Inside the Numbers: Spring 2026 Auction Strategies That Drove Revenue

Transcript Recording:

Leya Simmons (00:02)
Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to this is actually another data-driven, data-filled edition of our 501c drop. Today we're going to look at the information that we got from Better Unite organizations in the spring of 2026. There are some truly notable findings that I really believe is going to guide you all in.

what you're doing in your fall 2026. So a couple of weeks ago we did a session on the kind of overarching event experience, what we saw, what we didn't see. Today we're focusing just on the live and silent auction components of events, but also any silent auction or online auction that got ran on our Better Unite platform. So a couple housekeeping ⁓

pieces here. If you're joining me live, please feel free to add some questions into the chat and I will answer what I can. ⁓ I see somebody here from Maryland, somebody here from Boston. If you all join me regularly on video or if you're watching this on YouTube, I have the most spectacular background right now. This is not my usual background. I am joining you all from Hancock, Maine.

where I am spending just a couple of days. I dropped my son off at a summer camp in New Hampshire. And now I get to be in this incredible setting for our Fourth of July weekend later this week, but lots of work this week. So anyway, enjoy my background. I'm turn I'm I I actually could have filmed this from other places so that the sun was on my face, but I decided this is just too beautiful. So you all get to enjoy. Hi from New Mexico, San Antonio, Chicago. Love it. And I am loving Maine as well, Melinda. So anyway, thank you all for joining me.

Drop those questions in the chat if you are joining me live. If you are not, and you have questions when you're watching this or listening to it, please send any questions that you have to support at betterunite.com. If I don't get to your question during the session, we are going to email and follow up with you. And ⁓ if you are watching this or listening to this, I do want to note that we are going to send a white paper out to all of you that will

Have all of this data in it. So don't worry about scribbling furiously, catching all these numbers that I'm about to say and spout at you. Just catch what I am the the kind of data that we have sourced, the data that we have found in the subset of organizations that ran events on Better Unite. And will I offer my interpretation of it? It is simply one interpretation of it. So you listen.

You take what you need, you leave the rest and go back and look through it later in your own time. Let me start at the start. I'm Leya Simmons. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Better Unite. This is the 501c Drop. Before Better Unite, I spent more than a decade as a frontline fundraiser, development director, and event planner for nonprofit organizations, executive director. I wore many hats. I've personally sourced true story, the gift basket that not a single person bit on.

I have stood next to the silent auction table at 9 15 watching a single item that did not get a single bid. And I thought I just I called 11 people to get that item. So I look this is not theory, my interpretation. we're pulling from actual data. It was almost 90,000 bids across 259 organizations. And you know, honestly, I'm asking kind of one question on your behalf.

What drove the money? And I I honestly think some of it's going to surprise you. So let's get into it. ⁓ again. So let me again clarify, these events happened between January 1st of 2026 and June 15th of 2026. The numbers and the stats I'm going to tell you from about today all come from those events and online auctions. And again, this is not a one-size-fits-all situation. You're going to get to take a look at all of this data following this webinar. So

And actually let me note too that if you're listening to this, it's in the show notes. The link to the data is in the show notes. or if you're watching it, it's there too. So please take a look at this fully and consider all of the information that I'm telling you from the perspective of the vantage point of your personal organization. But to that end, ⁓ we're all gonna get all of those things. And by the way, if you cannot find that white paper.

Email again, support at betterunite.com, and we will make sure that you get it. And please give us just a little bit of grace this week. It is a holiday week. So we will get the white paper and the recording to you as quickly as we can. ⁓ I think on Thursday, it might be Monday, given the holiday weekend. So okay, let's go. Let's dive in. In the auctions we looked at this past spring, one in four items got zero bids. Not a low bid, not a like that was kind of disappointing bid.

Zero. That means nobody touched them. 24% of everything that nonprofits source, like I said, that gift basket that someone begged a boutique for, like I did, the item that took a bunch of follow-up emails and seven phone calls to pin down, a quarter of them just sat there untouched on a display table. However, the flip side of that number is one that I actually love. 76% of items sold.

