Sealed Bidding

Posted by Ella Jacques on 11 October 2021

Sealed bidding could be the answer to your fundraising prayers!

This method involves only showing the number of bids placed on an item, as opposed to the highest bid, helping to increase audience participation and encourage competitive bidding.

Throughout the auction our system will display the number of bids received on an item, but bidders won’t be aware who the highest bidder is. The idea is that bidder’s are encouraged to place their best bid first, however when a guest sees a lot of interest in an item they have also bid on, it encourages them to ‘up’ their bid, which they can do as many times as they want to!

Sealed bidding is particularly powerful when you have access to several of the same auction item (which is always the case when you include items from Givergy). Through a fully transparent and ethical process, we’re able to easily sell the same item to, for example, the top three bidders at the end of the event, meaning that your charity profit is instantly tripled. We are very upfront in our visuals that we may sell to the top X bidders if multiple items are available. We also recommend adding a sentence to the item description to be fully transparent.

We add visuals to the website, tablet and leaderboard to help explain to your guests how sealed bidding works, and recommend that your MC/host explains this at the start of the event. If you have booked an onside team, they will also explain sealed bidding to guests when they conduct table welcomes.

Why does sealed bidding raise more?

• Our results show that guests participation increases by 9% when using sealed bidding at your event.
• On average the charity profit is increased by up to 166% when using sealed bidding on your event.
• When using sealed bidding and standard incremental bidding at the same event, items sold via sealed bidding raise 11% more than items sold via standard incremental bidding.

Example Media Page we will add to tablets and fundraising websites:

Ella Jacques

Global Client Services Manager at Givergy

Ella heads up the global Fundraising & Events team. A key part of Givergy’s growth for four years, Ella has a passion for event planning and ensuring her and her teams’ clients exceed their fundraising targets. Furthermore, Ella’s exposure to some of the highest-profile fundraising events gives her a unique insight into the newest and most innovative way in which charities are engaging with their audiences.