How To Set Up A Silent Auction On Facebook

Silent Auction

Has your organization been thinking about running a silent sale? This can be a keen way to raise funds and engage your donors.

Participants often detect them more heady than a traditional alive auction. There's less force per unit area on bidders and much more of a "experience adept" cistron. The winning bidders donate to your nonprofit and become something in return, which can be a big incentive to get involved.

Running a successful silent auction can take a lot of planning, but information technology tin as well be a fun event to organize. And with the right setup, you lot can make certain that it's a big success!

What is a Silent Auction?

A silent auction is an event that is typically held by fundraisers and charitable organizations. It normally takes place without an auctioneer. In a silent auction, items are displayed to the attendees and each item has a bid canvass. Participants place their bids silently on the bid canvas using a bidding number on their favorite item.

Items displayed in the auction have a "minimum increase requirement" which is mentioned in its bid sheet. Nowadays silent auctions can exist conducted using mobile bidding applications, which makes it easier to maintain anonymity and not let the bidders know the corporeality placed by other bidders. Once the bids take been placed, the highest bid wins the item, and the gain go towards the cause or the nonprofit.

Silent auctions are popular for fundraising and also easier to execute compared to the traditional English auction event.

In a traditional silent auction, each item has a paper bid sheet. Participants identify bids by writing their name, contact information, and bidder number on the bid sheet.

silent auction

If yous're using mobile bidding, they can identify bids on their smartphones instead.

In one case the silent sale has airtight, the winning bids are announced and payments are made.

Pro-tip #1: Using silent auction software can brand it easier to run a silent auction. If bidders are outbid on an item, they can quickly place another bid and stay in the running. Some mobile bidding tools let participants to automatically bid again. It can besides bring the auction to a close, confirm the winning bids, and take payments from the winning bidders.

Pro-tip #2: Wait for silent sale software that volition make it like shooting fish in a barrel to place bids, register attendees, create auction catalogs, track bids, engage participants, and analyze data. A great example of this is 32auctions.

Why Run a Silent Auction?

A silent auction can piece of work well for helping organizations in various sectors to raise funds.

Other benefits of running a silent sale tin include:

Raising the profile of your nonprofit
Expanding your current donor base of operations
Increasing donor retention rates and helping to make sure your supporters stay engaged with your nonprofit in the futurity
Making donors aware of the donation channels they can use to support your nonprofit

How to run a silent sale (Step-past-Pace Guide):

Pace ane: Setting Up an Auction Commission
Stride 2: Choosing a Venue for Your Silent Auction
Step iii: Securing Items to Sell
Footstep iv: Prepare Up Table for Silent Sale
Step five: Promoting Your Silent Auction
Step 6: Setting Upwards the Registration Process
Step 7: Pricing Your Sale Items
Step 8: Setting Upwards the Venue
Step 9: Closing Your Silent Auction
Stride 10: Following Up With Attendees

Bonus

Learning From Your Silent Auction
Rules of a Silent Auction (Tips and Best Practices)

Extra Resources

How to run a virtual silent auction
How to exercise a silent auction on Facebook
Ofttimes Asked Questions (FAQs)

Step 1: Setting Up an Sale Commission

Staff and volunteer support are crucial for planning and running your silent auction.

Set a planning committee to handle central tasks such every bit organizing and setting up the venue, securing items to auction, marketing, and ticketing.

Some helpful questions to ask include:

How much tin your nonprofit spend on planning and running your silent auction?
How much does your nonprofit need to enhance through your silent auction?
Will your silent auction be ticketed?
When do you plan to hold your silent auction?
Will you host other events on the night to heighten extra funds? You could choose to hold a fundraising dinner or raffle, for example.
Where will you hold your silent auction?
Will y'all run a traditional silent sale? Or will yous utilise silent auction software?
Who will officially denote the winning bidders and perform other emcee duties on the dark?

Pro tip: Ready guidelines for when tasks will exist completed by. This makes it less stressful to programme your silent auction and helps y'all stick to your upkeep and timescales.