That's like a three out of four sell-through rate. And that's that's like legitimately good. But that last quarter is the rub, just you know, honestly given the effort. And I and I really do believe that that's where a whole lot of our lessons live. let me set the scene a little bit more because I do think that the scale matters. so you can trust everything else that's coming after that. From January through mid to late June.

Nonprofits on our platform ran almost 400 auctions and raised $30 million through bidding, almost 90,000 confirmed bids on just over 18,000 items. The median organization raised about $52,000. The top organization raised over $1.7 million from their auction. And the revenue is concentrated.

I always kind of like to bring this around. It does reflect what we see in every other measure, every other ⁓ data set that we look at, giving USA, the fundraising effectiveness project. What we saw here, the top 10% of organizations brought in nearly half or 49% of all of the doll dollars. ⁓ and the top quarter of our organizations brought in 72% of the dollars.

So I I think that the instinct might be to dismiss this as the kind of typical big orgs have big donors. ⁓ you know, I get that. And and to to some con some extent, that's certainly true. Capacity is definitely a thing. But if you stay with me for the next like 35 minutes or so, I think that you'll see a lot of what separates the top from the middle is not just donor wealth. It's also mechanics, right? The decisions you

You make that organizations have made as they're building out their auction catalog, the decisions around timing, decisions around where and when to put their effort, these decisions that are completely free, by the way, no software sells them to you, and you're able to make a different decision next time. So that's what I'm going to work today to bring to your attention. And I want to start with the finding that kind of reframes how honestly you might think about.

I mean, I dare I say most of the event. The entire event is what I have written down here, but I'm gonna call it most of the event. Here's what we found. Live auction items were only six percent of everything that was offered, but they drove 59% of the revenue. So I'll say that again because I really do think it's one of the most important components of this episode, because I know that time is your currency as nonprofit leaders.

Six percent of the items garnered fifty-nine percent of the money. The median live item sold for two thousand five hundred dollars. The median silent op item sold for just a hundred and twenty dollars. Live auctions raised over five million dollars out of almost eight hundred items. Silent auctions raised just under four million dollars out of nearly thirteen thousand items.

So those numbers pretty really do speak for themselves, but please hear me loud and clear. I am not telling you to throw out your silent auction. Silent and online build bidding is an engagement powerhouse. It's a machine. It's where you get 13,000 people into the act of bidding. It's how you capture the 40, the 60, the $120 gifts, and they scale.

And when they're tied to an in-person event, it warms the room up for the really big moments that come with your live auction and your fundinite or paddle raise or whatever you call them. And it's also an excellent vehicle for getting those elusive and frankly, again, pointing to our data that we see all of the time, those ever receding small and micro donors. It it the silent auction is a wonderful way to get all of those folks.

engaged with your event and excited, frankly, about your mission. But we do need to look at and be mindful of the effort ratio. There's just no other way to quantify it. Your team pours often not a small amount of energy into thousands of silent auction items to raise in our data set $3.7 million. And they look at maybe a small fraction

Of or tightly curated kind of handful of live auction items, maybe ⁓ you know, fewer than a dozen per event, usually less than 10. ⁓ however, those items at less than 10, they raise significantly more money. So the strategic question that I think we all need to consider is: are we spending and are and sourcing energy in proportion to where the money is? Most organizations spend

80% of their effort on the silent auction catalog, and they treat the live auction as something that their auctioneer or consignment partner will handle. But our data tells us that the approach should frankly be exactly the opposite, exactly reversed. Your live auction lineup deserves not just more of your attention, but the majority of your attention because it earns the majority of your dollars. If you find five special

Spectacular live auction items. You and you merchandise the hell out of them. That's where I think you should go. Get your board on board and build out really unique experiences. Talk to consignment partners and source the best live auction trips that you can. Then once you found them, share them on social, provide images, videos, details, and value, and do all of that well in advance of your event. Also, do it

at the event on site. And like I can see that I've got a couple of my hello there, benefit auctioneer friends listening in today. Tip of the hat to you all. You all have been saying this for years. And I mean we have data for that backs you up just this past spring. The live auction portion of an event not only tees up the paddle raise, which is we all know where real money is typically raised, but it is also where event revenue gets a very, very big boost.

