Get the Most out of your Club Sport Fundraisers by using Auction Software

Providing the necessary funds for equipment, travel, and other expenses for your team can be expensive. That’s why fundraising is essential to the success of your club sports organizations. Auction fundraising platforms offer a dynamic and far-reaching method to raise money. The right platform will help your club sports teams engage with a larger audience and offer unique experiences that excite supporters. Keep reading to learn how!

Advantages of Auction Fundraising Platforms

  • Expanding Your Reach: Leveraging Online Presence with Community Engagement
    Hosting an auction online allows your fundraiser to reach a broader audience, including distant family members, friends, and alumni who can’t attend in-person events. Online platforms make it easy for local businesses and community members to participate, increasing your potential for sponsorship, donations, and bidding activity.
  • Ease of Management: Ensuring a Smooth Experience
    Auction platforms, like Auction Frogs, provide intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces for organizers and participants. Their primary purpose is to make it as easy as possible for users to participate in your club’s fundraiser.
  • Diverse Fundraising Options: Auction Platforms Gameify Giving
    Features like Auto-Bidding and Bid Wars can bring excitement to your auction by increasing competition. Offering a Win it Now option allows supporters to buy items instantly, bypassing the auction process and ensuring immediate funds. By using Buy it Now items, your supporters can buy items like team swag, exclusive training camp sessions, and other items instantly at a set price and limited quantity.

Effective Fundraising Strategies for Club Sports

Finding the right fundraising strategy can be a unique challenge for your club sports teams. Helping your community understand the needs of your club and your players should always be a focus. Here are a few ideas to help your fundraiser gain traction in your community.

  • Engage Local Businesses with Sponsorship and Volunteer Opportunities
    It’s a good idea to ask local businesses to donate to your organization, but make sure your ask stands out!  Emphasize that your club sports community includes their current and potential customers, and that partnership offers a valuable marketing opportunity for their business. Encourage businesses to promote your auction on their websites and within their stores using QR codes on posters at check-out stands. In return, share their business logo and web address on your auction site, team webpages, and other marketing materials.  Always think about how you are showing your willingness to partner with your donors beyond the current fundraiser.
  • Utilize Creative Marketing Materials
    Creative marketing materials make it easy for your teams and their families to share your fundraiser with others. Create and distribute business cards with auction details such as dates, times, web addresses, and QR codes. Ask neighborhood businesses to display posters and give stickers showcasing your auction’s information to customers. Send stickers home with athletes and collaborate with local takeout businesses to use them on their packaging. Remember to show your community partners some love by giving them a shout out on social media, in your monthly team newsletters, and in pre-game announcements.
  • Offer Unique Auction Items and Experiences
    Your audience is looking for unique experiences to bid on. Auction off VIP experiences such as front-row seats or reserved seating tents for games or special events. Provide chances to meet popular athletes or coaches, creating a memorable Meet-and-Greet experience for fans. Offer exclusive experiences for players to be the “Coach for a Day,” or the “Guest Announcer.”
  • Engage your Club Sports Community Beyond Bidding
    Give parents a platform to market their own businesses through your auction while supporting their team. Ask star athletes to donate unique items like autographed memorabilia or special services like personalized training sessions. Engage your teams to put together special service packages where the winning bidder gets the team to rake their leaves or pick up trash.

Need More Ideas?

We’ve given you a lot to think about items and strategies. Here are a few more unique item ideas to hit it home!

  • Exclusive Training Sessions: Auction off a private training session with a star athlete or coach. This provides a unique opportunity for fans and aspiring athletes to learn from the best.
  • Game Day Experiences: Create game day packages that include VIP seating, access to the team’s pre-game meal, and the chance to be part of the team’s warm-up.
  • Autographed Memorabilia: Auction off items signed by the team, such as jerseys, balls, and equipment. Personalized autographs can increase the value and appeal of these items, especially for players getting ready to move on to the next level.
  • Fan Packages: Offer packages that include game tickets, team merchandise, and photo opportunities with the team, providing a comprehensive fan experience.
  • Unique Sporting Events: Organize and auction off unique sporting events, like a friendly match between the team and supporters, or a skills competition where fans can participate.

