala (which is fairer to all bidders), or suspend the online bidding and finish it at the gala (which will undoubtedly raise more money).

A better answer? Sell special, low-priced tickets that do not entitle the guest to attend the gala, but DO entitle them to bid on those items through Mobile Bidding, during your gala event, and against guests at the gala (who are also bidding on these through the same Mobile Bidding system.)

This is actually just an update on an old idea - selling “silent auction-only” tickets to your gala - ones that don’t get the guests dinner or the ability to attend the live auction, but do let them into the silent auction room for a couple of hours before the dinner is served. In this case, you are selling a “mobile bidding-only” ticket, and they don’t actually have to dress up and drive to your event to use it.

This gives you the benefit of the greater bidding energy in the room at your gala, plus the benefit of offering greater access to the auctions for those special items with appeal to your entire group of supporters.

Questions? Thoughts? Please leave them in the comments section below.

SchoolAuction.net is web-based software designed to help you plan, manage, and run fundraising auctions - live, silent, online, and mobile. To learn more, please download our printable Information Packet, sign up for an online demo, and/or start a free two-week trial and test it out yourself.