My friend George, who I was talking to earlier today. That's right. Amen. So, what were those high performing items? We sorted everything into categories and we asked, like, nearly $30 million, where did that come from? The headline news is travel and experiences were under 20% of items listed, but they drove nearly 40% of revenue per item. And these numbers combine both silent and live auctions. So the numbers for the traveling

and the experiences, it will seem a little bit lower because it does include silent auction items or excuse me, silent auction lots that were ⁓ were travel and experience as well. A travel or a getaway package averaged about $834. An experience, which was like, you know, a dinner, a wine tasting, a whiskey tasting, a VIP night, sports or entertainment tickets, those averaged $459. Now, compare the filler items.

Gift cards averaged $101. Wine and food baskets, $194. Jewelry, $276. Art, $259. So our lowest one, gift cards. A single one, single travel package does the work of eight gift cards. And let me ask you, which one took more of your effort, your team's work and time to source?

You did eight times the logistics for the same exact amount of money. And if we look at the top, like the actual top items from this spring, the number one item was an elite private, excuse me, I'm reading this for you. An elite private dining experience. It sold for $200,000. Then we had the ultimate London Music Experience that went for $110,000. A private Tuscany Villa escape, $100,000. An Augusta Golf and Masters experience.

$75,000. A private island escape in Belize, $70,000. You're hearing the trend. So I also want to pay attention to what's not on that list. No artwork. Those were our top sellers. No jewelry. Nothing that is a physical item at all. It's travel and once-in-a-lifetime experiences top to bottom. And almost all of those that I just listed were live auction items.

So again, I'm not saying throw out the gift basket. Some donors love them. And I mean, if I'm being completely honest, I when I am a guest and a bidder ⁓ at events, which I still go to often, I frankly love a good gift or gift basket. I feel like they are curated little presents full of nice surprises. When I get home, if I don't love a thing, I gift it to somebody else. And I, you know, I'm a fan. They fill out a table, they make some people happy. However,

I am saying, I've got some people that like gift baskets too. Most nonprofits do their sourcing backwards, maximum effort on the small stuff. And then like it's an afterthought on experiences where the data will tell us that the dollars, that's where they truly are. So, and I I do want to be careful because there's there's kind of this like tempting wrong conclusion in some of these numbers. When we look at like overall auction size and the per item numbers, it favors small.

like a small auction when ⁓ organizations with fewer than 25 items earned about $1,380 per item while on the other hand organizations with 100 to 200 items earned about $750 per item which is roughly half as much per item. So you could like at first glance look at that and think great list fewer items done. However, I don't think that's necessarily true because if we look at the total dollars

Then our story flips on its head. The smaller auctions raised a median of about sixteen thousand dollars. Very good still. The bigger, however, auctions, those 200 plus or you know, 100 to 200 plus items, those raised a medium of nearly $200,000. So that's more than 10 times the money. Bigger catalogs will win on total revenue, like hands down. So the truth is that.

Both things are true at once. And you kind of have to hold them together and make decisions that are right for you and your team. More items will raise more total money. And each additional item tends to earn a little less than the one before it. I think that's actually a really good way to think about it. So I don't really want to say that the lesson is list viewer items. I don't think it's that cut and dried or black and white. The lesson is don't pad your auction with marginal or crappy stuff.

Don't like add weak filler just to make the table look full because that filler drags down your per item average. And it can also pull a bidder's eye off of an item that they would have really worked for. So I think that the move is to add more strong items. Keep sourcing, but keep sourcing the quality. There is a sweet spot in there that we're all looking for. You know, it's decently elusive.