By leveraging auction fundraising platforms, your club sports teams can effectively engage a larger audience and offer unique experiences that raise funds AND build stronger community ties and support for your teams. These platforms, like Auction Frogs, make fundraising more dynamic, efficient, and successful, ensuring your club sports team can thrive and excel.

Want to learn more, book time to chat with Auction Frogs today!

How to source Auction Items for a Winning Virtual Fundraiser

How to source Auction Items for a Winning Virtual Fundraiser Banner

Auctions are one of the best ways for nonprofit organizations to raise funds. Courting businesses and individuals willing to donate or sponsor auction items is a crucial part of that process. The quality of goods and services you’re able to acquire is integral to the success of your fundraising initiative. 

Let’s explore some methods you can use to procure great auction items for your next event!

Strategize for Success

Once you have a strategy, you can actively seek and solicit auction items. Build your game plan based on:

  • Strategies that worked well in previous years
  • New ideas that work with your target market's income level and budget

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

First things first, you need to assemble an item procurement team. Your team should be comprised of committee members who have the gift of the gab. Look for people with charm and diplomacy who can call on a vast social network to obtain coveted goods and services.

If your team is small, don’t worry. Be sure to plan early (preferably a six months to a year in advance). You’ll be surprised by how much even a one-man show can accomplish! Sound people skills can help you distinguish between donors who are short on time and those who want you to invest time in exchange for a high-impact donation.

Lay it All Out

Put together a PR kit with brochures and links depicting what your organization does. Include facts about previous auctions you’ve held such as the number of bidders that participated. Don’t forget, explain how your virtual event works. This includes what would be expected of donors when it comes to fulfilling their end of the transaction.

Your PR kit can provide auction items suggestions to give your business donors inspiration. Customize these ideas for your wishlist businesses in the body of an email or on a phone call. Just remember, it’s easy to ignore emails, so try and make a call first to establish a personal connection.

Warm-Calling

Colleagues, stakeholders, previous donors from a database, friends, and family are all good sources of auction items. They’re familiar with your cause and have likely witnessed the positive outcomes of your organization’s fundraising projects.

If you’ve thanked them appropriately in the past, there’s a solid chance they will be willing to proffer bid-worthy items again. Your loyal donors and supporters are your first port of call.

Cold-Calling

Cold-calling and cold-pitching can reap rewards so don’t shy away from approaching businesses out of the blue. Highlight the advantages of participating as an item donor. For example, advantages could be greater brand exposure or an enhanced reputation via visible corporate social responsibility or sponsorship.

Remember, the community you engage doesn’t necessarily have to be local. It can include companies from further afield who have an online presence that resonates with your core audience. As long as you’re not trying to ship items across the world, it should be a-okay.

Harness the Power of Social Media

If your campaign messaging is creative, you can tug on the heartstrings and purse strings of hundreds of potential donors via social media. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are remarkable elements of the internet age. In the digital world, the generosity of clicktivists and regular folks alike acts as a counterbalance to vicious trolling. Craft a compelling narrative and it can find its way to people in the mood for a random act of kindness. 

Cast your net wide and you’ll find treasure. You can group smaller items in lovely gift baskets and hampers so no contribution is too small. Don’t forget, stipulate that you’re not looking for second-hand items. High-end thrift items and antique auctions are niches that don’t work for everyone.

Cash donations are welcome too. You can use these to curate vacation items, or organize discounted sports tickets, live performances or any other experiences you feel are missing from confirmed offerings. By doing so, you’ll be able to stretch donations even further and maximize the good you can ultimately do with those funds.

Record-Keeping for the Win

Be sure to use pledge and procurement forms to record important details. Log physical goods and intangible items such as gift cards, donor particulars, starting bids, and any other relevant logistical information. Collate and meticulously track received goods that your organization will need to warehouse and distribute. The best part, virtual gift vouchers and codes can be stored in a secure folder in the cloud!

Key Takeaway

Auction item acquisition is a challenging but satisfying aspect of planning your fundraising event. You can score fantastic items for an online, silent, or live auction. A little planning and determination will serve you well, as will an enthusiastic and polite procurement team. Good luck!

