EP 102: Auction Items: What Works, What Flops, and Why Knowing Your Audience Is Everything

This conversation is for informational and educational purposes only and is not professional advice.

Positioning review: Minor adjustments made. Replaced "you should start things around 35% to 40%" with descriptive framing ("a common guideline is to start around 35% to 40%"). Replaced one direct recommendation about check-in ("we always recommend you do") with experiential framing ("which tends to work well"). All Handbid references are naturally experiential, reflecting the team's firsthand observations from thousands of events. No outcome guarantees or prescriptive claims remain.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. Welcome to Elevate Your Event, the podcast that's all about taking your fundraising game to the next level. This week, the Handbid home team is bringing the heat with a fun and brutally honest look at auction items -- what works, what flops, and why knowing your audience is everything. Let's jump in.

Jeff: We got the home team. Wait, we have the best part of the home team.

Elise: That's right. The A-team of the home team.

Jeff: It's a Monday. Mondays are not big -- I say they're not well-attended Handbid in-the-office days.

Elise: In-the-office days, yeah.

Jeff: So there was a recruitment. Who's in the office? That's right -- we are. We're making it work. So that's fantastic. Well, today I was thinking about what if we talk about a few things. And one thing that we were chatting about before we went live was let's talk about auction items -- what works, what doesn't.

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: And then Elise brought up the fact that it really just depends on who's at your auction. It's not one size fits all.

Elise: Right. Yeah. I think it is know your audience. Yes. And what works one year might not work the next year.

Jeff: I'll tell you the worst way to do it, although it's probably the most common way to find auction items, is whoever gives you a donation, that's what you put in the auction.

Elise: Pretty much, yep.

Jeff: That works. You have your little auction committee meeting, right? You've sent board members out. You send your crew out to go find stuff, and they come back and they're like, I got five $5 gift cards to Subway.

Elise: Okay.

Jeff: We're going to feed the volunteers with that. I'll tell you what not to do with that -- don't put five different items in your auction for $5 each. At least bundle it into something.

Elise: Oh, no -- a drawing.

Jeff: Or a drawing. Sorry. Apologize.

Elise: Illegal words, Jeff. You're going to jail.

Jeff: That's right. I said the word raffle.

Elise: Did the legal team look at this before?

Jeff: That's right. Our attorneys are going to be all over me now. No. So there are ways to handle the small gift card things. I mean, we're here to talk about auction items in general, but which ones are hot?

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: And I would say what I've witnessed is people who don't know their audience -- they come up to you about three quarters of the way through the event and they're like, so what has no bids and what's got bids? And it's always the same answers most of the time. But the funny thing is, you look down there and they're like, well, all the wine -- in this one auction that I was at, it was all wines and trips had bids on it, a lot of bids. And then like the zoo and like Meow Wolf and the Children's Discovery Museum and all these other really cool kind of fun things had no bids on it. And I look out in the audience and all of these people are over the age of 60. They're not going to Meow Wolf. Grandpa's not going to be walking around Meow Wolf.

Elise: Absolutely not.

Jeff: And they're like, well, we got this whole family package from the Denver Zoo. Unless some lady out there is saying, I'm going to get this for my grandkids, they're just not going to bid on it. That's not what the audience kind of dictated they wanted. And so I think part of it is you need to definitely understand what it is, and then you look at last year and see what worked.

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: We have a category performance report, and it's probably one of my favorites in Handbid because it will show you by category -- if you categorize your stuff well -- it will show you by category how many bids it got and also what percentage of fair market value, again if you put in accurate data. And I would say in some cases it's pretty self-evident -- like wow, this group likes these types of items.

Elise: Yeah. Go get more of those.

Mark: You feel like -- my wife and I, we just wait until the very last second to see what has zero bids and the highest chance of us --

Jeff: Oh, you're the deal shopper.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jeff: You're the one we don't like coming to the auction, Mark. But hey, it gets bought.