We're all going to get it right some years and not others. Grow your auction. The overarching piece of advice here though, grow your auction with things that people actually want, not with a fourth gift basket. Like don't have a specific number in mind. Have quality in mind. Scale and curation are not mutually exclusive, nor are they enemies. Are padding and those kind of like fluff.

just because we needed to, just because they gave it to us, those items are the enemy. Okay. In my notes, my next section is called The Pricing Mistakes That Cost You Money. These are, or you'll see that in the white paper. These are the unforced errors in our silent auctions where we're have we got those really well-meaning committees and and event planners and board members. They they they're out there doing the the best work they can.

But they end up leaving real money on the table. But the you know the truth of it is if we're not looking at it, then it's almost never accounted for and none of them ever know it. And they do the same exact thing again next year, and we don't ever correct. okay, mistake number one, starting bids set too high. When organizations opened their per item bidding at one to 25% of an item's value, items drew an average of 8.3 bids.

When they opened at 60% plus of their total value, they got 5.5 bids. So I I think what we see here is, and it's decently intuitive, right? A low starting bid invites people in. But opening too low realized only 50% of the value of the item. So it's like the ladder started so far down that bidders, they they just gave up.

They didn't end up actually, you know, even really climbing it. So the starting bid, again, sweet spot, according to our data, is 40 to 60% of the item's value. So somewhere, somewhere south of 60%. That got a decently healthy 5.6 bids and realized 79% of value. So those two things together. So rule of thumb, open at about half, if not maybe just a tiny bit lower. Our mistake number two, and I

Feel like this one's decently stink sneaky. Your bid increment is too big. When the increment was under, so bidding increment, when that was under 5% of the starting price, items averaged a final total all-in sale of $931. At 20% plus, so ⁓ increment at 20% plus, they only averaged $210. Same items, same kinds of items even, but

Four times the money. I really do think that the psychology here is that a big increment, it it kind of ends the auction early. There's a psychological shift that says, you know what, I'm out. If an item opens at $100 and then there's a $50 jump, and then the next bidder at $200 has to then jump to $250, you know, a lot of people are just gonna quit. So a small increment keeps two and three and four people, you know, inching each other up.

$10 or $20 at a time until one lands at a number that probably they would have never like offered up in the first place. So I think the increment should be considered like a ladder or a staircase, and smaller steps will equal a higher climb. Mistake number three, over-anchoring with the estimated value. Stay with me. I think this feels counterintuitive. Give me a minute. We looked at priceless.

Priceless items, items listed with no stated value. So in Better Unite and many other platforms, there's an ability to place priceless on this. It didn't just include priceless, this it included anything that did not have a stated value. So you would think that that would scare off many buyers, but the totally the opposite is true. Priceless items sold for a median of $210 versus $125 for items with a stated value, 68% higher. So when you print estimated value $150.

you've kind of told every bidder exactly where to stop. So if you take that number away off the printed sign, out of the magic link that you get texted when you're where where you're bidding in your phone, the one of a kind experience and the bidders will set their own ceiling. And that's almost always higher than what you would have put. I do think there's a caveat here, however,

Because we have gift acknowledgement and tax substantiation reasons, and we need to have a fair market value on record, an FMB, right? So in Better Unite, you can list that number, and this is true with many platforms. In Better Unite, you can list that number without making it visible to bidders. It's only on your back end. And sometimes it's also just needed. Sometimes it states it on the item. Of course, that you know, you use it then. I'm only saying, particularly on those like showcase experiences or the once-in-a-lifetime trips, things like that.

Consider letting those ride without a public number. And while we're on the topic of value, across the almost 9,000 items that had a fair market value assigned, which is about two-thirds of all the items that we sold that were sold through Better Unite. We didn't actually sell them. All the items that were sold or ⁓ you know, bid on through the through our system, the median winning bid came in at 70% of FMV and 29% sold at or above FMV.

