Silent Auction Overview

Silent auctions can be a fun and effective way to raise funds for your organization. They energize your business supporters and give them an opportunity to showcase their products, and your donors enjoy the excitement of bidding on creative auction packages.

But silent auctions can be overwhelming in the amount of information that must be managed: who donated the items to be auctioned? how are the bid sheets created for all the various auction packages? who won the bids? was the winner contacted? did the winner pay for the winning packages, and was the package delivered to the winner?

Delightful Labor can help with all this!

(note: support for silent auctions became available in software release 1.014)

How Delightful Labor Manages Silent Auctions

An auction is an event you create. You specify the date, name, location, and logos associated with the auction. You also associate a donation account and campaign that will be used when recording winning bid donations.

Each auction has one or more packages. You can think of a package as a gift basket that contains one or more items. For example, you may have an auction package that contains movie tickets, dvds, and popcorn (donated from three different businesses). People will bid on the package as a whole, but you can record the individual items and donors, and have these entries itemized on your bid sheet. You may also have a package with a single item, such as airline tickets or a gift certificate.

You can upload images of auction packages as well as individual items within that package. After adding your package and item information, you can customize bid sheets (based on one of four master templates), then print the pdf bid sheets for your auction. After the auction, you can record the bid winners, the winning amount, and finally you can enter information about the fulfillment of the winning bid. 

The Steps for Setting Up an Auction

Before setting up an auction, you will want to create a fundraising account for silent auctions. Next you will want to create a campaign under this account for each auction. Later you will direct the bid winner's payments into the appropriate fund raising campaign. Information about setting up donation accounts can be found here, and information about setting up campaigns can be found here.

The next step is to creat an auction event. This defines the date, location, name, and logos associated with your auction. (You can find more information about setting up your auction here).

You can then define and configure bid sheet templates. These templates will be associated with auction packages, and you will be able to automatically generate bid sheets.

Next you will set up the packages that will be bid on, and the individual items within each package. You can upload images of packages and individual items, and have these images appear on the bid sheets.

After the auction, you can record the bid winners and the winning amount. When you receive your donation and transfer the auctioned package, you can record the donation.