Mark: That's true. That's right. The derby event, there's like no bids on the condo. I was like, all right, we're getting the condo.

Jeff: See how that worked out. Didn't you do what you pay for? No, I mean, it is true, right? And silent auction bidders are bargain hunters.

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: But I think also some of the times when we see that happen, when there's no bids, you probably didn't configure the item well. Now, there are some caveats to that. There are some items that just are never going to get bids. There's some funny math on why, and we'll talk about that in a second. But sometimes it's like, I'm going to put this bid on this condo, I'm going to start this item at $1,500, and no one's bidding on it. Why is no one bidding on it? Well, nobody is ready to spend $1,500.

Elise: Yeah. You've got to start them lower. It's like a psychological thing. And marketing too -- I think how you present things and sell them is also important as well.

Jeff: Absolutely. I totally agree. And the photo you use -- everybody is so funny. Some of these bidding systems out there, the photo is like a small little miniature thumbnail, or it's pixelated and bad. In Handbid, we're trying to make them huge. Why? Because it is all about the presentation for some of this stuff.

Elise: Yeah, you pull it up -- well, it's so funny. They'll show like the logo. I'm like, look, if you really need to give your sponsor some love, it's fine. But if this is like this gorgeous Napa Valley experience, show some gorgeous picture of Napa Valley.

Jeff: Yeah, show the vineyards. You don't want just the logo of the vineyard, of the wine, right? Maybe as item image number five of ten or something like that. Of course. Okay, well, but what about flops? There's got to be flops that you consistently see.

Elise: Gift cards.

Jeff: Okay. Well, gift cards have a different issue, right? I think gift cards -- I hear what you're saying, because a gift card for $100 is going to go for what?

Elise: $100.

Jeff: $100. Maybe if people are feeling overly generous, $105. But there's something we could do with gift cards. Let's come back to that.

Elise: Okay. Buy them at Costco, and then they're discounted, so then you're making a profit.

Jeff: Or just go get them for free. Let's come back to gift cards. But let's talk about the constant flops, and there are a few out there that I always see.

Elise: Okay. Oh, I'm curious.

Jeff: And I don't really want to pick on this particular industry, especially since you're kind of tangential to it, but it is the photography session -- the headshot session.

Elise: Well, I mean, I think you would sell headshots, right? But most of the photographers that donate, they're doing a family portrait. And they're going to give you a free 8x10 -- it's included in it. But the problem is -- and this is where math gets in the way -- they're going to donate it to a charity and they're going to say this is a 45-minute to one-hour photo session, and I'm going to give you a free 8x10, which they'd probably give to anybody, by the way. And it's worth $1,000.

Jeff: Now, is that 45-minute session worth $1,000?

Elise: It's not worth $1,000.

Jeff: Yeah, $350. Well, what do people do? They say, oh, it's worth $1,000. A common guideline is to start things around 35% to 40% of the value, so let's start it at $400, and no one bids on it.

Elise: Yep. Because no one's going to spend $400 plus what you're going to charge me for all of the images when it's all said and done. See, this goes back to the data that you put in -- the category performance report, right?

Jeff: Well, hold on. It's the donor who told you what it's worth. Okay, now why is the donor doing that?

Elise: To make it sound like a great deal?

Jeff: Get a write-off, right? I mean, if I donate something to you and say it's worth $1,000, I'm going to go tell my accountant I donated $1,000 to this charity. But what we have to do as the auction organizers is we have to know -- okay, fine, you think it's worth $1,000? I'm starting this thing at $100, period. Like, max I'm going to start. And we see this in a lot of professional services. I've seen tax returns. I've seen consulting. I saw a will-writing session.

Jeff: You know what my favorite was?

Elise: What?

Jeff: This was at a Christian school event. I thought this was so funny. It was marriage counseling.

Elise: No.

Jeff: And I'm thinking to myself, who's going to bid on that? The wife's over there nudging the husband. I'm thinking, honestly, who wants to announce to all the auction hosts that they need marriage counseling?