So your typical item sells for about 70 cents on the stated value dollar. And roughly three in 10 beat their value outright. That I I actually do think is a b useful benchmark when you're ⁓ yeah, you know, at at at a minimum when you're setting committees expectations. And it's also another reason that you should be thoughtful about values that you print, things that you make very, very big and visible, because that number

Will absolutely be an anchor to the result. So, encapsulating, open at about half, keep the increments small, drop the estimated value where you can. Three, again, completely free decisions. The clearest relationship that we see in our whole data set is that the more bids an item got, the higher it sold. And again, another decently intuitive piece.

⁓ single bid items had a median final of $95. Items with 10 or more bids sold at a median of $215 and an average of $486. So I I this honestly I think this is kind of one of the most exciting takeaways for me in this ⁓ and and clearest, frankly, in this entire data set, what we're seeing.

Your job is not to price items. And we get this question all the time, even on our side as software company. My account managers field this question off often. You know, where do I where do I put the price? Where do I put the value? Your job is not to do that. Your job is to manufacture competition. Every lever, every refinement, all of the decisions that we're talking about here today, they should all reverse engineer to that same one thing. Get more people bidding.

against each other. The price is just a scoreboard, but it's the gamification of your auction that matters. And that is also that piece of engagement as well. Like our whole if our if the the point of this, you know, 80% of our effort with our silent auction is engagement and a way to keep everyone in our in our event, in our in our, you know, ecosystem or in our environment engaged and and paying attention.

then gamification of your silent auction is truly the way to do that. And here's how deeply engagement and gamification ran this spring. 13,230 unique people placed bids at an average of 6.6 bids each. So that that is a very big number of people bidding multiple times. So it's not a room of passive spectators at all. It's an active repeating bid crowd.

With a median bidder coming back to bid three times or more, about a quarter bid only once. So that stands to reason. That that sounds about right. And those people, that that subset, that 25%, though they're your opportunity. Those are the people who like kind of dipped in a toe, but they maybe didn't get hooked. I mean, some of them probably won on the one bid, but most of those people did not continue. Get them into two items that they care about, and now we're gonna see numbers start to move. So again,

Rather than asking what's this worth, ask how do I get five people invested and emotional and you know thinking about winning this item. Competition is your product. Everything else that you're doing, everything else is something that should serve the competition. Okay, now here's another piece for my my auctioneers that are listening in. Timing.

This is where we can really easily sabotage ourselves right at the finish lines, like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory into whatever sports analogy that you want here. Excuse me. For the online and silent auctions, nearly a quarter of all bids, about 23%, came in came in the final hour. Half came in the final four hours. And because the late bids are clearly obviously the bigger ones.

The money skews even harder. 31% of revenue in the final hour, 53% in the final four. I know that my auctioneers listening, they they know this well as they know this as well. It's about that buildup. And then what happens at the very end is where the excitement lives. Well, the same thing is true in your silent auction. A third of your auctions money or your silent auction, I should say here, a third of your silent auctions money shows up in the last 60 minutes. So I got a couple of points to make here. One.

Make the close of your auction its own moment. Don't let it end at 10 PM on a school night with no warning or just kind of quietly right before your live comes on, push out notifications. You've been outbid text messages. Your your auctioneer or your MC on the stage saying, Hey everybody, 10 minutes left. Get your phones out. Or maybe honestly, and this is something that we have at Better Unite, our account managers, and I know Kirby, our event specialists, will advise this every single time and twice on Sunday.

Leave your auction open a day after the event. That g gives you opportunity for a social and a text push. And just and we have seen in the past, our data does not reflect this. We did not see that this time, but in the past, we have seen a 30% increase in those auctions that stayed open. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that the data actually looked at that. So that might be something I go back and and pull from our from our data set for you. Okay, number two, beat the snipers. I don't know. What do I mean by that?

