Silent Auctions

Chloe Colquitt

Client Service Manager

“Our award-winning mobile bidding technology is simple, fun, and easy to use, bringing silent auctions to life to help your charity raise more during live and online fundraising events.”

SILENT AUCTIONS
OVERVIEW

A silent auction allows supporters to silently bid on items. Through mobile bidding, supporters can bid from their phone, computer, or tablet. This paperless option makes it easier to collect and manage bids while adding a professional touch to your live or online silent auction.

OUR AWARD-WINNING MOBILE BIDDING TECHNOLOGY IS SIMPLE, FUN, AND EASY TO USE

OUR SOLUTION TO
SILENT AUCTIONS

Mobile bidding is Givergy’s bread and butter; it’s how we got started in the fundraising technology space and still accounts for 80% of the services we provide.

Our bespoke mobile bidding technology is tailor-made to meet your needs. We understand no two campaigns are the same and nor is any silent auction, which is why our bespoke mobile bidding technology offers the flexibility to customize bidding modes, branding, and more.

Benefits of mobile bidding:

  • Guests can easily browse and bid on favourite auction items
  • Simple login and registration
  • Monitor bids and activity using ‘My Bids’ functionality
  • Receive outbid text notifications to maximize funds raised

We have a range of bidding modes to help you maximize funds raised from your silent auction:

  • Standard bidding gives supporters the ability to bid on any item as many times as they like. The bidder can remain anonymous if desired and use their ‘My Bids’ area to stay updated on progress
  • Max bidding allows a donor to place a maximum bid on a specific item. The system will then bid on their behalf, increasing by the pre-set bid increments each time they are outbid until it surpasses their maximum bid. They will then receive the out-bid notification to bid again
  • Sealed bidding displays the number of bids received on an item, but ‘seals’ the name and amount submitted by the highest bidder. Read more here.

You can choose the type of bidding mode for each item. If you are unsure which bidding mode fits best, our expert team is happy to advise.

SILENT AUCTIONS
KEY FEATURES

Straightforward Guest Experience

Live Reporting

Secure Payment Processing

Live Leaderboards

Expert Support

Reliability

TESTIMONIALS FROM
SILENT AUCTION CLIENTS

“This is our fifth year working with Givergy and every year, we raise more and more money. We would not consider using any other platform. It is so simple and easy to use. New features are added every year, which makes the platform even better. Thanks again to the Givergy team.”

Silent Auction Co-Chair, AIM for SEVA Canada

“Givergy makes online auctions easy and fun! Event participants seem to enjoy the auction and the automatic prompts to bidders helps raise more funds. The team is amazing to work with. If anything comes up they are quick to respond, helpful and attentive. I strongly recommend this platform for online events!”

Fundraising Manager, Radius Child and Youth Services

“‘A wonderful experience with consistent and high quality support, both electronically and by chat or phone. Made issues easy to solve. System is intuitive and easy to use… so much so we are planning our second program in November of this year!

Fund Raiser, Food For The Poor Canada

READY TO
GET STARTED?

Simplify all aspects of your silent auction with our award-winning mobile bidding technology. Click here or call +1 236 326 6253 to learn more and get started today!

SILENT AUCTIONS FAQS

In many cases, more is not always merrier and from experience, you want to use the number of guests in the room/expected online reach as a guideline to how many you should include. 10% of your guest attendance is the recommended amount of auction items to include and so, for a room of 250 guests, aim to have around 25 auction items. Enough to give a good selection, but not too many to discourage any competitive bidding.

This community article details all of the required information needed to set up an auction item on the Campaign Management System (CMS). As a general rule the minimum you will need to gather is; a title, a description, pricing and an image.

Selecting the right auction items is extremely important and can make or break your fundraising efforts. Consider your guest demographic; who are you guests, how old are they, are they predominantly male or female and do they have any common interests? These are all questions you should ask yourself before setting out to source your items. The best way to source your silent auction items is to reach out to the masses, whether that be your database of supporters or a committee. This is an effective way to get an amazing array of auction items for free. Another option is to reach out to companies, restaurants, organisations etc. and see if they would be willing to offer a prize. You won’t always be successful, but often when it’s for charity it will be considered.

An efficient way of allowing your guests to donate items directly to your fundraising website is by utilising the ‘Donate Item’ tab. Once your fundraising website is set up, this tab can be added where donors can fill in all the fields that you would normally complete, including uploading an image of the item. Once the donor completes the process, the item will appear as inactive within the Campaign Management System for you to review and accept / decline. At this stage you are also able to make any relevant edits before the item is launched into your auction.

Yes, Givergy can provide you with a variety of incredible auction items and experiences. A consultation with our in-house auction item specialist will allow you to carefully select items that are specifically sourced to appeal to your audience. These range from memorabilia to experiences, holidays and art work. For more information click here

Our default bid mode is Silent + Max Bidding, and in general, the one we recommend using. However there are other bid modes available, detailed below:

  • Silent Auction: standard incremental bidding
  • Silent + Max Bidding: standard incremental bidding with the additional option for guests to enter a Max Bid (the highest amount they would be willing to pay) and the system will bid for them to that amount.
  • Buy It Now: allows you to sell a set quantity of items at a fixed price. 

Sealed Bidding: allows guests to enter anonymous bids without knowing what the top bid is. The highest bids win depending on the quantity set. To learn more about Sealed Bidding, see Sealed Bidding

Target:
$5,000

Raised:
$7,400

RESOURCES FOR
SILENT AUCTIONS