Elise: We've got problems. Come up and receive your phone.

Jeff: If you're wondering why my child is troubled in school, this might be it. I've seen crazy stuff. I mean, in one auction -- this was a live auction item actually -- they auctioned off a free vasectomy.

Elise: What?

Jeff: And all of the women were bidding on this, and the husbands were the ones getting pissed. It's usually the role reversal.

Elise: Yes. Don't bid on that. What are you talking about? The women are like, yes.

Jeff: Oh, that's awesome. We've seen it all. I have to tell you, there's been some fun ones. But yeah, the professional services stuff, it's hard to value, and they always overvalue. I see that with jewelry too. I'm going to donate this ring. At one point we're at an event and I want to say this ring was like $2,000 in the silent auction. I'm like, wow, this thing must be amazing. No one's bidding on it. I'm chatting with this lady, trying to talk about -- hey, she's like, it ain't worth it. It's not even worth $2,000.

Jeff: So we go online and we find this ring, and you can buy this ring online. It wasn't a diamond ring, so I didn't have to worry about all of the diamond aspects of it. But it was definitely -- it looked like the same ring. $800 retail online.

Elise: Yeah. So do you think it's important -- because in my mind, it's like a psychological thing, right? Where you get the price down. Say, for the family portrait, you sell the vision of, you know how you always forget to take the family portrait before Christmas card season starts? Now you have an opportunity to get your Christmas card done for the low price of $150. And then someone thinks, oh, $150, Christmas card. And then you get a handful of people doing that. And it's like, come on, people, it's for a good cause. And you loop them in to keep bidding it up.

Jeff: Up until -- you know what I would do? I actually saw this at a charity event. I thought this was brilliant -- just do it right there. The family portrait session, they had it over on the side. It was a big family event. It'd be like doing it at the derby event. Let's just get this over with. You're all on your Sunday best, you're at the derby. Let's just nail this now. Everybody gather over here, take the professional shots, and you just bundle it up and it's just another item.

Elise: You always should do that at our derby. That is a great idea. Oh my God. Where do we come up with these ideas?

Jeff: But why not?

Elise: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense to me.

Mark: If you say, hey, Mark, let's do a family portrait session, I'll know where that idea came from. $100. Everybody pays $100 in derby bucks or whatever. I don't know. You get your one photo.

Elise: I think it's a great idea. We can even switch out backgrounds and stuff.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. We could do -- I love it. All right. We got a green screen. This is how you create items, guys. Anybody listening to this show, you just have to sit around --

Elise: Brainstorm.

Jeff: And brainstorm. Nice. All right. So the next thing that we're going to chat about --

Elise: Hold on. Hold on. Sorry.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. Should we go back to gift cards real quick?

Elise: Oh, we didn't wrap that conversation? Well, yeah. No, I think gift cards are something that everybody gets donated, right? Every auction you go to, there's some form of gift card. And for me, of course, the $5, five sets of $5 Subway or Chick-fil-A's or whatever -- buy your volunteer's lunch. But the restaurant gift cards that maybe are higher-end restaurant, again, like you said, if it's a $100 gift card, you're getting $100 for it. Put it in a drawing. Or --

Jeff: Bundle. Bundle it. Make it an experience. Date night out. And add the movie passes too, and now you've -- if you could come up with a good mix of them, I think that could work, for sure. You just don't want the guys on date night driving all over town -- scavenger hunt.

Elise: Yes. No, we're not going there, honey. That's not the bowling alley we have the gift card to. I know it's next door to the restaurant, but we're driving 25 miles in the other direction.

Jeff: So yes, if you can get around that, I think that would work. But I mean, every auction, every event, a lot of them have a theme, right?

Elise: Yeah.

Jeff: Just sell the theme. Say, let's just stick with our derby theme for whatever. We just sell horseshoes. And the horseshoe has a number on the back of it. It's like a wine pull, right? You buy the horseshoe, and behind that numbered horseshoe is a prize. We don't know what it is. It's going to be that $100 gift card.

