« Older Entries

Auction Listings Are Vital to the Success of Fundraising Auctions

Fundraising Auction Tip: You should always provide potential bidders with a printed Auction Listing of both your Live and Silent Auction items at any Fundraising Auction. A printed Auction Listing is vital for several reasons:

An Auction Listing informs bidders of the order of sale, and what is coming up next. If you keep your bidders guessing, they will simply not bid.

If bidders are not 100% certain of what they are bidding on, they will not bid. A printed Auction Listing should answer any and all questions about what is being sold in order to encourage bidders to bid as much as possible.

Bidders often need time to plan their bidding strategies, especially on multiple and/or larger value items. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.

Couples often need time to consult with each other about what they are willing to spend on something. A printed Auction Listing helps them to do that.

Potential bidders need to know the specifics, the benefits, and the restrictions on any item they are going to bid on, especially on travel and/or other higher value items. A printed Auction Listing should answer all of their questions, in writing.

After bidders see that they have lost an item to another bidder, a printed Auction Listing makes it easier for them to re-strategize on what else they can bid on.
Printed Auction Listings generally come in 3 forms:

Printed in the Event Program or Auction Catalog.

Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-inserted into the Event Program or Auction Catalog.

Printed on loose sheets of paper and hand-delivered to all attendees, or left on each dinner table in the room.
Auction Listings cost practically nothing to produce and they can make the difference between the success and failure of a Live and Silent Auction. You should never conduct a Fundraising Auction without one.

A Case Study

Let me share a real-life experience with you. Once I was hired to conduct a Fundraising Auction for a nationally renowned organization. The event was held in a major hotel, in one of the country’s largest cities, with several hundred “black tie” participants attending. It was an extremely professional event, with the music, singing, lighting, speeches, and awards all perfectly timed and choreographed. Everything was done to perfection… exception the Fundraising Auction.

Although I had signed an agreement to serve as their Auctioneer nearly one year in advance of the event, no one bothered to contact me for any advice or help. Approximately one week prior to the Auction date, I contacted the group to see if they had replaced me with another Auctioneer. But they said that I was still their man.

Upon arriving at the event I asked for a copy of the Auction Listing. I was told that there were none. I’m not sure whether they felt that the Auction Listing wasn’t necessary, or whether someone forgot to have them printed. This was never made clear. When I asked what I was to use at the podium, I was told to copy the list of Live Auction items from a committee member’s computer. It took me about 30 minutes to copy three pages of hand-written notes in order to prepare for my role as their Auctioneer.

I knew that they had created a PowerPoint program showing the various Live Auction items. When I asked whether the PowerPoint slide order corresponded to the order of sale I had copied from the committee member’s computer, I was met with a blank stare. The committee member left to check the slide order, and returned to let me know that the slide order did not correspond my notes, and he provided me with the correct slide order… hand-written on a paper napkin. This forced me to re-arrange my three pages of hand-written notes before taking the podium.

There was a Live Auction Table with descriptions of the Live Auction items that were to be sold, but the table was not clearly marked, and it received significantly less attention than the Silent Auction Tables, which were clearly identified. Since the Live Auction Table was located adjacent to the “Raffle Table”, it appeared that most people thought it was part of the raffle and therefore paid very little attention to it.

According to the event program (which did not include an Auction Listing), I knew approximately when I was to begin the Live Auction. At the designated time the Master of Ceremonies announced the start of the Live Auction to the several hundred people in attendance, and introduced me as Auctioneer. As I approached the podium I realized that photographs of award winners were still being taken… directly in front of the podium where I was to stand… which required me to stand aside for several minutes until the photographers were done. Can we say “awkward moment”?

As the photographers cleared, I approached the podium and began my Live Auction introduction. Approximately one minute into my introduction, the “Raffle Committee” approached the podium and stopped my Live Auction Introduction in order to pull the 8 or 9 Raffle Winners. These drawings lasted about 5 minutes. Upon it’s conclusion I was allowed to resume the start of the Live Auction.

When standing at the podium two intense and extremely bright spotlights were pointed directly at the podium. The lights were so bright that I literally could not see the center 1/3 of the room. I could see the tables on the right, and on the left, but was totally blinded when looking straight ahead. It took perhaps five minutes before the spotlights were turned off.

While at the podium and describing Lot #1, I had to ask someone to start the Lot #1 PowerPoint Slide… because apparently no one was assigned that job.

