Jump into the lively world of auctions and fundraising with Roger Devine, co-founder of SchoolAuction.net. Hosts Alysse Bryson and Libby Sundgren explore innovative fundraising ideas, practical strategies for organizing successful events, and industry insights that help both seasoned and first-time organizers “win the game of events.” From chicken bingo to dessert dashes, Roger serves up a playbook packed with actionable tips (and hilarious stories) that will level up any community fundraiser.
Resources Mentioned:
- Roger Devine: LinkedIn
- SchoolAuction.net: Website, Instagram, Facebook, X
- Alysse & Libby: Bios & LinkedIn
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Roger Devine [00:00:00]:
Allow me to introduce you to chicken bingo. Chicken bingo happens when you take a big old piece of plywood. It needs to be, like, at least 5ft by 5ft, divide it up into squares, put numbers on the squares. Like it’s a big bingo card. You bring that to your event. You have it in a corner of the room. You’ve got a little chicken wire fence up around it. In the back of the room, somebody has brought a live chicken, and they’re slowly feeding it lettuce throughout the evening.
Roger Devine [00:00:26]:
Meanwhile, people are coming up to your chicken bingo thing and buying spots on the board. And then at the appropriate time, you take the chicken out, you put him down on the board, and you see where he poops.
Libby Sundgren [00:00:37]:
I’m from the country, so I love that game.
Roger Devine [00:00:41]:
Yeah.
Alysse Bryson [00:00:41]:
You are really glowing.
Libby Sundgren [00:00:43]:
I know.
Alysse Bryson [00:00:44]:
Really did just perk up quite a bit.
Libby Sundgren [00:00:45]:
That’s so fun. Where’s the bird gonna bomb?
Roger Devine [00:00:48]:
We don’t know exactly. Ah, yeah. And when you. And when you were talking about the goat taking on the stage.
Libby Sundgren [00:00:55]:
Oh, yeah.
Roger Devine [00:00:56]:
Like chicken bingo.
Alysse Bryson [00:00:58]:
Speaking of animal, welcome to Beats Working Winning the Game of Events, where we share stories and strategies to turn any event or life moment into something unforgettable.
Libby Sundgren [00:01:10]:
Events are wild, and the people who work in them are some of the most resilient humans on earth. If you know, you know.
Alysse Bryson [00:01:18]:
So come with us behind the curtain for a look at their most memorable experiences.
Libby Sundgren [00:01:23]:
As they say, the show must go on. So let’s get on with the show.
Alysse Bryson [00:01:33]:
Welcome back to another episode of Beats Working Winning the Game of Events. And we are super excited for today’s guest because, Libby, we haven’t. We haven’t covered this topic yet on this.
Libby Sundgren [00:01:44]:
We haven’t. And it’s will speak to you whether you are a. An event organizer, an event attender, all realms, whether you’re professional or just kind of in your personal life, an event organizer.
Alysse Bryson [00:02:01]:
So I’m super excited to introduce today’s guest, Roger Devine, one of the founders at School Auction.net, a company that equips schools and nonprofits with the tools they need to run successful fundraising events. Let’s be clear, a lot of events involve fundraising of some kind, whether it’s silent and online auctions, Tegalas and golf tournaments. Beyond software, Roger brings boots on the ground experience, having personally chaired dozens of fundraising events for causes close to his heart. Education, veterans, and community resilience. Whether it’s building schools in rural communities or pairing service dogs with veterans, Roger lives the motto every event can and should make a Lasting impact. Roger, welcome to the show.
Roger Devine [00:02:55]:
Thank you for the lovely introduction. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while.
Alysse Bryson [00:03:01]:
We paid him to say that. We paid him to say that. Checks in the mail, Roger. Checks in the mail.
Roger Devine [00:03:06]:
Fantastic.
Alysse Bryson [00:03:07]:
You know, I love what you do, and I’m so excited to jump into today’s conversation because over the years, Libby and I have produced hundreds of events, and so many of them. Libby involved fundraising like they do, and.
Libby Sundgren [00:03:21]:
Just supported and sponsored so many nonprofit events and go to school auctions. And so many of our. My friends, you know, have kids in school right now. And so people are always sharing links to their auctions and sharing, like, what they’re up to. So it’s definitely something that is very close to our hearts and experiences.
Alysse Bryson [00:03:45]:
So, Roger, I would love to know, like, how did you even get started? Like, what led to you launching school auction.net where did it all begin?
