How should volunteers be utilized at my Fundraising Auction Event?

Volunteers are an extremely important part of your
fundraising event!!  Here are a list of "jobs" that your volunteers need to be placed in for optimal success from Mike Grigg at Elite Auctions & Fundraising Services:

• Live auction and fund a need recorders.  We recommend that you utilize three volunteers in this position to eliminate errors when recording winning bid amounts and donation amounts.  Make sure your professional auctioneer has a "pow-wow" with the recorders prior to the live auction and fund a need.
• Selling raffle tickets or entries to games.  Always put your volunteers in teams of two to maximize their efficiency.  If you have raffles or games going on at your event then send out 2-3 teams of two to sell those tickets or buy in opportunities.  You want aggressive volunteers that are going to sell not just stand in a corner and chat with friends.
• Check-in and check out.  You will need several volunteers to assist with checking in and out your guests.  This number varies dependent upon how many guests you have coming to your event.
• Silent Auction Assistants.  You will need about two volunteers per silent auction table to answer questions, assist with set up, and shutting down silent auction.  These volunteers will need to be able to get bid sheets off the table as soon as auctioneer closes the silent auction, and then move items (if needed) to the proper check out area.
• We recommend that you use professional ringmen rather than have volunteers as your bid spotters.  Professional ringmen are trained to get the best result from your bidders and leaving this up to volunteers simply causes more chaos than assistance.
• Obviously, you will need volunteers to help with setting up and taking down your entire event as well.

Volunteers that are not used or managed in the proper way can cause more problems than they help with, therefore make sure you have a manager in charge of training your volunteers.  Also, don't give each volunteer too much to do; If you overwhelm your volunteers they become less effective.  Good luck with your fundraising events and always make sure to hire a professional auctioneer/consultant to maximize your fundraising results!

Written by Mike Grigg, AARE, BAS with Elite Auctions & Fundraising Services

Signs Your Organization might be ready for Benefit Auction Software

Imagine an event night with seamless transactions and automation systems that track bid packages, bids, and donor activity. Many nonprofit organizations are managing their single largest fundraising event on Access or Excel spreadsheets. This can create certain challenges like version control if there are a number of people managing the events details.  It might be time to consider software if your organization:

1. Has high volume of new volunteers each year. Software maintains history
2. Has multiple people who need to enter attendees, donations, items etc. – Cloud software can have unlimited users and real time updates
3. Needs to sell tickets and take donations online – Software reduces data entry
4. Is not able to tell its auctioneer or board which part of its auction raises the most money
5. Is not able to tell your auctioneer or board the average % of value your silent and live auction delivered at an event
6. Doesn’t know what sold well the year before
7. Doesn’t know who its most generous donors are
8. Has long lines at check-in and out and spends weeks afterwards collecting the money
9. Doesn’t know who was thanked from the event guests to coordinators
10. Needs to reduce the stress of its volunteer and paid staff

There are many types of software out there.  Determine what actions your organizations need to be able to do.  For example, do you need a website to share information about your event? Do you need to take donations, ticket sales, preview your catalog, sell sponsorships and display your sponsors?  Do you have one person entering and managing auction data or a team?  Once you’ve answered some of these questions, start comparing and contrasting software to your list of musts.

A PC version is nice for one person but when an organizations has multiple people managing auction details,  an online version means multiple users can work at the same time. Furthermore, the IT team doesn’t have to install it on a network.  Information is available 24/7 for the auction team.

Software helps you keep the history of the event to hand off to next year’s team.  Also, software that runs reports helps organizations measure areas of success and opportunities to improve.  Lastly, it can help with quick registration, entering winning bids and checking attendees out quickly.

It might be time for software if you’ve recently said, “I’ll never volunteer again!”

Debby Roth-Bush, Greater Giving for Elite Auctions& Fundraising Services