Elise: That's right. That's what I would do with them. And you sell them for $25 or $30.

Jeff: Yeah, maximize your -- that's what I would do with them.

Elise: Yeah. We have a lot of people that do that. Gift card tree or gift card wall, they'll call it. And you don't know what's in your envelope.

Jeff: You know the worst, though. I went to an event, and it wasn't one of our events. It was another event. But they had the wine deal, and I did that. Got this nice wine. It was really nice. And then I take it home and I bring it over to my in-laws for this dinner we're having. And the cork's all dried out and it was like vinegar on the inside of it.

Elise: Oh, no.

Jeff: Somebody donated a bottle that had been in their basement, sitting upright in the sun.

Elise: The worst.

Jeff: Yeah, those are tough.

Elise: Oh, man. Like when you do the board members' wine library package. I always tell my board members, it better be good. Don't go down in the basement and dig in the corner and find some dusty old bottle of wine that has been sitting upright and ignored.

Jeff: It was the worst. I was like, man, this cork's really not coming out that easy. And then it just crumbled all in. That was the worst.

Mark: Oh my God.

Elise: I feel like -- you know what? I'm going to bring you a nice bottle of wine.

Jeff: You feel bad for him?

Elise: I do.

Mark: Thank you. Mark, when we're done here, we actually have some in the office. You could just go pick out a bottle.

Jeff: Yeah. Okay.

Mark: All right. Bring me something.

Jeff: Okay. I appreciate that. All right. Listen, we got to wrap this show up because we've got deals to close and business to make happen. But one last thing I wanted to quickly cover is events that take place. People bring you guys in to say, hey, we want to fix our event. What are the things that you go to first to try to solve as a problem?

Elise: Well, usually we have to understand what their true problem really was to begin with. But I would say one of the biggest things we focus on is streamlining the check-in. Streamlining check-in and understanding not just what their process is and how to fix their process, but also where they do it, how they do it -- all of those things that kind of get in the way too.

Jeff: But I've been to events where it's like, okay, hold on a second -- you're going to make them walk down a dark, creepy flight of stairs with no lights on and into this door to check into this event?

Elise: Yeah. So there's a little bit of that sometimes.

Jeff: That's kind of how you did your checkout a couple years ago. How about we move -- how about we move check-in? Can we move it over here? So anyway, sometimes it's that. But yeah, and look, the one thing that I always tell people is, yes, of course we know Handbid and yes, our software technology can definitely make things a little bit more efficient. But so much of what we do is strategy on the logistics of the space, the whole event. And look, a lot of times our clients are like, you're the mobile bidding company. That is true, it is. But we have been to thousands upon thousands of events. So we have seen a lot. And I also run an event -- I've run it for 18 years. So I can tell you what works and what doesn't work. And every event is different.

Jeff: So I can give you my perspective. In a lot of cases, it's like, got too many live auction items. You should do your paddle raise before your live auction because half these people were walking out the door when you were on lot 15 of 20 on the live. And you think people are going to stand around and wait or sit around and wait and then do the ask? Probably not. But here's the problem -- we're also battling the array of consultants that are in there, and one of them could be the benefit auctioneer who has their opinion on how things should work.

Jeff: Sometimes -- I mean, we're a lot more aligned today than we were in the past. In the very beginning, benefit auctioneers hated technology and they hated mobile bidding. And so they would always say you've got to close your silent auction before you start your live auction. And the reason was, back in the day when there were bid sheets, what did people do? They'd get up, they would leave the live auction area to go back out to their bid sheets and bid. Live auctioneers, I think, are largely over that. They get that people can do it on their phones now. Some people still have those traditions, which they don't get -- you're shortening the window for people to bid.

Elise: It doesn't make a lot of sense. They're there all night. And as soon as you close your silent, guess what people do? They get up and leave.

