If “Video Killed the Radio Star” more than 25 years ago with the birth of MTV, then similarly, the online auction could be making the silent auction a thing of the past. This is the message that Jon Carson, CEO of online auction platform cMarket, has for nonprofit event planners. Auctions have long been a part of the fundraising effort,” Carson says. “Live auctions are alive and doing fine, but silent auctions are broken.”

There are several reasons why silent auctions are not the most effective fundraising practice. The company points to a number of confounding issues, such as bidding limitations, logistics requirements, limits on the marketing value of items, and a lack of best practices data. One of the most interesting limitations is the lack of “competitive arousal,” a condition that Carson describes as “when things get silly before it [the auction] closes.”

Clearly, a live auction still has this last-minute frenzy built in, as bidders pay rapt attention and vie to get their bids in while in direct competition with one another. A silent auction, however, dilutes the frenzy; conversation, entertainment, and food compete for attention with the items up for bid. “The clipboard doesn’t exactly get up and follow you around the room,” Carson says. The online auction changes this, allowing colleges and universities to tap into their unique resources, target a wide range of bidders, and use tools that eliminate the need to lug items for bidding to and from the event venue.

Targeting alumni; drawing on resources

“The Internet removes the barriers of time and geography,” says Carson. “This is particularly important for higher education, because alumni are dispersed.” As one might expect, the Internet can allow a fund-raising auction to reach a much larger audience of alumni, including those who could not travel to a silent auction event and those who could not make it because of time constraints and/or scheduling difficulties.

Obviously, the fundraising potential of an event increases dramatically if one can target bidders in several different time zones and walks of life, rather than simply those who can attend an on-site event.

There is another important reason why online auctions are a valuable tool for colleges and universities to employ. “Alumni typically go dark in giving for 10 years,” notes Carson. During this period of getting settled, establishing careers, and perhaps starting families, young alumni can lose the connection with their alma mater, and some may never regain the bond they had with the institution when they were students.

This has always been a problem that development professionals have had to deal with; the difference with the current crop of young alumni, however, is that this generation is exceedingly comfortable using the Internet to communicate and connect. Institutions of higher education can capitalize on this comfort by hosting online auctions.

Young alumni can “attend” this kind of auction at virtually any point in their day, regardless of geography, and maintain their relationship with their university. If the auction is also well stocked with items for bid in a range of prices, the young alumni may also be enticed to bid and buy, starting a lifelong habit of contributing to their college or university.

“Higher education has an advantage” when it comes to getting people to attend an online auction, Carson says. He notes that colleges and universities are “the most advanced nonprofits at developing an email list.” Institutions of higher education tend to be very deliberate about maintaining contact information for alumni and friends of the institution, making it easy to send invitations to an online auction.

Additionally, “alumni participation tends to be high,” Carson says. With colleges and universities adept at contacting large percentages of their alumni, and with large percentages of those alumni willing to participate, Carson says the demand side is healthy for online auctions.

Managing items

If the demand side for an online auction benefiting higher education is robust, then what about the supply side? Obviously, if many bidders are attending an online auction, they will expect to find a variety of items to bid on, and Carson finds that higher education excels in this area as well.

Higher education “has a ready ability to develop items,” Carson says. Development professionals hosting an online auction can draw on professors and staff at the university to create unique affinity items and experiences for their auction catalogs. For example, a “be an assistant football coach” experience could allow the high bidder to come to campus, hang out with the football coaching staff, participate in practice, or even be on the sidelines during a home game.

However, even the most well-connected development professional can find the creation of a complete auction catalog draining, and this is where companies like Carson’s cMarket can help. Through cMarket’s cMarketplace, participating institutions have access to thousands of items available on consignment to add to their auction catalogs

For example, universities that want to add a $10,000 dream vacation to Paris to their catalogs could find it on cMarketplace with an initial value of $4,000. A simple click adds it to the university’s auction catalog with a minimum bid of $4,000; if it sells, the university will pay only $4,000 for the trip and can pocket the rest for its fundraising efforts.

Carson explains that cMarket also has a number of tools and pieces of information to make online auction creation simpler for colleges and universities. Through cMarket Auction Manager, universities can build their own auction website, and an email engine allows users to import their email lists and send notifications about the online auction.

Additionally, “we now have very interesting data about item sell-through rates and bidding rates,” says Carson. “The data is really key; we’ll give them the data roadmap even if they don’t sign up [with cMarket].” This allows universities to better determine the scale of online auction they need to meet their fundraising goals.

Overall, cMarket has helped colleges and universities raise some $1.8 million for their charitable goals. Online auctions, Carson says, “take the auction from an art to a science.”

Contact cMarket at www.biddingforgood.com/ or www.cmarket.com/

Three more tips for a successful online auction

Jon Carson, CEO of cMarket, offers the following tips for online auction success:

 

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