How to Engage Donors Before, During, and After Your Auction
Keep bidders engaged before the auction opens, while the competition heats up, and long after the final bid.
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Keep bidders engaged before the auction opens, while the competition heats up, and long after the final bid.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!Who’s the lifeblood of your organization? Your supporters. Of course, every volunteer and employee and sponsor is vital to the success of your organization, but your donors are the ones providing the funds for you to do your important work. For an auction fundraiser, engaging donors should start well before bidding opens and continue after the final item has been won.
It’s all too easy to focus most of your attention on the auction itself, but some of your best engagement opportunities actually happen before and after bidding.
In this article, I’ll walk through how to engage your donors before, during, and after your fundraiser.
You can start building excitement well before your auction begins! From the moment an attendee registers to bid, you have an opportunity to introduce them to your mission, preview standout auction items, and give them a reason to come back once bidding opens.
People don’t donate randomly. They donate because they’ve learned about an organization that’s focused on a cause they care about. They donate to make a difference.
Don’t be afraid to pull at their heartstrings: make sure you communicate why it’s important for them to support your cause by attending your event and then donating. You can do this by showing pictures and videos, including informational articles about your cause, or sharing relevant data. You can tell your organization’s story on your event website, and if you gather information like their email, you can email them directly in the months leading up to your event.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you tell your story:
By telling your story alongside your auction promotion, you give supporters another reason to register, bid, and stay engaged with your cause once the auction is over. You’re “warming” them up in advance, increasing the likelihood of them donating during the event (and the likelihood of them donating more than they might have otherwise!).
During your auction, it’s important to make the bidding experience as smooth as possible. Bidders should be able to browse items, place bids, and stay on top of their bidding activities without unnecessary friction.
If there’s friction in the experience (i.e., it’s hard to find where to buy a ticket, some payment options aren’t accepted, etc), then you run the risk of supporters getting frustrated. They might even give up on attending, bidding, or donating entirely if it’s unclear or too difficult!
You may also lose their trust: if your event is poorly run, they may not trust that your organization will put their contributions to good work. A smooth event experience, on the other hand, helps build confidence in your organization.
Platforms like Auctria help make bidding easier to manage and simpler for supporters to navigate, so they can focus on the excitement of the auction instead of the logistics.
If supporters want to give beyond their bids, tools like Donorbox provide additional ways to donate directly to your cause and generate recurring support.
This is also your time to double down on telling your organization’s story!
You can tell your story leading up to your event, but the event itself is your main shot to get them over the finish line to donate. Make sure you have a compelling presentation during the event to motivate donors to give money.
You can take your storytelling to the next level with an impact video, as well. Showcase the best of what your organization can achieve as you call on your supporters to help you continue to make a difference.
Once you’ve created your video, you can easily add it to your event website or show it at your event to inspire attendees, sponsors, and donors.
One of the most effective ways to keep donors engaged with your mission after your auction is to share any data you have about the impact of their support. Nothing speaks more effectively to the impact of your event and your organization than data. And, it’s key to communicate that data in a clear and effective way.
Display your data in a clear and appealing way; graphs and other infographics or images can be an effective way to quickly communicate simplified data learnings to supporters who don’t know the nitty-gritty details of your mission behind the scenes.
Your auction can also give you useful clues about how individual supporters engaged. Looking at bidding and participation data helps you understand:
Your auction may end when the final bid comes in, but the relationships you build through it can continue much longer. Remember to engage supporters before bidding begins, keep your mission visible throughout the auction, and follow up afterward with the impact they helped create.
Tools like Auctria keep the auction running smoothly from the first item preview to the final bid. And once the event wraps up, Donorbox makes it easy to carry that momentum forward through one-time and recurring donations and ongoing stewardship.
Laurie Hochman is the Director of Business Growth and Strategy at Auctria, an event fundraising platform used by thousands of nonprofits to run auctions, galas, and community fundraisers – raising over $1.7 billion to date. Laurie has a unique vantage point: she sees what works across thousands of nonprofit events each year, spanning causes, sizes, formats, and communities.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!