Step 2: Choosing a Venue for Your Silent Sale

how to do silent auction

Where will yous concur your silent auction? Some of the factors to take into account are:

How many attendees are you expecting?
What type of atmosphere practice yous programme to evoke?
Is in that location plenty of space to set out your sale items in an attractive and organized way?
Will there exist good connectivity for using silent auction software and mobile behest?

Pro tip: You may need to book your silent sale venue months before the large night. Booking early on gives more flexibility for securing a venue that suits your needs, peculiarly if yous're expecting plenty of attendees.

Step 3: Securing Items to Sell

Securing a variety of items makes it more likely that your silent auction volition be a success. A diverse range of items will appeal to more attendees and tin can lead to more bids beingness placed.

silent auction

A few tips for gathering items to auction:

Encourage staff, volunteers, and donors to tap into their network. They may know someone who can donate a unique detail.

Ask local businesses to donate auction items in exchange for publicity. You can promote them during the silent auction and in your marketing materials, for example.

If you find yous take a lot of items, group them into packages. This tin can avoid a state of affairs in which y'all accept more items than potential bidders. A bit of healthy contest can exist great for securing higher bids!

Pro tip #1: You tin can auction experiences, likewise every bit physical items. Examples can include dining experiences at restaurants, spa packages, yoga lessons, meeting a glory, sporting experiences, and holiday packages.

Pro tip #2: Donor management software tin can assistance with finding items that lucifer the interests of your donors. This can significantly meliorate the number of bids that are placed. And information technology can push up winning bids too.

Step 4: Set up Up Table for Silent Auction

Silent auction table set and layout is a crucial step toward piquing the interest of your bidders. Information technology may seem similar a simple process with no planning and skills required, only it is non.

Here's how you can prepare a tabular array for a silent auction:

1. Keep tables cracking – practise not stuff a table with also many auction items. When you do that, people find it difficult to focus on each detail.

ii. Brand your detail descriptions stand out – utilize a single template for all items' descriptions. Write in simple and concise language, and make sure they are visually matched with the bid sheets.

Here's a skilful example –

silent auction table setup

3. Salvage the best for last – take the excitement of your silent auction to its peak by placing some of the all-time items on your final table. It will keep people engaged throughout the event.

4. Make your tables visually highly-seasoned – if you've put up a coffee auto, identify some cute signs or nice images side by side to it. For intangible items such as tickets or dining experiences, a stunning image of the place can make a lot of difference.

These tips will aid you create an constructive silent auction table layout for your nonprofit.

Step five: Promoting Your Silent Auction

To get plenty of attendees registering for your silent auction, your supporters need to know that it's happening!

If you're using silent auction software to create an event website, include the link in your communications with supporters. You can too promote the link on your social media platforms.

To encourage a wide range of attendees, promote your silent sale through diverse channels, including email, social media, and directly mail. Brand it easy for your supporters to share your event with their friends and family so they tin can spread the word too.

Pro tip #1: Advertise your items too. If people tin can run into what is on offer, they're more likely to bid. If you're listing items online, add high-quality photos. Being able to view the items tin encourage more than people to nourish your silent auction, specially if some of your items are unique.

Pro tip #2: If you're not using silent sale software, you can create a concrete version of your auction catalog instead. Brand sure that your auction catalog tells participants how to bid, and acknowledges everyone involved in the event, including sponsors, item donors, and volunteers.

Pro tip #3: Create an event page for your silent auction on Facebook so that supporters tin invite their friends. You can too create an event on Eventbrite and promote it on meetup.com, for example.

Step vi: Setting Up the Registration Procedure

With silent auction software, attendees can register for your result before it officially starts. They can also register a payment card to simplify the bidding procedure.

Some of the software options that can benefit your nonprofit include:

32auctions
Givergy
ClickBid
Xcira
Silent Sale Pro
Tip Top Auctions

If you're not using silent sale software, y'all can still streamline the registration process past request attendees to pre-annals and submit their payment details.

Pro tip: Not using silent sale software to register attendees? Have separate booths at your venue to handle pre-registrations and new registrations.

Step 7: Pricing Your Auction Items

How to price silent auction items:

Have a range of starting bids to encourage more attendees to identify a bid. Non everyone will have the upkeep to place loftier bids, and some people may exist reluctant to bid if the starting price doesn't suit their budget.