When a quarter of bids come in in the final hour, inevitably someone is gonna swoop in in the last second and like they're gonna come in right under the bidder. And that bidder would have happily gone higher, but they don't get the chance to. And you I know that most of you on this call have had somebody complain, like, wait, I didn't get a chance, and what happened? And we I mean that this is what happens. ⁓ that is money that you are losing to

Clock, you can auto extend or popcorn bid your auction. So, what do I mean by that? A late bid pushes the close out so that the two people who are bidding who like they both want it, they get to kind of finish the fight. If your platform offers it and you're not using popcorn bidding or auto extends, really both of those two things, those two terms mean exactly the same thing. Then you are, if you're not like doing that piece, you're donating revenue.

to whoever has the fastest fingers. And PS, Butter Unite, offers popcorn bidding, of course. And if you haven't experienced it, frankly, it's kind of awesome. Okay, number three, for my event planners and consultants, ⁓ and our anybody that's paying attention to run of show, build energy to the close, don't release it. Most events kind of like peak at dinner and then they limp along to the auction and then the fund and need close. The data is going to say the opposite is optimal. Dinner is your warm-up, the final hour is

your headline. And that is my piece from my auctioneers. I know that they all say this. Okay. So let me pull this all together, the entire playbook. Again, don't worry about writing everything down. We're going to get all of this to you in the along with the recording. Number one, put the bulk of your effort into your live auction and lead that live auction with experiences. Live items were 6% of our auction items.

Yet they accounted for 59% of the revenue. And in that set, travel and experiences out earned everything per item. So if you curate fewer, better, experience-led items and merchandise, your live auction hits hard. Number two, start your silent auction bidding at about half or 40% of the value of your items. That one's right there, stands on its own.

Number three, shrink your bidding increments. Remember our ladder or our staircase. Smaller steps will resert in a much higher climb. There we go, completing the analogy. Number four, drop the estimated value on your showcase items for sure, others where you can. So let those unique ones live in priceless. And if your platform offers it, put the word priceless on there.

And not just an absence of a of a ⁓ bear market value or an ⁓ estimated value. Number five, engineer the close of your auction. I love this word, engineer, pay attention to it, science it, figure it out so that a you b because you understand that a third of your money comes in the final hour. So you can send notifications, you can send text messages, you can include language in the script.

Capitalize on the urgency and also use auto extend. And finally, number six, remember what you're building. You are not, none of you here on this call, none of us in the nonprofit world, we are not pricing experts on items and goods for sale. What you are and can become an expert on and what you should build is a competition, a game.

Every decision that you make should get more people bidding in every capacity. And the overarching truth here, and it's just it's just the truth, is that none of this is a magic wand. And nor nor does all you know, every single word that I'm saying, all of it apply to all of you. The top 10% of organizations who ran auctions did still get half the money raised by all of them. A small

like rural organization and a major urban area hospital foundation are just not running in the same race, even though both are so very important for our communities. But every like piece of advice and every every piece of data that we're supporting, all of the suggestions that are supported by our data, everything I've laid out for you here today, again, all of this is free.

All of those decisions that you make around this, none of this is required by any software. You can't pay for it. But each of them is what I truly believe the middle of the pack group is leaving out. So you don't really need a bigger donor list to run a smarter auction. You need a sharper auction selection and a better engineered close.

So I'm gonna leave this conversation. I'm actually I see a few questions in here, so I'm gonna get through some of those, but I'm gonna leave you here where we started. One in four items got zero bids this spring. And a very tightly small curated six percent of items, all live auction items, drove well over half the money. That is a design story, and you have control of that. So again, we've turned this all into a white paper.

takeaway with the numbers so you can hand it to your committee, your auctioneer, your board chair, that that person that's like insisting on the gift card wall. It's linked wherever you're listening. So I am ⁓ I I love the auctions. I encourage all of you to try one or multiple, which we saw several organizations do this past spring, ⁓ this fall. And and I would love to hear how they go. I would really like to hear how they go. This 501c drop, I hope, becomes a community

where we are kind of practitioners in the work and ⁓ seeing what works. All right, let me come in here and see if I can grab some of your questions and answer a few of those. What percent over standard rental, Airbnb on the water, sleeping eight could we expect? That I don't know. I don't know a very specific ⁓ piece like that, Melinda.

