How to Take Your Silent Auction to the Next Level

There’s a unique excitement to a silent auction like the kind you can run with the help of BetterWorld’s easy-to-use technology. There’s no auctioneer calling for bids and no loud escalations of bids as people try to publicly outdo each other. Instead, participants enter their bids using a mobile platform.

A live auction is a performance; a silent auction is a hands-on experience. People can take their time exploring the items and looking at bids. They can see all that your silent auction offers and bid on all their favorite items. At a set time, the bidding closes. Maybe you announce the winners, or maybe the bidders can check whether they won themselves. Silent auctions are a great way to have fun with your community while increasing donations for your organization!

Why Should You Hold a Silent Auction?

With the right technology and extraordinary items, silent auctions are extremely inclusive. They welcome and accommodate all bidders, while still encouraging the thrill of the bidding war. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!

Plus, because the silent auction has a more relaxed pace than a live auction, you can sell a larger variety of items, especially the kind of items that people want to look at closely. Clothing items often do well because people can look up brands and sizes, and sometimes see pictures of people wearing the items. Fine craftsmanship and artistic detail are more apparent when people can zoom in and take a closer look.

Silent auctions are also adaptable should anything come up that would prevent your event from being held live. Traditionally held in-person, they’re easy to digitize. With tools like BetterWorld, bringing the entire silent auction online is easier than ever! This creates more of an opportunity to expand your reach and expose your event to a larger group of bidders. It can also lower costs as in-person events are traditionally more expensive due to location fees and overhead.

Some people get overwhelmed thinking about all the work that goes into an event like this. Still, with a solid auction planning checklist and easy-to-navigate tools like BetterWorld, you’ll breeze through creating a successful and profitable event.

Leveling Up Your Silent Auction

Silent auctions can be lucrative, but they’re not the place for a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach. You must be actively involved in stirring up interest and excitement and getting your silent auction website in front of as many people as possible. This is an essential way to increase attendance at your next event.

Once you have people talking about your event, you’ll need to keep that energy up to encourage your participants to bid early, bid high, and bid often.

So, how does a silent auction work? Let’s break it down into easy-to-digest steps.

1. Choose the right silent auction items

Item selection can make or break a silent auction. You want your items to excite people so that if they win, they’ll feel like the luckiest winner of the night!

If you’ve run an event before, look at your old silent auction bid sheets to better understand what sold well. If something received a lot of bids and/or sold for higher than its value, see if you can offer the same or a similar item again.

Consider your audience as well. Young professionals will likely gravitate toward different items than parents with young children or retirees. If you have a mixed crowd, be sure to pick items for each demographic. Young professionals may not want a night of free babysitting, but a parent of three certainly would!

Also, consider whether your mission relates to any personal interests. An animal shelter might get a lot of bids for “one hour of puppy cuddles” or a getaway at a dog-friendly resort. The more you tailor your silent auction items to your audience, the more donations your event will bring in. And that is the goal, after all!

2. Preview some enticing items

Create some buzz around your online silent auction by showcasing some of your items in advance. Adding photos and graphics of some of your most exciting items to your marketing promotions will prepare people to open up their wallets and start bidding.

Prepare your listings and link to them in your promotional messaging, including in your emails and on your social media feed. Try to add different items to each promotion so you preview as many as possible.

Encourage comments wherever you can, especially on your social pages. Invite people to share links to items that they like — you might even start a bidding war before the auction starts!

That said, if you get a lot of buzz about a particular item, don't be afraid to bring it back as the auction approaches or while it's active. Reminding people of something particularly enticing is a great way to encourage bidding wars!

3. Set starting bids and increments carefully

Silent auction bidders get excited about the prospect of getting a great deal and helping a charity at the same time. Engage them right away by publishing a starting bid and specifying bid increments. Display these numbers clearly on the item page as a prompt for people to start bidding early — and outbidding often.

For starting bids, we recommend a range from 30% to 40% of the item’s value. Use your judgment. If it’s something your audience will love, a higher starting bid is safe.

Your starting bid will inform your bid increments. In general, 10% of the starting bid is a good guideline. BetterWorld makes this easy by automatically adjusting bid increments — the higher the price of the item goes, the bigger the increment gets.

As you set your starting bid, always opt for round numbers and whole dollar values. The key is to make it easy for your bidders to know what to bid next. No one wants to sit around and do the math, especially at a fun event like a nonprofit silent auction! For example, if you have an item valued at $110, 30% would be $33, but $35 is a better starting price. From there, you could ask bids to go up by $1 or $5. Don’t set $3 as an increment — that makes it harder for people to bid quickly.

4. Create an intuitive layout

If people can’t see an item, they won’t bid on it. Organize your page so people can find not only the items they’re excited to bid on, but also the undiscovered gems they have yet to see but will likely be interested in.

Remember that people need to be able to go back to items and check if they’ve been outbid, so make sure people can navigate forward and backward. It's always a good idea to have a volunteer or staff member do a dry run to make sure things are arranged intuitively.

5. Make fulfillment and payment easy

The auction experience won’t end when people place their final bids. Winners will be excited about receiving their items, so take the opportunity to remind them how that will happen.

List on your online silent auction page whether items will ship or be available for pick-up. You can also email a reminder and post it on your social feeds. This helps to keep the buzz going.

Payment will be easy if you run your auction through BetterWorld. The platform automates all payment collection and receipts so you won’t waste time organizing silent auction forms and hunting down payments. You can just focus on thanking your donors, posting highlights from the event, organizing giveaways, and sharing how much you were able to raise for your organization.

The Takeaway

Silent auctions create fun, low-pressure fundraisers for your nonprofit. You don’t have to hire an auctioneer or ask people to sit still for hours to participate in your nonprofit silent auction. They can go about their days and check in with the auction when it’s convenient — or when they get excited by one of your social shares.

Remember to choose items that appeal to your audience and sell well in an online silent auction format. Use attractive photos and quality captions on BetterWorld’s free platform to showcase your items online. Don’t forget to specify a starting bid and increments!

Lay your page out intuitively and make it as easy as possible for people to bid. Payment is already automated with BetterWorld, so all you have to do is oversee fulfillment.

Now that you know how to do a silent auction, your next event will surely be one for the books! If you need more information on how to create an incredible and profitable online silent auction, reach out to BetterWorld today to schedule a free introductory demonstration. We would love the opportunity to help your nonprofit raise the funds it needs to change the world. Sign up for free at BetterWorld today!