Fundraising auctions are subject to the same economic laws of supply and demand found in any typical retail operation. One of the most fundamental concepts in retail economics is ‘need versus want’. Need represents things that we must have and want represents things that we would like to have.

In the case of fundraising, ‘need’ is represented by the organization holding the fundraiser but it is almost never represented by the bidding patron, which is represented instead by ‘want’. It is important to remember that your patrons are not motivated to bid on your auction items just because of your organization’s mission. They bid because they want the item they are bidding on. The word want is critical. 

Some items elicit want by virtue of their character or their creation. For example, a hand painted toy box created in your child’s 5th grade art class, or the opportunity for your child to be the ‘principal for the day’, are potentially priceless. Other items elicit want because of their uniqueness or rarity. Sports memorabilia and collectibles fall into this category, or hand made golf putters from Scotland is another example.  Finally other items elicit want simply by their price or ‘deal’ potential. Generally travel packages and discounted retail items qualify for this category.

When procuring items for your auction catalog, keep the word want in the foreground. Something to look out for, especially schools and local community fundraisers, is not to get locked into what I like to call the ‘spaghetti feed item’ rut. You’re familiar with this, it generally takes the form of a personally served dinner for 4 or 8 at the Jones’s house with wine and lots of cheer and conversation. Don’t get me wrong, donated ‘items’ like this are great and almost always bring in solid bids, but be careful not to resort exclusively to these types of contributions. I once attended an auction that carried 7 different variations on this theme and by the 3rd ‘backyard barbeque neighborhood feast’ the audience was worn out and there were few bidders for the asking.

So how does an organization create a catalog filled with a high number of quality items that elicit the desired want, while also avoiding redundancy?  My suggestion is to include a reasonable number of consignment items. Many organizations shy away from consignment believing that consignment items ‘pull’ too much money out of the pool of available money in the room, (the word ‘room’ here being figurative for the online audience as well.)

But there is very little, (actually no), evidence that this theory is true. I have spoken to many ‘experts’ and not one has ever proven that consignment items in a fundraiser reduce the overall revenue goal for the event.  It also defies logic, in that people don’t attend an auction fundraiser, whether online or live, to spend money on things they don’t want. I have lost count of the number of organizations that have reported to us over the years that their fundraiser failed to achieve its goal because the audience simply didn’t buy enough of the items up for auction. This proves my claim that if you want to reach your financial goals the critical criteria for any auction catalog is want, not consignment versus donated. You have to think of your auction fundraiser as a ‘retail’ operation. Yes the consumers are motivated more than the typical consumer but they won’t spend money unless something appeals to them, and the one thing about consignment items is that they tend to be popular, especially the unique and higher quality ones.

In summary, patrons who bid on a consignment item because they really want it is certainly better than patrons who bid on nothing because they could not find anything interesting to bid on. The question to ask yourself when planning your catalog is: --- which is better for the fundraiser?……..A bid for a consignment item where we keep only a portion of the money, or no bid at all?

I believe the answer to this is obvious.