Planning a successful fundraising event requires significant time, resources, and effort. This is especially true if you’re going the route of a live auction to support your nonprofit—but the potential payoff of this event is well worth the upfront investment!

Every effective event starts with clear goals. For a live auction, your primary goal is likely to generate a specific amount of revenue, and you may also have a secondary objective of maximizing participant engagement through this exciting format. These goals shape your entire planning process, which is why they’re the first major elements you need to consider.

Let’s look at five other key considerations founded on these objectives to help you map out and execute your event.

Item Procurement

If you’ve ever hosted or even attended a silent auction, that event likely featured dozens of varied items for bidders to choose from. But when procuring live auction items, your focus should be on quality rather than quantity. You only need 12-15 prizes at most to keep the event to a reasonable length, but all of those items have to be high-value so you can reach your revenue goal.

The best live auction items will also be creative (i.e., not easily found in retail stores) and appeal to your event’s target audience to encourage bids. Here are a few popular prize categories and examples to keep in mind as you brainstorm your wishlist:

  • Vacation packages that include transportation, accommodations, and activities specific to the destination, such as water sports at beach resorts or tours of famous landmarks in international cities.
  • Arts and leisure goods and activities that appeal to a variety of interests, from collectible visual art pieces to concert and athletic event tickets to movie studio or filming location tours.
  • Fine food and beverages for participants who prefer to buy consumables over permanent items, or experiences related to food and drink (like a winery tour or a meal prepared by a celebrity chef).
  • Family-friendly products (e.g., popular, valuable toys or backyard play equipment) and activities (e.g., amusement park passes or children’s museum memberships) to engage the parents and grandparents in your supporter base.
  • Health and wellness-related prizes, which can also be experiential (such as fitness class passes and spa treatments) or tangible (such as home gym equipment or racket sport supplies).

To reduce upfront event costs, secure as many of your tangible prizes as possible via in-kind donations from individuals and corporate sponsors. Some experiences can also be donated, but you’ll likely need to negotiate discounted tickets or go through consignment travel providers to procure others.

Marketing Plan

Like with many of your nonprofit’s initiatives, a multi-channel marketing approach will maximize your live auction’s reach. Promote your event across the following platforms:

  • Your organization’s website—particularly the Events page, calendar, and banners
  • Email blasts and newsletter mentions
  • Social media posts on all of the platforms your target audience uses (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok)
  • Paid digital ads on social media and search engines
  • Text message reminders and updates
  • Print communications like direct mail and flyers

In every marketing message, include a link or QR code to your event registration form so audiences can sign up right away if they’d like. Additionally, consider featuring some of your most appealing auction items so participants arrive excited to bid on them.

Revenue Streams

Especially if you’re hosting a standalone live auction, item sales will likely comprise the majority of your event revenue. To make the most of this stream, Winspire recommends using the following item pricing strategy:

  1. Figure out the prize’s fair market value (FMV), which is the amount you would pay for it if you bought it for full price on the open market.
  2. Set the item’s starting bid amount at 30-50% of its FMV, placing your most creative and highest-value prizes at the upper end of that range and more commonplace or lower-value items toward the lower end.
  3. Calculate the minimum bid increase so it’s approximately 10% of the prize’s starting bid.
  4. Determine a minimum bid or reserve price, about 15-25% of the item’s FMV, which is the lowest amount you’d be willing to let someone purchase the prize for if no one takes the starting bid.

You may also charge admission to your event, collect additional donations (via a box, QR code, or text-to-give keyword), and pair your auction with other fundraisers to get your organization to its revenue goal.

Venue Setup

While it’s possible to hold a live auction virtually, an in-person format is usually easier for this event. Therefore, your venue should be well equipped with everything you need, including:

  • Basic room setup supplies like tables, chairs, microphones, and speakers.
  • Any decorations or extra equipment (e.g., a large screen to display photos of auction items during bidding or a bar cart to serve drinks to attendees) that you want to enhance the experience.
  • Bidding materials for each participant, including a bid card and a print or digital copy of your auction catalog.

Carefully budget for these upfront costs along with item procurement to ensure your spending on your auction doesn’t exceed the revenue you bring in from it—after all, you’re hosting this event to fund a much larger cause!

Data Tracking

Keeping detailed records of your live auction not only lets you know whether you’ve achieved your revenue and engagement goals at the end, but it also gives you a reference for planning future events. Some data points to track include:

  • Attendees: Total number, first-time event participants, and repeat supporters.
  • Revenue: Total amount and how much you brought in through each stream.
  • Item sales: Number of bids per item, sell-through rate, and data on which items sold at or above their FMV.
  • Marketing: Conversions from each channel, email and text message open rates, website traffic, and social media post interactions.
  • Supporter satisfaction: Overall impressions and with each aspect of the event experience.

Make sure to set up your data tracking systems well in advance of the event to capture all relevant data. If you leverage specialized event planning and marketing platforms for this purpose, Bloomerang recommends integrating those tools with your nonprofit’s primary donor database or CRM. That way, information will automatically transfer between solutions, saving your team time and reducing the risk of errors associated with manual data entry.

While managing all of these moving parts is critical for hosting a live auction that successfully engages participants and meets or exceeds its fundraising goal, the most important resource you have to make that happen is people. Bring staff members, board members, and volunteers together into an event planning team that can split the above responsibilities based on their respective skills and bandwidth—and together pull off an auction that makes a major difference for your nonprofit’s mission.