Create a bid canvas for each sale detail. This can include the particular name, a brief description, and who donated it. Beneath this, have a series of lines for people to write their bids.

Pro-tip #i: If you're using paper bid sheets, impress off extra copies of your template and take them to the venue. This can come up in very handy if new auction items get available at the final minute!

Pro-tip #two: If you haven't already, look at ways that your nonprofit can accept credit card payments. This can encourage more than bidders to get involved in the event, and it streamlines the registration and checkout processes.

Step 8: Setting Upwards the Venue

Get to the venue early on to set up and handle any final-minute issues that may occur.

Some of the factors to consider include:

Make sure you have plenty of volunteers to greet attendees, take registrations, and handle ticketing. If you're using mobile behest, you may need extra volunteers to explain how information technology works.

Arrange tables around the walls of the venue to display your sale items. This offers plenty of space for attendees to move around and browse. You can take some tables in the middle too if the venue is spacious enough.

Attempt to brandish simply one row of items per tabular array so that attendees can get a skillful await at items. If you don't accept enough space to exercise this and you lot demand to take more than than one row per tabular array, make sure that the high-value items are in the front row!

Conform brandish cards next to each detail to provide of import information that bidders demand to know, including the item proper noun and number, a brief description, whatsoever restrictions attached to the item, the market value, and the starting bid.

Gear up upwards separate areas for making announcements and picking up winning items.

Pro tip: Have a physical check-out booth for treatment cash payments. This can streamline the payment process for winning bidders who want to pay by greenbacks, rather than by credit menu.

Step ix: Endmost Your Silent Auction

Closing the behest can be an of import step in raising funds.

You can have a "spontaneous" cease to your silent auction. Attendees won't know when the auction will come to a shut, which can encourage them to keep bidding.

Alternatively, you can set a pre-planned finish time for your silent auction, and utilise countdown timers to bulldoze last-minute bids.

At the end of your silent sale, collect the bid sheets, and declare the winning bid for each item.

If you're using mobile bidding software, it will ofttimes confirm the winning bids automatically.

Pro tip #1: A silent auction isn't the only fashion to raise funds. Your nonprofit can set a fundraising goal and ask attendees to help you go at that place before the auction closes. This tin can appeal to their competitive streak, particularly when they're already placing bids on items. Goal meters tin can exist a dandy manner to prove how quickly you're moving towards your target, and get people excited to bring you a bit closer to information technology. They can see how close your nonprofit is to reaching your goal and this can encourage them to join in.

Donorbox lets you embed a goal meter into your nonprofit website in a few uncomplicated steps. Here's an example of how information technology looks –

Pro tip #two: Hosting a raffle is another fashion to heighten extra funds, and you need very few resource to set it up. You can sell raffle tickets via an event website, mobile bidding software, or paper tickets. Likewise, you'll need i of your sale items as a raffle prize and a saucepan to collect the tickets. Recollect to cheque the regulations in your local area to brand certain that it's okay to host a raffle.

Pace 10: Post-obit Upwardly With Attendees

Once the silent auction is over and y'all've historic your success, attain out to attendees and thank them for their participation. Post-obit upwards with donors helps strengthen your relationship with them, and makes them experience that their attendance on the nighttime was valued.

Pro tip: Send a cheers letter of the alphabet or email to all attendees, regardless of whether they placed a winning bid. You can create a template to be sent out in the days later on your silent auction to make it easier to deed while the event is even so fresh in their minds.

Tips and Resources for running a silent sale

These bonus tips and resources will further help you plan and improve your next silent sale in a more effective way.

Learning From Your Silent Sale

Subsequently your silent sale has concluded, spend some time evaluating how it went and how y'all could amend.

Silent auction software can run reports and give insights that you lot can use to run your side by side silent sale. It can confirm which items received a lot of bids and which didn't do also, for example. This tin guide your future efforts so y'all know which items to seek out side by side time.

Getting feedback from attendees can also provide insights that can be valuable for improving engagement at time to come silent auctions.

