Charity auctions: What you need to know

Learn about Givebacks' auction options and how to customize them for your Experience.

Running an online auction may seem complicated, but Givebacks provides many tools and customizations to help your auction proceed smoothly and efficiently.

Types of Auctions

Givebacks offers two auction types: English style and Proxy Bidding. Learn which type may be best for you in this Knowledge Base article:

Understand: Auction Bidding Styles

Costs 

Givebacks offers a few different pricing options to help cover the costs of your fundraiser.

Item Limits  

You can add as many Auction items as you like, and you can customize how your items are organized.  

If you have a lot of items, consider putting them into categories so donors can quickly find what they’re interested in:  

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If you want to highlight a particular auction item, you can create a link specifically for that item. This article guides you through that process:

How to create a unique link for your auction items

Promoting Your Auction 

Spreading the word about your Auction to as many people as possible is the best way to ensure its success. You can share the link or QR code to your fundraiser on social media or send an email to your donors, family, and friends to get the word out:

How to Find and Share Your Experience Link

How-to: Use QR Codes to Promote Your Fundraisers

Our free Text-to-Give tool allows donors to text a keyword to 33100 and immediately receive an Experience link so they can participate and donate from their mobile device:

How-to: Promote Your Experience with Text-to-Give

If you're planning to host a live Event and auction off items in person, consider turning it into a hybrid Event by livestreaming the Auction. You can even enable Gated Livestreaming and require donors to purchase Tickets to view the Livestream:

Insights: Turn Your Fundraiser into a Live Virtual Event

Pre-Registration

Pre-registration allows donors to create a Givebacks account and save a payment method before your Auction begins. When your Auction starts, donors can place bids right away, inspiring more competition and helping you raise more funds:

Understand: Experience Pre-Registration

Bidding Process  

Givebacks helps you manage all steps of the bidding process.  

  • Donors bid directly from your Experience page.  
  • When donors place their first bid, they’re asked to enter their credit card information and create a Givebacks account. This makes it easy for donors to increase their bids later if they are outbid, and winners can be charged as soon as the auction ends.  
  • Donors can bid as many times as they want on as many items as they want.  
  • Givebacks only charges the winning bidders after the auction ends.

Buy it Now

You can allow a bidder to buy an item immediately if they don’t want to risk losing the item to another bidder. Buy It Now allows donors to skip the bidding process and purchase an item for a set price.

How-to: Add Buy It Now to Your Auction Items

Auction Gifts

If a donor doesn't win an Auction item, you can allow them to give an Auction Gift so they can still support your cause. This feature can seriously increase the amount you raise since you could potentially receive donations from all Auction participants, not just the winners: 

Understand: Auction Gifts

Outbid Notifications  

Donors automatically receive email notifications when they’re outbid, but they can also opt to receive text notifications when they place a bid or re-bid:

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Both email and text notifications include a link that allows donors to update their bids easily.  

If you choose to let our system automatically notify the winners when the Auction ends, winners who opted to get text notifications will receive both an email and a text.

Tax-Deductible Receipts

When the Auction ends, we charge winning donors’ credit cards and send them a receipt. If you include the Auction item’s Fair Market Value, the receipt also acts as a tax receipt that donors can use to claim tax deductions:

How to designate ‘fair market value’ for auction items to appear on the winner’s receipts.

If you need to verify any tax implications, contact your tax advisor.

Auction Reports

Givebacks provides several reports you can use to manage Auction details and analyze data:

Understand: Auction reports

 

Questions? Contact Givebacks Support.

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