Try Auction Frogs for Your Next Online Auction

Our platform is feature-rich, simple to use, and yields great results. It can be customized to reflect your brand identity. Our platform allows for an unlimited number of item and image uploads. And, with a mobile-friendly user experience, bidders can participate on any smart device. You can streamline your auction item procurement with site-integrated donation forms. And there’s even a dedicated space for donor advertising!

So, whether you’re a school or a nonprofit organization, get in touch to see how we can help make your next virtual fundraiser a successful one.

5 Ideas for Live Auction Items

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What are good live auction items to be considered, and why does a benefit auctioneer work the best at events?

Our clients often ask us, “What items should I have at my live auction?!” With so many options, it can be hard to know where to start, and even more difficult to know what your audience is looking for. To make the planning process a bit easier, we’ve put together five ideas to get you started on the right path. We’ll also discuss the value of having a Benefit Auctioneer at your event, and how these individuals influence the bidding process.

  1. Identify Your Audience – For success at your live auction, you must know your audience. Begin brainstorming items to offer by creating a profile of your average supporter. Consider their lifestyle: Do they have families? What kind of jobs do they hold? Do you have more male or female supporters? What do they do in their downtime? What are their hobbies? A high-end auction will not be as successful if you are giving your guests low-end items. On the other hand, a public school auction may not do well if you are auctioning off trips to the wine country that might be out of your bidders’ budgets. Knowing your audience allows you to plan for success. Figure out what they want and find a way to deliver.
  2. Create Your Item Roadmap – Now that you’ve identified your audience, make a roadmap of items you predict will be most successful at your auction. This is where a wrap-up meeting after your events can come in handy. After every auction you hold, make a summary of the items that went fastest and those that took more “selling.” If there were items that didn’t get any attention, make sure you avoid those and similar items for future events. If this is your first event or your first year acting as an organizer and you are unsure of the outcome of previous auctions, it may be helpful to speak with past committees or a few of your supporters you have good relationships with. They can help point you in the right direction.
  3. Offer Unique and Cause-specific Items – One of the most successful items that we see for smaller auctions, such as schools or small nonprofits, are items specific to the cause. We have often witnessed “Once-in-a-lifetime” experiences going for the most money. For school fundraisers, you may auction passes for “Principal for a Day” or the prime parking spot right in front of the school. These are items that cost you nothing and are ONLY available at your fundraising event.
  4. Leverage Your Locale – The next most successful items are those connected to popular spots in your city. For example, Auction Frogs is based in Boise and many of the events we support are centered here, as well. That means that the guests at our local charity events are very interested in Boise items, such as Boise State University Football packages, staycation/date nights in downtown Boise, or nearby adventures in our beautiful outdoors.
  5. Give Them An Experience – For larger auctions with elite attendees, we often find that trips are hot ticket items. Vacation packages perform amazingly well because the bidder is often getting a great deal on a getaway while supporting their favorite cause. It’s a win-win situation! While trips are hard to solicit, we do have resources to help. (Ask us how you can utilize our consignment partners, Winspire.)

Keep in mind that these items only perform well if they are being auctioned off properly. This is where skilled and experienced Benefit Auctioneers can make all the difference in the success of your auction. These professionals know your crowd and how to work the room to get bids moving out of pure experience and enticement. Benefit Auctioneers are perhaps the single best investment to ensure the success of your fundraising event. Not only do they add an element of fun and entertainment to your live auction, but they are especially talented at reading your audience, encouraging bids, and increasing your revenue.

If you have any questions about items specific to your auction or need a good recommendation for a Benefit Auctioneer, please reach out. Our team is always willing to chat via phone at 208-321-5515 or email to [email protected].

 

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3 Ways Nonprofits are Raising more with Mobile Bidding

people at an auction on their phone

Charity events are complex and often exhausting with many moving parts and variables. You may choose an online auction or a live event, or perhaps a combination of the two (which we recommend). But regardless of your approach, it’s vital to have software in hand that can help you maintain and track all the moving pieces leading up to your event and in the days following.

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