So with only the Auctioneer’s verbal description, and a PowerPoint slide, it appeared that few people in the room had any idea about what we were selling… or when we were selling it… until it was announced by the Auctioneer. As a result, bidding was extremely light and the final results fell several thousands of dollars short of where they should have been
The learning experience is this:

The Live Auction is where you place your better items, and where the real money should be made at any Fundraising Auction. Let bidders know as far in advance as possible what you will be selling, and the order of sale, so they can get excited about the Auction, and plan their bidding strategy accordingly.

Auction Listings are absolutely vital to the success of both Live & Silent Auctions. In my opinion, revenues at this Auction fell thousands of dollars short of where they should have been, because no Auction Listing was provided to the guests.

If bidders are not perfectly clear on what is being sold, including both the item’s specifics, benefits, and restrictions, they will not bid.

When you have a committee of volunteers, especially volunteers having full time jobs and/or very busy schedules, the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer can help to keep the committee on track.

And once you retain the services of a professional Fundraising Auctioneer… use the services that you are paying for.

Tags:

Top 5 Classes Of Advertising

These top classes of advertising are sometimes incorrectly termed ‘mail order’ advertising, because this is a contradiction in terms. Mail order is a form of distribution, but direct mail is an advertising medium. Some clarification occurs with new names, such as direct response and telemarketing. Significantly, the mail order exhibition was renamed Direct Marketing. Goods supplied direct, instead of through shops, are advertised in the press, by direct mail, on television, and on the web. However, these top classes are as follows.

Persuasive: It is also known as ‘hard-sell’ advertising. This is most obvious kind which surrounds us in our daily lives, urging us to buy all manner of products and services. Without such sales-promoting advertising it is hard to imagine how modern society could survive, with its mass production and mass consumption. Scathing comments are made about the ‘ad-mass’, but its critics happen to enjoy the plentiful supply of goods which satisfy their economic needs, food, clothes and shelter. Countless pleasures and luxuries are also enjoyed simply because economics of scale can be exploited, thanks to advertising and other aids to distribution to national and international markets. This sort of advertising or hard-selling advertisement has to attract attention, command interest, create desire, inspire conviction, and provoke action provided it is to succeed in its goal.

Informative: Not everything is bought right away. It may have to be thought carefully, and there may be quite a bit of window-shopping and budgeting before the final purchase is made. Or it may be one of those once in a lifetime buys, or a present for some lucky person some day in future. More leisurely and often more expensive purchases can result from a study of helpful and explanatory advertisements over a period of time. Central heating, a new car, kitchen cabinets, a refrigerator, or a sewing machine are typical products of this sort. Mostly, they are ones which are popularly known as consumer durable items. So, here the kind of advertising should be less dramatic and compelling, but nonetheless attractive, interesting and convincing. The pace of appeal is quieter; there is more copy to read, perhaps more pictures to look at, and the object of the ad may be to invite the reader to obtain more detailed information by applying for a brochure or arranging for a demonstration.

Classified: While a great many classifieds are inserted by private individuals, others are placed by commercial firms as will be seen, for instance, in the vacancy columns of both national newspapers and magazines. By classified we mean not only that the advertisements are small and run-on but that they are grouped together under identifying headings, such as ‘House for sale’, ‘Situations Vacant’ and many more.

Retail: With the exception of productive retailers like bakers, florists, hairdressers, most retailers are selling other people’s goods. Their advertising has four objectives. They include selling the stock, establishing the identity or a kind of ‘image’ advertising, identifying the location and attracting personal, telephone or mail order shoppers. Obviously, retail advertising has to work very hard, even harder than a persuasive advertisement.

Industrial: Most industrial advertising offers raw materials, components and services to manufacturers and users who convert these technical things into finished products, which, in turn, are advertised to the end users or financial consumers. A house or an automobile, a computer or a central heating system is an assembly of items made by others. So, the advertisers are sometimes referred to as secondary suppliers. Their promotional activities are called Back-Selling as well. The advertiser has the problem that his product may be seldom or never known to the final customer for support.

There are more classes of advertising also. They are, for example, institutional advertising, financial advertising, co-operative advertising, trade advertising, etc. All of them have different ways and objectives.