I think that that would be something that ⁓ you you could run the math on, frankly, by just knowing what is typical and typically received there. You know, sometimes this is where consignment pieces, when you're looking for travel and experiences, to consignment companies can truly help out because you can sell multiples of them and ⁓ they have done this kind of math that consignment companies have to make sure that you're actually going to get returns and see where those are.

⁓ so I would take a look at me, you know, that's one piece of advice there. If you've already got what you're what you're describing here, ⁓ I think that well, first of all, I would also say that maybe not putting an estimated value on it. So know where your kind of floor is, but don't don't talk about that piece, right? Like mm you know, you're you want to ⁓ you want to grow the rental, the Airbnb on the water, into a full experience.

that people really want to have. So focusing on the feelings of it and the emotion of it as opposed to just the functional, you know, kind of like this is what it is and this is what you could get if you just went to Airbnb, but focus on that piece of it. ⁓ sorry, I don't have a very good answer for that one, but but it's a good question. And I'm sure that the rest of us we can all kind of talk about this. Is there a size of catalog in relation to goal for fundraising? I mean, I think this is Jim, the question is in that this there's like that sweet spot where

We want to ⁓ you know, have as few auction items, well, actually, sorry, we want to have as many auction items as we can, but we want them all to be very quality, very exciting items. So I I do think still that the overarching piece of this is feel good about the items that are in your auction. Not not putting up auction items just because or because you know your board chair's son painted this painting. I know those can be really awkward conversations and sometimes they just have to go in, but the goal would be

Just keeping in mind that everything that you put into your silent auction that you don't feel good about, that is a quality item, potentially takes attention away from the things that can raise money for you that you do feel good about. So I'm reframing it a little bit and not really answering your question, but that is what our data set will tell us. ⁓ any suggestions for airline tickets and or ways to avoid fees for point transfers? That is beyond my scope of work.

I apologize, but ⁓ Marla, if anybody listening has an answer to that, please send those to support at betterunite.com. And Marla, I will make sure that you get the answers to that question. ⁓ do you ever like to close the silent auction before the live auction by asking patrons to bid on their smartphones before we start the live auction? I, George, I've seen this done many ways. And ⁓ again, previous data sets that we've looked at will tell us.

That leaving your silent auction open after the event itself can can significantly increase the revenue that you receive. It also accomplishes the goal of not really having an on-site checkout, which is which is sometimes less than ideal because ⁓ you know, our our attendees to our events feel so good. They they're the hero of the story, right? They've given money to your cause.

They are now involved and invested. And we, you know, having them leave, talking about, you know, splitting payment for a silent auction item or, you know, wrapping up something, that's rarely good. If it can be truly and exclusively they're leaving just with the item, great. but but there's often somebody that's like, no, I need to change my credit card or pay by check, or then they're looking at numbers and you know, and then it's just like stuff to do. So I, you know, there's a part of me that thinks that. There's also the part of me that knows that.

It is definitely nice to not have to deal with fulfillment post event. And for auctioneers, right like you, you having the silent auction quiet when you're starting your live auction can be helpful. What I have seen is I've seen people pause the silent auction while the live auction is happening so that people are not on their phone looking through, you know, buying raffle tickets and, you know, getting outbid notifications, which they would be, right? So I think that could actually be a very smart move.

is to pause the silent auction. But I, you know, I I just think that there's several component parts and there's no one size fits all answer to that question. ⁓ What are your thoughts on consignment items? Love them, think you should use them. Absolutely, 100%. These are companies that their job is to do the hard work that you're trying to do. Yes, you're not going to get like, you know, a complete donation of trip, you know, tickets to Wimbledon and an air flight in an airfare and all of that.

Great, sure, that sounds good, but that's really difficult to come by. These ⁓ consignment companies have made a study of what works. do your research on them, of course. Make sure that you're using reputable ones. We do have, and I see somebody else asking about this, the auction item shop within Better Unite. So when you go into your auction, the setup, there is the auction item shop. We offer a couple of different auction consignment companies and what they offer.