Roger Devine [00:03:57]:
Parenthood.
Alysse Bryson [00:03:58]:
All good stories start there.
Roger Devine [00:04:00]:
Yeah, starts with parenthood. By the time my kid gets into second grade, I have. At that point, I’ve had a nice career in software, Internet services. Got laid off when he was in second grade. So I decided to become PTA president.
Alysse Bryson [00:04:18]:
You know, as one.
Roger Devine [00:04:19]:
As one has time.
Alysse Bryson [00:04:21]:
Little free time.
Roger Devine [00:04:22]:
Yeah, exactly. And I was PTA president for a couple of years at his school. And during that time, we. We had a fundraising auction every. And as PTA president, I was kind of looking at. Talking to the team about how that happened, etc. And I said, you know, there’s got to be software out there. I’m a software guy working software for a long time.
Roger Devine [00:04:44]:
Let’s go find the software that’ll help do this. And sure enough, there was some software out there. There were. Some of the early players were out there. Auction, pay, maestro, soft, etc. Really did not like their business model, however, really hated the business model because, you know, when you’re thinking about how software companies get paid for their work, and they should get paid for their work, you know, cost something to write software, maintain it, all of that. I’m willing to pay a license fee for software. Absolutely.
Roger Devine [00:05:15]:
But at that point with our fundraising auction, I was not willing to pay a percentage of what we raised. Absolutely not. You know, I understand that this is the way banks price their services. So if we’re going to accept credit cards for processing, that was going to come with a fee structure that was a percentage of what you raised. But I didn’t have to add anything on top of that, as a software guy, I just was like, no. Why does the software company get entitled to dip their finger in the stream there? It’s like, get out of the way. You’re having me produce my auction. Get out of the way.
Roger Devine [00:05:50]:
I don’t want to pay you a percentage. I’m looking around and not liking what I’m seeing. And then I got introduced to a couple of other guys here in Portland. We’re in Portland, Oregon. Auctions are a thing down here. Auctions been a big thing down here and they had just built something for their kids school. And I was referred to them by some people at the local schools foundation, said, you guys should talk to each other. And then they found out that I had done software marketing and sales before and they said, oh, hey, we’ve got.
Libby Sundgren [00:06:23]:
A job for you.
Roger Devine [00:06:24]:
Hey buddy, want to start a company? And yeah, the rest is history. That was about 20 years ago. We started a company, did things, you know, did things a little bit differently. In the beginning, you know, we did not charge any sort of a performance fee. We had an a, we had a flat fee model where you would give us some money. I got again, I got to pay my programmers. But then I was done. You know, the idea was we were incorporating the concept of enough into our pricing.
Roger Devine [00:06:50]:
I have to make some money. I don’t have to make all the money, of course, you know, I can make a reasonable money amount of money and then I can stop. Back then when we started it was really all about the galas. That was about all we were supporting was a gala with a live auction, maybe a silent auction there. Silent auctions had paper bid sheets. This was a while back. And as we can, you know, as we grew, we realized what you, what is a truism in software development which is that you’re never done, you’ve never built the car. You know, car is constantly being modified as you are driving it down the road.
Roger Devine [00:07:24]:
And so we added in online bidding, mobile bidding, the ability to golf tournaments, the ability to run thons and other kind of fundraisers through it. And given that we were selling on an annual subscription basis, this meant I could go to a PTA and give them a fundraising toolbox they could use all year long on their three or four different fundraisers, only one of which was going to be a big gala because duh, they’re a lot of work, right?
Alysse Bryson [00:07:50]:
So much work.
Roger Devine [00:07:51]:
Yeah. But we know how to win this game, right? We do. And so we, we started the company, started working with groups, primarily school based groups, so lots of PTAs, PTSAs, HSAs then booster clubs, young life chapters, etc. But from the beginning, we were also dealing with non school related local grassroots charities. I could go after and try to sell our software to the American Cancer Society or the American Red Cross. That’s not where my heart lies. My heart lies with the groups in our communities whose impact is really important, but may be localized. And events really, really work well for those types of organizations because many of their supporter base is, is going to be located in a geographic region.
Roger Devine [00:08:43]:
We want to get together, we want to rub elbows, we want to have fun. So that’s kind of been our orientation going forward. Like, you know, if you’re a big nonprofit, okay, I’ll do business with you, fine, whatever. But if you’re a little nonprofit, welcome in. I’m really happy. Come on, let’s, let’s get going. So, yeah, that’s sort of the origin story.