Jeff: They leave. And now you've got to do a checkout. You have people that are wanting to leave and pick up their items because they know they won. But you're still running your event. It's just little things like that. But sometimes people listen, sometimes they don't.

Jeff: The other thing I've seen that we'll kind of step in and say -- hey, you should really shorten your program. Or I know that auctioneer likes to sell doubles, but you're selling too many doubles or triples. It cheapens.

Elise: Like I tried to get you to do the extra dinner for the --

Jeff: Well, when people know it's coming, that's the thing. If I know that auctioneer is going to sell another double, I'm just not bidding anymore. I'm like, why do I need to bid this up anymore? Because he's about to sell it to me for the price of the other dude. Got to switch it up. It gets predictable.

Jeff: So a lot of times we'll do some of that. We'll help them maybe reallocate their volunteers into roles where those volunteers would be most successful. And it's so funny because they're like, who do you want to be your greeter? Friendliest person you know, right?

Elise: Right.

Jeff: No, you don't necessarily want them to be there because --

Elise: They're talking too much.

Jeff: They talk too much. Yeah, it's like, hi. I haven't seen you. How was your week? Lines building up behind them. How was Tommy's soccer game? Oh my God, he's so good. Anyway, so that's all going on. Meanwhile, there's a line behind him. So it's like, no, you need those people somewhere.

Elise: Right.

Jeff: Maybe put them around the photo booth. Maybe not. Yeah, you need Sour Sally there just like, next.

Elise: No.

Jeff: Well -- why don't you -- your volunteers that don't like technology or don't know how to use their phone or have never turned on a computer is probably not the best person to put at check-in. Not if you're doing mobile check-in, which tends to work well.

Elise: Yeah. There's always a little bit of that. We try to do -- we do a lot to get ahead of that and have those conversations ahead of time so we're not shifting on the fly. But believe me, we've had to shift on the fly.

Jeff: And look, sometimes it's just little things that make a massive difference or an improvement. It's really simple to say, hey, if you did this or maybe if you -- how about you don't have your check-in staff sit at a table? Let's put them on high tops. Let's put them on cabaret style and let them stand and talk to somebody face to face. Check-in will run more smoothly. It's not a big change for most venues to have those types of tables.

Elise: It makes a big difference. Yeah. Check-in just goes faster, right?

Jeff: How about we put you on a mobile device? It'll be even faster. How about I take away the table and just put you out into the crowd greeting people when they walk in the door with a fistful of paddle numbers and you can do tap to pay to get them logged in and credit card on file on their way in.

Elise: Well, and I think it really adds some warmth to the experience for the guest. It really elevates it.

Jeff: Yeah. These are all little things we're trying to do to help the guest experience. And sometimes you just run into stubbornness and tradition too. We've always done it that way. Because we'll ask the question like, so why do you have 62 live auction items and only 80 bidders in your entire event? Is everybody supposed to go home with an item?

Jeff: You get an item. You get an item. Well, we've always just done it that way. All right. How many people are left when you're on lot 62? We're exaggerating a little bit, but not really. This one group printed a book, and it was a live auction book, and it was unbelievable.

Jeff: I mean, but I said, okay, so you know you have it all in the app now. It's 29 items. You have it in the app. No book necessary.

Elise: No, that's what we do. Mark, we print the book. People love that book.

Jeff: How long does it take you to make that book? Do you remember back in the 80s and early 90s, the MLS book? When they were looking for homes before Zillow and all that stuff?

Mark: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: That's good. All right. Well, hey, let's wrap this puppy up. Where's the best way to connect?

Elise: Connect with Handbid. You can go to www.handbid.com.

Jeff: That's right. You can chat with me.

Elise: Oh, Elise, you're the best.

Jeff: Well, thanks for having me, Mark.

Mark: Yeah, my pleasure.

Jeff: All right. Hey, make sure you like and subscribe. Make sure you hit that thumbs up icon so you get notified every single time a new episode drops. And until next time, happy fundraising.

All: Happy fundraising. See you guys.

Jeff: If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.