Adapting Your Auction for a Virtual Setting: 5 Essentials
With the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing guidelines, and ongoing economic and social concerns, nonprofits have faced their share of challenges so far in 2020.
This is particularly clear when it comes to events. Organizations that have long relied on in-person events for fundraising, reaching new audiences, and stewarding long-term support have been faced with the new necessity of going virtual.
For many nonprofits, the widespread effects of the pandemic unfortunately meant canceling existing event plans. Even as we settle into the new normal, nonprofits need to embrace new strategies to diversify their fundraising and create back-up plans to in-person events. A wealth of virtual event resources make it easy to pivot online, and there are plenty of success stories from organizations that have successfully moved into the virtual realm.
With plenty of advanced planning, charity auctions and annual fundraising galas are the perfect case study for going virtual.
If an auction was already on your 2020 calendar and you need to keep fundraising to power your mission, a virtual auction is your best bet to keep donors engaged and build a solid revenue source. To illustrate how you can easily pivot your classic in-person event online, let’s walk through the key essentials for planning a virtual auction:
Review your event’s guidelines.
Check up on your tech stack.
Begin procuring auction items.
Set up your digital materials and promote your auction.
Follow up and review your performance data.
At OneCause, we specialize in charity auctions and virtual fundraising, so we’ve compiled proven strategies to help you make the virtual move. Let’s dive in.
1.Review your event’s guidelines.
When planning any type of fundraising event, setting specific guidelines and goals early in the process is a standard best practice. It keeps your strategy focused and provides specific benchmarks and touchpoints to check-in on throughout the process.
This is especially important for high-impact events like charity auctions that require heavier investment of time and resources to yield greater returns. For a refresher on how to plan a traditional charity auction, check out the complete OneCause charity auctions guide.
If you’ve already begun or are just getting started planning an auction for later in the year, start by reviewing or determining guidelines for your updated virtual event. Set specific guidelines like:
Budget. Your budget almost certainly looks different now than it did at the start of 2020, so take another look and determine what you can afford to spend on a virtual auction in light of any recent financial challenges you’re facing. In general, though, virtual auctions are less expensive to plan and host than in-person events because there’s no need to book a venue or serve food. Technology might instead be your biggest expense if you don’t already have a solid online fundraising toolkit on hand.
Timeframe. While you might’ve already had a specific evening blocked out for your traditional auction, virtual auctions can take place over an extended timeframe, often over several days or up to two weeks. This gives bidders plenty of time to explore your offerings and pick their must-have items.
Goals. What are your goals for your virtual auction? They’ll most likely differ (at least somewhat) from your goals for a traditional, in-person auction. Revenue and attendee retention will definitely still be important, but setting additional goals around digital engagement with your auction is a good way to keep your strategy focused, as well.
Some of the specifics around your auction will inherently need to change when pivoting to virtual, but outlining these changes and guidelines in advance will be essential for effectively adapting to the new approach.
2.Check up on your tech stack.
Your tech stack, or the full set of software and online platforms you regularly rely on, will naturally play a crucial role in a virtual auction. A typical nonprofit tech stack includes these fundamentals:
A database or CRM platform
Online fundraising tools
Event planning software
Marketing software, like email and social media management platforms
Most nonprofits have already brought their missions online to varying degrees over the past decade, so you’re most likely already working with at least some nonprofit-specific software.
However, tailoring your tech stack even further is a good idea as you extend your virtual offerings and engagement strategy. If you’ve regularly hosted auctions in the past (or plan to), adding auction-specific software to your tech stack is a smart move. These platforms include planning, management, and mobile and online bidding tools, great for in-person and virtual auctions alike.
In addition, pivoting to a virtual event strategy is a great opportunity to audit your tech stack. If you’ll be investing in new resources like virtual auction software and live-streaming platforms, doublecheck that every part of your tech stack is pulling its weight or is properly used by staff. Ask questions like:
Are there any parts of your toolkit that aren’t delivering value or are underutilized?
Are there additional features or integrations that would make your most-used tools more useful for your team?
Are there gaps in your toolkit that you’ve been meaning to fill but haven’t yet had the time to consider?
Virtual events like auctions will generate a lot of valuable performance and engagement data. Make sure your software has effective reporting features or, even better, integrates with your CRM. This will ensure you can analyze every aspect of your virtual auction as a part of the larger picture. For a refresher on this topic, explore DNL OmniMedia’s guide to nonprofit data management.
3.Begin procuring auction items.
As with a traditional, in-person auction, the range of items that you offer virtually will play a crucial role in your event’s success. Appealing items and packages are the main draw for bidders, after all, and will go much further to attract registrants for your virtual auction than even the most effective digital marketing campaign.
Strategic procurement is essential for any auction, but the longer timeframe and remote setting of virtual auctions mean that you want to devote even more thought and energy into procurement and pricing.
You’ll be relying on your items to do much of the heavy lifting to generate engagement and draw bids throughout the entire length of your virtual auction, so it pays to take your time with this step.