Rules of a Silent Auction (Tips and Best Practices)

In club to conduct a successful silent activeness, you must follow the best practices and get out no loopholes. Here is a list of rules to ensure a smooth and productive silent auction with the maximized issue:

1. Recruit your dream squad

One of the almost important steps for a successful silent auction is an effective team of people who will drive the event to success. Your squad can exist a mix of your nonprofit staff and volunteers. They are responsible for all tasks correct from pre-promotion activities to volunteering to sale monitoring.

2. Observe the right balance of auction items

Make certain your auction has a wide diverseness of items ranging from different categories like food, travel, entertainment, etc. to capture the involvement of a wide audience. Also, ensure that yous include a diversity of toll points and so that everyone can accept part in your silent auction.

3. Pre-promotion and invitations

Y'all can start sending out invitations online via e-mail service or spread the word in your community as soon as the auction dates are out. Yous can also let them know what to look, give them a glimpse of the products to entice them as well as other potential bidders.

4. Venue

The venue of the event must be big plenty to allow all the attendees to movement around comfortably, mingle, chat, and place their bids.

five. Particular display and layout

The style in which y'all brandish the items has a lot to do with the auction of the detail or receiving a higher bid. Keep your silent auction station as organized as possible. You lot may choose to group items of similar categories together. Choose wisely from cases, platforms, easels, and stages to brand your detail expect even more than desirable. Information technology is also a good idea to include an item description sail forth with each item where you can give more details about the product.

six. Registration

Registering for an sale is completely optional and not necessary. However, there are benefits of having your silent sale participants register earlier the result begins. The first do good is that your auction tin can be anonymous if participants annals. Each participant volition be provided a unique applicant number which volition help maintain their anonymity during the upshot. Some other benefit of making your guests register is that you can collect information about the guests in case you desire to contact them after the event.

7. Bid Sheets

Your bid sheets are where the silent sale actually takes place. If your auction requires pre-registration and provides the bidders with a applicant number, and so include that in the bid sheet. Call back to keep the bid sheets elementary as you don't want your guests to spend nigh of their time simply filling up a sheet.

8. Bid Increments

A simple formula that you can follow for bid increments is a 10% increase with each bid. You lot may use bid sheets with the incremental bids already printed on each line.

nine. Duration and Endmost times

The best time to close your silent auction is earlier the live event begins. Ideally, a silent auction should last anywhere betwixt threescore to 90 minutes.

ten. Legal clauses to include

Your silent auction must include some legal clauses and past bidding in your auction, each bidder must hold to these rules. Some of the legal clauses that you may consider including are non-refundable policy, payment policy, checkout, and particular pickup process, etc. You lot can also include a clause stating that your system reserves the right to add or withdraw items, without notice, to or from the auction.

Extra Resources

With the COVID-nineteen situation in place, most nonprofits are opting for online channels and virtual means of running their silent auctions. These extra resources will help you run successful silent auctions in the online space.

How to run a silent auction online:

Offline events being inadvisable during the pandemic, your silent auction tin be run online. Such events are virtual in nature only require less hassle, tin can be longer, and help you lot achieve a wider range of audiences.

online silent auction

Here'southward how you tin run a virtual silent auction –

one. Ready your silent sale online

Cull the right software for your online silent sale. Be mindful of the features you need.

Silent Auction Pro and ClickBid are effective silent sale software platforms for nonprofits. Alternatively, Facebook can be a good pick for simple virtual events.

One time yous've decided on the software, you'll create an event and add together auction item pictures and descriptions to it.

Pro tip: Plan fun segments for your online sale such every bit quiz sessions, games, etc. Add together them in the event description to increase bidders' involvement.

2. Promote your virtual silent auction

People need to know that you're having a virtual silent auction. Use email marketing, social media posts, and a landing page to share your event link with potential bidders.

At this stage, you should try to achieve maximum registrations. But at the same time, keep reminding your registered bidders about the upcoming online effect through posts and notifications. Your auction software should make this easy.

Here'south how American Lutheran Church promoted their silent sale on Facebook.

virtual silent auction

3. Run the auction

On the day of your online silent auction, mail about it on social media and send reminders to bidders to get-go bidding.

Try to keep bidders engaged throughout the outcome timeline. This becomes easy with fun segments and a host who can make such events even more interesting. Utilize video conferencing software like Zoom to implement this.