Some Important Advice to Help One Find a Legitimate Home Based Business on the Internet

In looking on the internet for a legitimate home based business of your own, you must first learn to discern between the good and the bad home job situations out there – and remember to focus on the kinds of businesses that intrigue you after that. To help you do this, here’s a short list of some important things:Use keywords wisely – Broad, general terms such as “working from home employment” will bring you bogus jobs by the hundreds – all going no where. Instead, use key words such as, “telecommuting” in place of “working”. This will take you to the sites that have honest home employment opportunities, and save you the hassle of wasted time.Baits and empty promises scammers use – Typical quick-money job scams include marketing businesses that offer to help get you started with their program – which they claim will make you rich within a month! The catch is, after you’ve scraped together enough money to buy a costly “words of wisdom” kit – it always fails to live up to its promises.Another common victimizing scam, is the ad for the job that solicits you to join their job pool employment list. They bill themselves as an exclusive company, overloaded with work due to their ever-expanding client base, which demands more production every day. And as fate would have it – they are seriously understaffed as far as having enough competent employees to do the work. The implication is clear – if you’re smart you’ll jump at the chance to be on this magic list. And last, they throw in a hint of the huge amounts of money just waiting to be made by those who join them – for a monthly fee, of course.Victims finally get suspicious when months go by – and they’re still waiting to get their first assignment. This is due to a lack of both a client base, and minimal or no workload at all. Or they find out they’re expected to “under bid” competing members for every job on the list, and the winner gets the prize of working for ridiculously low wages. But one of the biggest clues someone’s been scammed, is when he contacts a client to sell himself for an assignment – something else he didn’t see in the ad – and learns that the client hasn’t posted any jobs to that list for over 10 years.Usually after the fact, a person finds out that the legitimate job databases are out there, and free to join. So if you see an offer online promising you the moon for a fee – avoid them like the plague. The only people who will meet any financial goals in regards to lists like this, are the scammers who thought them up.Keep in mind that this scam – along with many others – will try to get the job seeker to sign the deal by including a few “official testimonies” from “members” supposedly on the same list. These come complete with glossy photos of middle aged people at some beach, extolling the virtues, the easy work, and of course the huge income they’re making now – thanks to the honesty of whoever the scam company is in their particular case.So to summarize, you would be smart to always investigate anything of interest to you, before leaping into it. This is easily done online by searching a company’s name and looking for any bad reviews, victim scam stories, or shoddy business practice reports that may be floating around the web on them.Now that you are educated in the things to dodge, here are some things to seek:Home data entry: Always high in demand by the self-employed, home based data entry jobs are limited – and you’ve likely guessed by now, most of the many advertised online are rip offs. If you want to find one and don’t mind a possible wait, make daily trips to the free job search engines, and use your direct keywords to look for them.A well-kept secret, but one of the most valuable tools for home based business information, are the blogs that are devoted to that exact subject. You’ll be given priceless tools to help you, such as links to the authentic job sites, lists of real job databases, and some information and websites of employers who hire out privately for all sorts of work – work that can become an eventual home business to someone who wants it, and has their own computer and the internet at home. You’ll also be given the run down of any past, present or recently discovered frauds to watch out for.Blog for cash – Blogs are simple to use, even for a first timer – and free to set up at many web host sites. It’s a very simple way to start small amounts of cash flow trickling in. You can write about anything you want on your own blog, but to make the money you have to be willing to allow advertising to run on it continuously. The way it works is for every visitor to your blog who clicks an ad link, you get paid a portion from the advertising sponsor of that ad. Some places give you ads for free to start you off, and some you have to pay for. If you have a lot of traffic, there is always the chance a company will want to sponsor you with free advertising for your blog, as well.Freelance freedom – If you have any sort of talent for writing, and a few hours during the week to devote to it, you can join an online freelance writing company and get paid to write SEO, and other types of articles – and for decent beginning writers wages. You won’t get rich overnight, but it’s a great way to make extra cash – and also a perfect venue in which to start a portfolio as a budding writer. The best news is, you can do all your work – from research to submission – from your computer, as long as you have an internet connection.This should help clarify a few things about looking for a legitimate home based business of your own. Just remember to do your research beforehand, and also keep in mind that for every honest company with an online home business proposition to offer, there are three more out there waiting to try and put one over on you.Owning a legitimate home based business is very a lot of possible. We have the answers to how you can own a home based business without putting a lot of (if any) money into it.

Tags: