Canada WHO
Since 1979, English Touring Opera has sought to make their classic artform more accessible through touring outstanding live performances, facilitating educational programmes and supporting community projects. English Touring Opera reaches over 50,000 people per year and offers tremendous support for children with special educational needs and people with dementia through specially commissioned opera’s and creative workshops.
WHAT
English Touring Opera were meant to host a gala for their 40th anniversary in 2020. This, of course, was unable to take place and English Touring Opera found themselves with a fundraising gap and facing a potentially expensive return to live touring as venues limit their capacity. Hoping to raise money to better prepare themselves for this return, English Touring Opera did something they had never done before and decided to run an online auction.
HOW
English Touring Opera used Givergy’s online auction facility for their campaign and hosted the auction for a period of two weeks. The two week auction was launched with a simple zoom meeting as English Touring Opera’s fundraising team were weary about the fatigue surrounding online events. For this reason they tailored their campaign to be social media focused, relying on network sharing to connect people to the auction.
RESULT
Despite never having held an online auction before and being unsure of what to expect, English Touring Opera still raised a fantastic £10,000! This tangible result will go some way toward bolstering English Touring Opera’s preparations for the return of live touring. However, through running Givergy’s online auction English Touring Opera may have also discovered something intangible. By pivoting their fundraising efforts to an online space and using a visually appealing, easily sharable, fundraising page English Touring Opera opened the door to a new audience. They found 25% of bidders on the auction were actioning their first financial contribution toward the charity, demonstrating the power and potential of social media to open doors for sharable online fundraising.
TOP TIP
“Get you committee on board throughout the entire process! Their network can be especially useful for sourcing the most effective auction items. Also, we have seen the potential of the online space and engaging the audiences there. It will be important to think about how we continue to interact with our new online audiences and keep them interested moving forward.”
“The website is very smooth and I had great support throughout the process. The back end of the platform was easy to use and the front end has very smart visuals. Especially considering the demographic of English Touring Opera, the ease of use was so important. I would definitely recommend the Givergy platform.”