⁓ and so go take a look in there. ⁓ but there are other wonderful consignment companies out there. Just make sure that you're block talking to a reputable one. And but I I I think that you I I strongly think that this is a very good opportunity for ⁓ nonprofit organizations to really boost their live auction offerings is through consignment companies. And there's a couple as well that will offer things for silent auctions also.

and you can send an email to us and we can get you those names for you as well. there's the auction item shop. So there you go. And if you want to know more about the auction item shop, support at betterunite.com or connect with your account manager. We can tell you all about those. Any suggestions for art-focused auctions? Okay, it's hard. And I've been on committees for ⁓ art focused events and they're hard. It the fact is that the people don't buy art on a whim.

In general, it's just not the case. And that they're very personal decisions when you purchase them. So what I would suggest for that, if that's what you're doing, is that you send out your catalog of live auction items way in advance of your event, as much notice as you can, maybe even have a viewing party for the for those art auction pieces prior to the event.

Because it is very rarely, you know, so much of a live event is an emotional decision. Donating, we know for sure, is first emotional, then financial. That's, you know, across the board. So when you ask people to make a purchase of something that is often an investment and something that is going to hang on the wall of their house, giving them time to sit with it, think about it, et cetera, I do think can be very helpful.

But also just go in knowing that that is that art is notoriously one of the more difficult things to sell in a live auction, absent being at Christie's or Setheby's and actually being at an art auction where people came to purchase art. But even then they send out Christy's and Sethebees, they're gonna send those catalogs out months in advance so that people do their homework and they can figure out what they're willing to bid on those things. ⁓ so yes, those can be tough.

And we do have a list of consignment resources, which we can send over to you, Melinda. As a matter of fact, I'll make sure that's ⁓ included in show notes so that you all can have that. Okay, I got through all the questions, which almost never happens, and we have two minutes left. So let me just say thank you to all of you for spending some time on this holiday week with me. And I want to make sure that you all see my email address, Leya at betterunite.com. I'd love to hear how your auctions this fall go.

From if you employ any of these tips, if they work for you, I would always love to hear that. So ⁓ please send any information my way or things that you think that we should cover next time. That's another piece I would love. If you've got questions about Better Unite or auction item shop or auction consignment companies or wonderful auctioneers, a couple of tips of the hat to the folks in the crowd, support at betterunite.com can provide that information to you or put you in touch with touch, excuse me, with your account manager.

and next week I have such an exciting webinar heat up for you with Floyd Jones, one of our biggest voices in the nonprofit space. He is the founder of Back Black. He does such interesting work talking about data around how Black-led organizations do so much work ⁓ and how they are really a different animal, and their approach can and should be different. But

That's Floyd. He is talking to us, however, ⁓ next week about community as catalysts, about organizing and really kind of I know we've done a stretch of our 501c drops around fundraising. This is about friend raising and community raising and ⁓ the awareness of our collective and frankly all of the things that brought me into nonprofit work in the first place. So we'll be talking with Floyd next Wednesday. So usually we're Tuesdays at 1 30 Central. Next week is it will be Wednesday, July 8th, because

Back Black is doing a webinar Wednesday. So we're gonna be their first one. And our 501c drop will be on Wednesday, July 8th at 1:30 Central. You can scan the QR code that is on the screen. And if you're listening, just take ⁓ the next episode or take a look and you can watch the recording. If you have questions about Better Unite, I talked about Better Unite quite a bit. It was a little bit inadvertent. I didn't quite mean to, but it's ⁓ good things.

Then ⁓ and you want to take a look at BetterUnite, scan that and sign up for a demo. And we would love to show you around. you can also request a demo by going to support at or excuse me, sending an email to support at betterunite.com or going to betterunite.com and click the button that says request a demo. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope everyone here has an incredible Fourth of July holiday week, weekend, but week leading up to it as well. Take

Good care of yourselves and take exceptional care of each other. Go build an incredible auction and let's all go do some good. Have a great day. Bye, y'all.