Ship your bidders notifications and emails every time they're outbid. It's a corking fashion to fuel their competitive streak and make your online silent auction a success.

4. Continue your bidders informed

As the online silent auction ends, announce the winners and accept the items delivered to them at the earliest. Recollect to thank all your bidders and create an impact study on your website or event folio.

Here's what Colorado River Headwaters Trout Unlimited did to go along their bidders informed of the impact and other details.

How to do an Online Silent Auction on Facebook

These days Facebook events are the simplest solution for online silent auctions. Statista shows that equally of January 2022, there are 190 million Facebook users in the US alone. Hence, most of your potential bidders are already using Facebook.

Follow these steps to do a silent auction on Facebook –

i. Programme your silent sale – Organize auction items, make up one's mind a timeline for the silent auction, and payment methods beforehand.

two. Create a Facebook event – Create a Facebook outcome from your Facebook folio. Add details about your online silent sale as shown in the example beneath.

how to run silent auction

3. Invite followers – Invite your friends and followers to respond to the event and register themselves. At the same time, use email marketing and social media posts to share the Facebook event with a wider audience.

4. Post updates regularly – Talk about your online silent auction – the auction items, intended bear on, and other important details – oftentimes on your Facebook folio.

v. Run the silent auction – The interested and attention bidders volition automatically get event notifications from Facebook. But you need to keep reminding them of the time, days left, auction items upwardly for bidding, and the process via posts on your page.

Hither's an example –

online silent auction

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

We have answered some mutual questions about the silent auctions in this section.

1. How long should a Silent auction concluding?

Ideally, a silent auction should last for i hour to one and a half hours. The silent auction's start time would be immediately when the consequence starts and should close before the live auction and the master activities begin. If yous Allow a silent sale to stay open up likewise long or close all at once, it will take abroad the urgency. An ideal silent sale just needs a total of 60-xc minutes to maximize your returns.

ii. How to price silent sale items?

Organizers ofttimes have the question of whether or not to display the item's retail value on the bid sheet. Nosotros would say that it's typically not a great idea to include prices in your bid sheets. This is because doing and so might create a drinking glass ceiling in the minds of your guests on how far they should bid. Instead, you can drag the item's perceived value which can influence the bids way more than the retail price. Rather than displaying the toll of the items, highlight the products and your mission. By omitting the price, the bids are free to get as high as the guests recollect it's worth.

3. What is the divergence between a silent sale and a raffle?

A raffle is a game of chance. It's a great way for an organization to raise money where typically, businesses or services donate an item to be raffled off. The organization holding the raffle collects money past selling tickets, and the winner is chosen at random. The more than tickets you buy, the more than are your chances of winning the draw. Withal, the winner is still decided by a chance drawing and not whoever places the highest bid. A silent auction is completely different from a raffle. The bidders must exist physically present and have the run a risk of examining the product before placing their bids. The one with the highest bid gets to walk home with the item.

iv. How exercise you prepare an opening bid for a silent auction?

It can exist difficult to put a toll tag on auctionable items, especially if the particular is priceless. To set upward an opening bid for a silent sale, y'all must first consider if the item was donated or if it is a consignment particular. For donated items, the opening bid can be thirty%-twoscore% of the off-white marketplace value (FMV). If you're auctioning consignment items, then the opening bid tin can range between 10-twenty% in a higher place the fair market value (FMV). When it comes to auctioning priceless items, or something sentimental that cannot exist marked with a toll tag, its all-time to start low and allow the buyers' emotional connection to drive the price.

Over to Y'all

Running a silent sale can be a daunting prospect for many nonprofits merely with the right planning, information technology can exist a very lucrative result.

Holding a silent auction can be a fun fashion for your nonprofit to enhance funds, and it can also be a smart motion for engaging with donors.

Silent auction software can make it easier to organize and run your event, but there's a lot you can practise to streamline the registration and payment processes if you're not using it.

And once it'southward over, post-obit up with your attendees can help build stronger links to your supporters. This builds on the success of your silent auction and shows attendees that you lot were grateful that they came.

For more tips on boosting your fundraising success, check out the resources on our nonprofit blog.