We recommend these tips for strengthening your procurement efforts leading up to a virtual auction:
Use your donor data to guide your procurement strategy. Who is the target audience for your virtual auction? How old is your average donor? Do they have children? What size donations do they typically make to your organization? These insights can directly shape your procurement strategy in terms of types of items and price ranges to aim for.
Create an item wishlist with your team. Once you’ve reviewed your donor data, use those insights to draft a list of ideal items or packages that will attract your audience’s attention. This will keep your procurement efforts focused leading up to the virtual auction and help your team avoid collecting random items that are easy to procure but that won’t drive engagement or revenue.
Price your items strategically. The starting bid and bid increments that you set for each item and package in your virtual auction will also play a direct role in how much interest, engagement, and bids they generate. If you’ve never hosted an auction before, study up on item pricing best practices. If you’ve planned an auction before but not virtually, devote extra time to pricing and reviewing your entire item catalog. This is one element of your virtual event that you definitely don’t want to get wrong.
While the energy of a live event can naturally provide a bit of an engagement boost and drive more bids for items, grabbing bidders’ attention and securing bids is more challenging in the virtual sphere. Taking extra care to fully target your catalog to your audience and set prices that encourage engagement will lay a stronger foundation all around.
4.Set up your digital materials and promote your virtual auction.
Once your procurement strategy comes together, it’s time to tackle one of the biggest differences between traditional and virtual auctions: digital materials. The digital materials that facilitate your auction include:
An event website, including registration tools
Your online item catalog hosted through the event’s website
Livestreaming platform and programming plans, if applicable
Social media campaigns to promote your auction
Email invitations and other message templates
Set up the essential infrastructure of your virtual auction, including the event site, catalog, mobile bidding tools, and live-streaming platform, early in the planning process. This will give you time to complete multiple test runs and ensure you can stay focused on boosting engagement during the event rather than putting out fires. Plus, having these materials ready in advance can open up new opportunities to boost pre-bidding engagement, like offering sneak peeks of your catalog for early registrants.
When it’s time to promote your virtual auction, we recommend recruiting ambassadors to support your marketing and fundraising efforts.
These well-connected supporters can secure registrations or additional donations on your behalf by reaching out to their own networks of friends and family, especially on social media. With social distancing guidelines increasing the amount of time we’re all spending online, this can be a great way to extend your event’s reach and deepen relationships with your most loyal supporters. It’s especially effective for community-centric organizations that host auctions, like schools.
Underlying all of your promotional and marketing efforts, however, it’s important to center storytelling whenever possible. Remember these best practices:
Frame your mission, auction, and (most importantly) the impact of your donors as emotionally-compelling stories.
Highlight the specific impact that the pandemic has had on your nonprofit and the need for support.
Show how you’ve responded to your constituents and the current moment with any examples of impact or success.
Tap into supporters’ emotional connections with your cause to deepen your relationships.
Strong communication coupled with smart digital tools will generate more attention and interest for your virtual auction.
5.Review your performance and follow up.
Once you’ve hosted your virtual auctions, kept auction attendees engaged, and then wrapped up bidding and announced winners, it’s time to dig into your event’s performance.
First, however, you need to thank all attendees (and especially your winning bidders) for their participation in your virtual auction. Due to the fundraising challenges we’ve already seen this year, donor stewardship and acknowledgment should be a top priority for your organization. It helps drive relationships and will strengthen your long-term fundraising efforts. Following up with a thank-you message and description of the impact that donors have had is a great way to start.
Next, analyze your auction’s performance data. Ask questions like:
Did we hit our revenue targets?
Which items received the most bids? The fewest bids?
Which items generated the most revenue above their fair market values? The least?
What was the average number of bids placed by bidders?
How many registered attendees didn’t actively bid on items?
Which marketing sources secured the most registrants for your virtual auction?
The answers to questions like these are invaluable for refining and strengthening all of your future virtual event planning efforts, from auction item procurement to digital marketing.
In many ways, virtual auctions and auction software make these post-event steps easier. With data flowing directly from your auction software to your database or CRM, you can automate follow-up and quickly filter your performance data by metric as needed.
Plus, a more comprehensive look at your auction’s performance and top bidders can reveal important prospecting insights. Identify the donors who placed the most bids or made the largest contributions to your organization. Then, conduct research with a wealth screening tool to generate a ready-made list of prospects to focus your more personalized stewardship efforts on.
Since it’s even easier to generate data with a virtual auction, post-event data strategies should play a larger role than they might for an in-person charity auction. Make the most of your opportunity to study your strategy’s performance!
From the start of the planning process to the day after your event draws to a close, planning a virtual auction requires a different approach and toolkit than traditional auction events.
Any organization can successfully pivot their auction plans, but it starts with understanding exactly what a virtual auction entails and will require of your team. Technology, procurement, marketing, and data are all key areas of emphasis to keep in mind. Best of luck, and enjoy your auction!
Author: Kelly Velasquez-Hague
Kelly Velasquez-Hague brings over 20 years of fundraising, nonprofit management, and sales/marketing experience to her role as the Director of Content Marketing for OneCause. As a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Kelly manages all of the company’s content strategy and execution. She is passionate about empowering great missions and loves that her current role allows her to continue to help nonprofits reach new donors raise more funds for their cause.