10 Ways Online Auctions Are Making Fundraising Easier

Fundraising is crucial to the success of nonprofits. It’s integral to fulfilling your mission, but it’s not always easy. Anyone that has had to solicit donations knows how time-consuming it can be. Since 72% of charitable giving comes directly from individuals, it's important to connect, nurture, and get people to understand your mission and motivate them to give.

That’s one reason why so many nonprofits have turned to online auctions as a way to raise funds.

Online Auctions Make Fundraising Easier

When it comes to soliciting online donations, all demographic groups are embracing online auctions for charitable giving. Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gen X donors all prefer to make their donations online. Online auctions go beyond charitable giving for fundraising. It broadens the reach to bring awareness of your cause to more people. It also taps into the fact that people are donors only a small percentage of the time, but they are always consumers.

As e-commerce continues to grow, online auctions for fundraising are becoming an important avenue for people to purchase goods or services while also supporting a worthy cause.

One survey found that 73% of Americans said they put a priority on companies that give back to important causes. Online auctions provide a way to tap into that spirit directly by providing things they want and doing some good at the same time.

Here are some of the other ways online auction can take the stress out of fundraising:

1. Real-Time Bidding

Real-time bidding encourages active participation. It adds an element of excitement and urgency. For many, it also gets those competitive juices flowing. When bidders get a notification that they’ve been outbid, it encourages them to take action and up their bid.

Real-time bidding encourages people to compete and there’s satisfaction in winning. Using other gamification tools, such as providing donation rewards, incentives, or perks can also increase bid amounts or encourage larger donations.

2. Automation

Automation drives the online auction process so you don’t need to worry about it. Notifications keep bidders up to date on what’s happening with the items and collect payment when the auction is over. Once donations have been collected, thank you emails are issued automatically. Fulfillment assistance is also automated to connect winning bidders with their items and provide receipts that can be used for tax purposes.

3. Customization

The best online auction platforms will provide you with templates that you can plug in information and launch quickly. They will also give you the ability to tweak and adjust everything you need to build the ideal auction for fundraising, including pictures, pricing, starting bids, bid increments, and more.

Another advantage of online auctions is that you can provide more detail in a user friendly format. You can provide in-depth descriptions and high-res images that might otherwise be overlooked at an in-person auction.

4. Length of Time

While in-person auctions often take a few hours, online auctions can take as long as you want. In some cases, you may want a short time frame to create urgency. However, we typically recommend that you hold online auctions for two to three weeks to help create more awareness, increase engagement and drive higher bids.

5. Integration

You can integrate your online auctions with other digital tools to enhance your fundraising and link all of your campaigns. For example, you can allow people to:

• Visualize the impact of donations
• Sell tickets, tiers, or tables to events
• Conduct giveaways or charitable sweepstakes
• Encourage direct donations
• Use crowdfunding tools to meet bigger goals

BetterWorld lets you market your online auction or event via Facebook, Twitter, or email to raise awareness and encourage social sharing.

6. Easy to Create and Manage

Using the right platform to create your online auctions for fundraising can power your auction sites, save you time, and save you money. You don’t need to work with a third-party provider that will charge you up to 20% of each dollar raised. BetterWorld believes organizations should keep 100% of what they raise. That’s why we don’t charge nonprofits a platform fee or take a percentage of transactions like other auction sites.

7. Easier Fulfillment

When you’re doing a silent auction or an in-person event, you have to pick up items, move them to your event, and stage them. When it’s done, you have to collect them and tear everything down. With an online auction, you can store them anywhere and arrange for pickup automatically.

You also avoid that end-of-the-evening rush for people to pay and pick up their auction items. Payment is collected automatically. People will pick up their items later or pay for shipping right on the site, making fulfillment a far smoother process.

8. No Geographical Borders

An online auction can also increase participation. People can take part from anywhere on their mobile devices instead of having to block out an evening and show up for an event. Online auctions also have a bigger reach. When it’s online, it’s open to anyone around the country.

9. Data

When the online auction is over, you’ll be able to easily transition all the data collected from participants into your donor database. It helps you better understand your donor base and establishes a relationship that may allow you to solicit other donations in the future.

You’ll be able to analyze the data to see which type of items generated the highest bids, most bidding activity, or engagement. This can be valuable information for your next online auction.

10. Save Time and Fundraising Costs

Another big benefit of using online auctions as part of your fundraising strategy is that you save the time of planning and executing in-person events. By shifting your fundraising online, you’ll significantly reduce your costs while still providing an engaging experience and getting your message out.

Online auctions are also convenient. Bidders can bid on or buy multiple items with the click of a button and instantly pay for the items they won.

A Free Online Auction Platform Designed for Nonprofits

BetterWorld is a free online platform for nonprofits that makes fundraising easier. You can quickly create auction sites and manage your online auctions. There’s no coding involved. You can have an auction up and running in just 60 seconds and add as many items as you want. We also support giveaways, crowdfunding, ticketing, and donations. Our platform of tools is interconnected to create a more seamless donor experience.

Go to BetterWorld and learn more about creating real-time auctions. And yes, we provide 100% free lifetime access to all of our fundraising tools for nonprofits.