In December 2005, Associated Content offered twelve ideas for how to run a silent auction with the article Organize A Silent Auction.
Despite being nearly four years old, some ideas in the article are timeless, including:
- Set a deadline for items to be entered into the auction
- Ensure you have sufficient lighting wherever the auction is to be held.
In the four years since this article was published, silent auction software built into hand-held Communicators from IML has ensured the success of hundreds of silent auctions.
As such, we are delighted to expand on the list of ideas for how to run a silent auction:
1. Allow Anonymity: Attendees at your silent auction are there to spend money. As an event organizer, your job is to make sure they spend as much as possible. Anonymous bidding will help you do this by eliminating the risk of collusion between attendees, where friendly bidders work together to keep the final price on items down. This collusion is replaced by bidders driving up prices of items as they never know who it is they are bidding against.
2. Make Bidding Easy: Make no mistake, when attendees are at an event they are in full-scale stay-, or even va-, cation mode. This means that the more complicated it is to place a bid, the less likely it is for an attendee to follow through with a bid. Whenever possible, make placing a bid as easy as pushing a button.
3. Lose The Paper & Clipboards: Silent auction software helps attendees post bids securely and electronically. Attendees are also notified if someone dares outbid them. Ever seen a fight break out at the end of a silent auction with two attendees hovering over a bid-sheet? You won’t with silent auction software.
4. Who Needs Prizes? A recent event hosted by poverty fighting organization Robin Hood encouraged attendees to bid for no other prize than the spirit of competition. Attendees in numbered table sections used IML Communicators to outbid competing table sections, with real-time results posted for all in attendance to see. In all, this event raised over $72 million for the New York poor.
5. Have Fun: Is this the most obvious idea, most important idea, or both? The more enjoyable the event is for the attendees, the more positive energy will be created. And this, more than anything else, will encourage attendees to spend.
Discover more ideas for how to run a silent auction with complimentary case studies available on our website.
Share some of your own ideas for how to run a silent auction via a comment below.
Is the silent auction keypads rentable? What is the general cost of something like this for a 300 person gala?