I recently heard about a great idea you can use to earn even more money at your benefit fundraiser. It’s an idea to add to your raffles, giveaways, games, and auctions, and it’s something ripped straight from eBay! Sounds interesting?
Your silent auction probably requires your guests to simply type in their name and their bid amount for a particular item. The hope is that throughout the hours of your fundraising event, auction participants will continually try to outbid each other, thereby increasing the price of the item. Some bidders find this process frustrating as they have to spend all afternoon or evening frequently reviewing the bid sheet and outbidding the previous bidder. They also continually check the clock as the end of the silent auction draws near, and with minutes to go, these folks stand at the auction table in front of their item, competing with three other people, frankly placing whatever they want. are waiting. be the latest and greatest offer.
eBay has a great feature that I have used many times that you can use in your silent auction. It’s called Buy It Now! This feature is a boon for people who want an item but don’t want to sit in front of their computers for days and outbid other auction participants. eBay sets a Buy It Now price: $19.95 for a T-shirt, for example. If I really want that shirt, I’ll buy it now! Sure, I could have entered the auction, bid for 5 days and won the shirt for $5.95, but I didn’t care. I wanted the shirt and didn’t have the time or patience to play the bidding game.
Use the option Buy it now! in the silent auction at your benefit fundraiser. Let’s say someone donated 4 tickets to a Green Bay Packers football game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay to your silent auction. At the time of this writing, the face value of 4 tickets is approximately $75 each or $300. His hope is that people who came to his benefit to support a good cause will be generous and even bid up to $500 for tickets. But what if there is one person in the crowd who really wants the tickets and for whom money is not an issue? What if that person doesn’t want to spend all night bidding, bidding, bidding, bidding again? What happens if you put a price on it? Buy it now! to the $1000 tickets? Mr. Moneybags can sweep them up in no time! And if he doesn’t, what have you lost? Any. Your auction continues and a generous bidder wins the tickets for $500. You’ve still done very well on that subject. It’s worth a shot!