Online bidding fuels a boom for auction fundraising

Two schools find they get more bids, more donations, fewer organizing hassles

Published: August 20, 2015

By Aprille Hanson
Associate Editor

This is a screen capture of a sample fundraising page provided by BidPal, an auction website that St. Joseph School in Fayetteville used this year. The online auction raised more money for the school with less labor and fewer volunteers.

While other Catholic schools around Arkansas scramble for volunteers to file, sort and keep track of the bidding on fundraiser auctions, St. John School in Hot Springs and St. Joseph School in Fayetteville have found an online bidding buddy of sorts.

The two schools enlisted the help of a website auctioning company to help with the annual St. John Bazaar silent and live auction in October 2014 and the St. Joseph Fiesta fundraiser this February. Both schools saw a jump in bidders and money raised. Plus the work involved in organizing it was significantly reduced.

“I think one of the big things that all schools struggle with is finding enough people to volunteer … what this does is it cuts out your number of volunteers so the people who were running the back office and dealing with the bid sheets can a) attend the event, enjoy it and give money to the school or b) fill other volunteer slots needed,” said Ashley Menendez, who co-chaired the Fiesta event at St. Joseph School. “The bottom line is they’re going to make more money for their school.”

Marianne Layne, director of advancement of St. John School, said its annual bazaar, which has been going on at least 75 years, has always been their biggest fundraiser. However, in recent years, the auction donations were shrinking.

In 2012, the school made $22,000 and in 2013, it hit a low of $17,791.

“We had not been doing good,” Layne said. “When I came in 2008 we were making like $30,000.”

Then, a teacher suggested an online auction website to run the auction for 2014. The school chose Auctions by Cellular (now named Gesture), based in Westmont, Ill., to conduct the auction. In past years, the auction began the Friday morning of the bazaar in October and closed at 8 p.m. that same day. Before the big day, volunteers with the bazaar would have to collect donated items for the auction and write out a profile sheet for each item, usually between 300 to 400.

“Then people would just come in and write their bids down during the day. The problem we had was some people would just come for our lunch … They would bid but a lot of them didn’t come back. We realized we were really missing out,” Layne said.

Then the end of the night was mayhem.

“When we closed the silent auction about 8 in the evening five people would be in a room, pulling everyone’s bid sheet and they’d wait outside. It was really difficult.”

In 2014, the school’s task was still collecting all the donations, taking photos and putting all the info in a spreadsheet. It was then given to the company, which created a private website with a login for the school to advertise. It was open to anyone, though the school did not ship items. People could log in on the website or through a smartphone app. Anyone not tech savvy or who did not have Internet access could go to the bazaar where four company employees were standing by ready to help assist with smartphones and iPads.

Layne said the website was promoted in area church bulletins, on Facebook and on business-type cards that had the login information. Anyone with late donations could still bring them in and Layne could upload the item directly to the website. It launched about 10 days before the bazaar.

“We went into the bazaar with about $5,000 to $6,000 already bid,” Layne said. “We did see a big jump in bids going back and forth and on gift certificates, a lot of things just made more than they normally do.”

Each bidder was anonymous and when someone else placed a bid on the same item, the bidder would get a text or e-mail asking if they’d like to up their bid, Layne said.

“Some people said, ‘Oh we don’t like it because we don’t know who we’re bidding against,’ but some people were glad they didn’t know who they were bidding against,” Layne said. “Maybe there’s a great school supporter you might not want to bid against, but it’s anonymous.”

As the auction closed that night, the bidders were alerted if they won.

“All people who gave their credit card, which was 90 percent, were automatically charged,” when they won a bid. “And that used to be a real hassle.”

Volunteers were there in the following days to pass out the items that were not picked up the night of the bazaar.

St. John’s raised $27,532 from the auction, which Layne acknowledged “is a huge jump.” The money went toward the budget for tuition assistance and technology for students.

The company charged for the service, but local businesses The Copper Penny Pub and Spa Towne Wine and Spirits (co-owned by parishioners Mike and Peggy Bodemann and non-parishioners Mike and Tamra Tankersley, who serves as bazaar chairman) sponsored it, covering the undisclosed fee and will again this year. The businesses had their logo displayed while bidders used the site.

“We loved it, we really did. I’m glad we’re doing it again,” Layne said. “I highly recommended it to people.”

At St. Joseph School, last year’s Fiesta event (which includes more than just the auction) compared to this past February with the use of the online auction, increased from $76,000 to $100,000 raised.

Parents Ashley Menendez and Angela Baumann, who volunteered as co-chairwomen of this year’s Fiesta, pitched the idea of an online auction. The service chosen was BidPal, with an annual fee of $1,195 for the software to use at other events throughout the year and $1,795 for the event itself. The school also did the ticketing for the event through BidPal, Menendez said.

“So we moved here from St. Louis last summer and I had used BidPal … I was an attendee at auctions for two or three years and knew it was easy and could take some of the hassle out of the planning,” Menendez said.

The silent auction raised $45,000 compared to last year’s $19,400, Menendez said.

The money was chosen by the parents to go toward playground renovations and rebuilding the network server for the building, said St. Joseph principal Jason Pohlmeier.

Like St. John, St. Joseph’s online auction had both an online and mobile component and volunteers onsite assisting with iPads, though not from the auction company. It also allowed the auction to be open to more than just those who showed up.

“The benefits we saw because of the online component were they could bid from anywhere. A grandparent in another state could bid on a quilt from their grandchildren’s class. It expanded our pool of bidders,” Pohlmeier said.

However, the school made it clear they would not be shipping the items. “Just the silent auction had a 125-percent increase over last year” in funds collected.

BidPal also provided a scrolling display to have the items up on screens at the auction, letting those at the event know which items had not yet been bid on and how much money was being raised.

“I think it’s just easier to focus on what they’re looking for instead of scanning the room,” Menendez said.

In the past, people also did not appreciate a person bidding something like a dollar up to steal the item at the last second, Pohlmeier said. The online auction eliminated that.

“Let’s say an item is worth $100 you’re willing to pay $90. You can put in a max bid of $90, it automatically bumps you up by $5,” each time someone else bid, Pohlmeier said. “It helps the bidder because they’re not going to get someone jumping in at the last minute and it helps the school because you know you’re going to get your max bid.”

Menendez added the school received 95 percent face value on the items.

While St. John and St. Joseph has similar pros and cons for each of their experiences, St. Joseph had one more unexpected benefit of doing an online auction — inclement weather.

“The week before we started there were forecasts of winter weather. We decided to, in anticipation, to open the auction,” before the scheduled Saturday fundraiser, Pohlmeier said. “It snowed out our event on Saturday, we had about four inches. We were sending out e-mails (and texts) to people to bid on items while you’re sitting in your house not able to go anywhere, here’s something to pass your time, and they did.”

The Fiesta was moved to Sunday and “by the time our event started that night, we had already made as much as last year,” Pohlmeier said. The school used the same website for another fundraiser in May.

Menendez said the only flaw was at the second event, the setting did not have a strong Internet connection.

“Just make sure you know that the Internet at your venue can handle registration, computers … because everyone in the room is on their phone,” she said.

With emerging technology and the need for schools to continually raise more money, moving toward an online platform makes sense, Menendez said.

“Everyone thought it was super easy to use. Let me say up front, people were very skeptical. We’re not a very tech-savvy parish,” Menendez said. “But I mean right away, the older parishioners were using it and bidding. Everyone said we absolutely have to use it again.”

Click for the Catholic Schools Herald, August 2015 index