Why Having a Varied Live Auction Lineup is so Important

Over the next couple months, we are going to explore live auction item ideas. One big priority for me as a fundraising auctioneer it to ensure that my clients have a varied live auction line up, but before I unveil the items, I want to discuss why it is important to have a varied live auction.

Having too many like-items lowers each item's value.

It is so important to have a varied live auction lineup because it creates competitive bidding. It may seem amazing when your committee comes to you with news that they have secured not one, but two trips to Mexico, a condo in Costa Rica, a resort in Disney AND a B&B in Ireland, and you are not wrong for being exited! However, having 5 trips in one live auction will lower the value of each trip significantly. Knowing they have another trip coming up, their incentive to keep bidding goes down. Unless all 5 trips are completely different and unique opportunities that they could not find absolutely anywhere else, the bidding will lose its competitive edge.

Variety provides opportunities to engage as much as the audience as possible.

This is key. You want you live auction lineup to engage as many people in the crowd as possible. The sports lovers, the animal lovers, the wine lovers, the beach lovers, the mountain lovers, the book lovers...you get the picture. If they don't have something they see in your program for them, you are going to lose their attention. Why is this bad? Because when they aren't paying attention, they are either leaving or talking. If they leave, they are not going to participate in other major revenue generating activities (like the fund-a-need, and if they start talking, they will become incredibly distracting and you are at risk of losing your entire audience's attention. 

Variety is fun.

Duh. People like variety. They like to be on their toes. They like to see different items and feel engaged and energized and variety of auction items will help create a buzz! Remember, the more fun they have, the easier it is for them to give.

Having Reserves on your Live Auction items

When soliciting items, you’ll come across certain “donations” that require a reserve, or a minimum bid, to sell the item. Now, although having reserves on your items is not ideal for your fundraising auction, it happens and it isn’t all bad. There are several reasons that an item could be assigned a reserve:

1. Your organization had to pay a firm dollar amount (though lower than retail value) to have this item at auction. There are companies that will “donate” extravagant items at wholesale prices to the nonprofit. The reason you need a reserve on these items is to break even! Avoid these items. Say the reserve is $2000, and you raised $2500, your organization only raised $500 for this item. You may say, “YAY!!! $500 is better than nothing.” The bad news is that you had a donor in your audience that evening that just gave $2000 to another company when they were intending to give it to your organization.

2. On the other hand, there are companies that will donate items to organizations and take a percentage (say 30%-50%) of the money earned. These sort of donations are MUCH better because your organization has a greater chance of raising more money on the items, and they are usually worth it because of the unique nature of the items. The reason that there are reserves on these items is because usually the donor knows the value of the items and is concerned about using their donations wisely – ensuring that they are actually raising organizations money rather than just practically giving away once in a lifetime opportunity.

3. Sometimes artists will put minimums on their work so that they maintain their own retail value. This is something that we need to respect. They’d rather have their work not sell than go for something below what it is worth. Again, this is a fundraiser – not a time to get good deals.

If you have items that have reserves on them, please reach out to me and I’d be happy to walk you through how to handle the reserve.