It goes without saying that hosting a fundraising event is a big investment. There are also many risks and unknowns involved, specifically the pressure of guaranteeing the auction items will sell to enable you to achieve your fundraising target. Ensuring you deliver ROI to compensate the event costs can make the pressure even more overwhelming.
In speaking with charities and nonprofits all over the globe we’ve gained valuable insight into the many barriers to reaching fundraising targets.
Firstly, identifying the right balance of fundraising tools is key. Its easy to get carried away with all the different ways of engaging guests at a fundraising event. However, its imperative to avoid implementing too many different fundraising elements. Instead of having a silent auction, a raffle, a quiz and pledging etc., focus your event on one or two elements that best suit your audience. This will ensure guests don’t get confused and overwhelmed with all of the different fundraising options, which will inevitably dilute the energy surrounding the event as well as their willingness to give.
Attending a fundraising event shouldn’t be a chore, in fact, it should be the event guests have been waiting to attend all year. Creating an interactive, high energy atmosphere will help you to retain and acquire high value donors. You can create this energy not only through amazing entertainment but also through your auction at your event by using fundraising technology which will make the bidding process easy, fun and competitive.
The hardest part then becomes engaging the silent majority to ensure that you make the most out of the spending potential in the room. The concept of buying in lot items from third-party suppliers is a divisive one, with many committees and event organisers strongly opposed from the outset. However, ensuring you have the right balance of lot items on offer is one of the most significant factors that can impact your total raised.
The most crucial consideration by the time the event comes around should always be this: Do I have the perfect range of items available to suit my guests? Are your guests going to be sufficiently excited by what’s on offer to take out their bank cards and spend, spend, spend?
If you can genuinely answer yes to the above having sourced all of the items through donations and goodwill then you are off to a great start and way ahead of the game. That’s unquestionably the ideal scenario but unfortunately is rarely often the case.
However, we would strongly contend that its far less desirable to go into an event with an uninspiring, unsuitable range of items on offer, even if all donated, than to add in a handful of third-party pieces and guarantee that your guests are excited by what they see.
The logic behind this is simple: wealthy donors aren’t going to spend big bucks on things they can easily pick up on the high street or online. Even if they bids lightly beyond market value, you’re unlikely to see people paying 1,000+ for a pair of tickets to a football match.
Buying in a handful of well-chosen, relevant auction items can change the mood entirely. While a pair of standard football tickets wouldn’t do much to get hearts racing, give a room full of high net worth (HNW) individuals and ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals the opportunity to fly across Europe with the Barcelona football team and sit in the changing room with them at half-time and mouths will begin watering and credit cards will begin emerging. What you’ve done, in essence, is unlocked the spending potential of your guests and gained access to wealth that would otherwise have likely walked straight out of the door.
Obtaining access to premium and true money-cant-buy items and experiences can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s where trusted third-party suppliers can take the burden of sourcing the items to fill the gaps in your auction list and offer a fair mix to best suit the demographic of the room.
The counter argument to this is invariably we don’t want any money leaving the room which isn’t going to the charity, which is understandable, however is often at odd
s with the key goal of all fundraising events. So, would you rather invest 500 on an exciting third-party lot item and see a guest spend 2,000 on it, bagging the charity a 1,500 profit, or would you rather see that 2,000 leave the room in its entirety?
Givergy’s lots collection is hand-picked and ethically sourced from our trusted partners all over the globe. Our lot consultants can advise on the right balance of items to suit a range of budgets, whether to supplement any gaps in your lot donations or to supply for the whole of your event. Givergy are committed to ensuring that you, the charity, are the main beneficiary from any lot item provided by
us for your auction from the very first bid!.
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