Case Studies
There are many different types, and sizes, of fundraising auctions. These case studies show how different groups might use Auctria to help with their fundraisers.
Elementary School PTA Fundraiser
The Parent Teacher Association for the local elementary school runs an annual fundraiser in the fall. This event consists of a silent and live auction with around 350 items in total, 250 "silent" and 100 "live". There are about 300 bidders, mostly drawn from friends and family at the school. In addition to the auction items, they sell Tickets to the event and also raise donations via a "Fund-A-Need" bidding program. The total goal for the event is approximately $50,000.
The group is able to give all of their auction committee members User Accounts to access the site so that they can enter item and donor details as the information is made available and everyone is able to see exactly what has been received.
They also decide to offer online pre-bidding for the silent auction for the week before the event, which is available through the auction website, along with online Bidder Registration/Checkout and Ticket sales. By connecting their Stripe.com credit card processing account, they are able to collect payments for the ticket purchases up-front and also capture credit card information for bidders who register online and want to save their credit card details for the event.
To facilitate the registration process, the auction committee members upload the school's address list (with email addresses) into the program so they can send out Bidder Access Tokens. As people register for the auction, and purchase event tickets, they are able to place early bids on the "silent" auction items.
The day before the auction, the online pre-bidding finishes and the silent auction Bid Sheets are printed out showing the highest online bid as the starting bid amount for the live auction component.
During the event, several volunteers are responsible for entering bids as the silent auction tables close. At the end of the evening, during Checkout, there are half a dozen stations to speed bidders through the process.
Charity Gala Event
A local non-profit hosts an elaborate gala each spring which features a live and silent auction as part of the evening festivities. There are a smaller number of high value items, around 30 silent and 20 live, along with raise-the-paddle donations and ticket sales. They expect to raise a bit more than $100K.
Bidder registration is handled at the door and credit card information is recorded to facilitate check out. The silent auction items are actually handled as an online auction, and the organization sets up a dozen iPads at bidding stations by the silent auction tables, running in Kiosk Mode Bidding mode. Bidders can browse the catalog via the tablets and enter just their bidder number and amount to place a bid - and because it is effectively an online auction they are able to use proxy bidding to ensure that the items don't get away from them.
Volunteers enter the winning bid information from the live auction, and the donations from the raise-the-paddle event, as it occurs live.
Since credit cards were captured at check-in, there is no need to run check out in the traditional way. Instead, the credit cards are processed via the Batch Checkout page the following day.
Online Corporate Fundraiser
The social committee at a large corporation wants to host a company wide online auction to raise funds for a number of causes selected by its members. Because the company is spread out over several states, there is no physical event just the online auction.
They have around 150 items, solicited mostly from local businesses, and hope to raise about $15,000. The auction is limited to current employees only and there are about 2,000 possible participants across several sites.
The group needs access for the committee members as registered users. They are able to enter the items that have been donated and keep track of the donors.
The items are all created as "Online" items and the bidding will be open on the auction website for two weeks. In addition to entering the items, they also upload a copy of the company directory from an Excel file, creating bidder records for each of the 2,000 employees including their email addresses. When the auction begins, this lets them send out <IndexLink slug="BidderAccessTokens/> to each bidder telling them about the auction and providing an easy link for them to get started. They are also able to limit registration to bidders with email addresses company email addresses only, for example @corporate.com.
Because the event is fully online, bidders are able to use Proxy Bidding and have the system manage their bids to ensure they stay the high bidder as long as possible.
Since people will be collecting their items on-site, there is no need for credit card integration as the organizing committee will simply be accepting cash, and check, payments during pick-up.
More Case Studies
We also have a number of additional "real-life" case studies available on our main website, please feel free to read them at Auctria | Case Study Catalog.