Libby Sundgren [00:09:02]:
Every organization that I have ever worked with has done an event of some kind and it always. A fundraising event obviously is a great idea, but, and a necessary thing, but also I think comes with so much, so much work and so many things you just don’t think about until you’re, until you hit it or you’re in the middle of it. So what are some of the most important first steps that you think an organization, whether it’s a community organization, a school, a church, whatnot should take when they’re planning a fundraising event from scratch?
Roger Devine [00:09:42]:
The first thing to do is to do some sort of thinking about how much money you’re going to be able to raise. Very difficult if you’ve never done an event for a particular organization before, but you got to get some sort of ballpark. Is it going to be $1000? Is it going to be $10,000? Is it going to be $100,000? There’s different, there’s different decisions you make right up front based on what you think your capacity could be. If you think you have a community that can support a live auction at a gala, then I will tell you that the single most important thing to spend money on is an auctioneer. They’re absolutely event professionals who bring in usually three to four times their fee in marginal revenue out of your live auction alone. It’s the, definitely the one place to start. Find the benefit auctioneers in your, in your area. Don’t settle for the local weatherman at the TV station, which happens.
Roger Devine [00:10:43]:
And really if your auctioneer is really somebody who only sells cattle and tractors most of the time, but has volunteered to do your charity event, you Might want to think about finding somebody who does charity events more often. They’re a little bit different, a little specialized. After that, the next most important thing to get started on. You know, regardless of whether you do or don’t hire an auctioneer, the next and most important thing, I would say, is get your software nailed down, because you’re going to have a long planning period. If you’re going to pull this off right. You usually need six, seven months to get everything going. You can pull one together faster, but if you’re an organized group and you’re going to behave like professionals, you give yourself some Runway. And being able to configure the software as you go, being able to enter things as they trickle in, your ticket sales, your item procurement, et cetera, being able to do that as it trickles in, rather than needing to do it all at once in the last week before the event will save you a lot of stress.
Roger Devine [00:11:54]:
Yeah. And then after that, you have to figure out the other things that must be scheduled, so venues, you know, other support personnel, etc. But the big two are, if you think you’ve got the capacity to do a live auction, go get an auctioneer. And if that wipes out your budget for the. For the rest of it and you have no money for software, well, I’ll get you next year. Okay. But go get the auctioneer first and software second, because then, of course, if you can hold a live auction at your event, you can hold a special appeal. And one of the things that we know from our side, from looking at 20 years worth of data, is that if you can manage to pull off a special appeal or a direct ask, or a fund, a need, or whatever it is you want to call it, if you manage to pull one of those off at your event, that’ll be alone worth about half of the money you raised that night.
Libby Sundgren [00:12:50]:
That is wild.
Roger Devine [00:12:51]:
Yeah.
Libby Sundgren [00:12:52]:
Because that’s not. You’re not buying any. I mean, well, you. You’re funding things, but you’re not going home with a tangible item in your pocket.
Roger Devine [00:13:01]:
Right.
Libby Sundgren [00:13:01]:
Wow.
Roger Devine [00:13:02]:
But they. And it’s only six minutes long.
Libby Sundgren [00:13:04]:
Yeah.
Roger Devine [00:13:05]:
You know, a good paddle raise is not going to go more than that because people start getting kind of itchy. But it is. It’s fundraising, a spectator sport. You know, I love to tell the story on how to talk, you know, how to. How to position your paddle raise and. Or your special appeal. And let’s just say I got the two of you out in my audience. Right.
Roger Devine [00:13:25]:
And I’m going to put you on opposite sides of the room. Because I know you’re kind of like, you know each other, but you’re also a little competitive. Maybe we’d call you frenemies. Right? Or. Or I’ll say, we got two dentists in town, and I’m gonna put them at opposite sides of the room. And then your dentist number one. Or say Libby throws up her paddle to donate $5,000 in this special appeal, and the room bursts out in applause, and everybody’s yay. And cheering and cheering.
Roger Devine [00:13:55]:
What do you think the other dentist is thinking?
Libby Sundgren [00:13:57]:
Oh, yeah, you want that applause, too? The other dentist.
Alysse Bryson [00:14:01]:
Elise, I’m gonna double down. I’m gonna double down.
Roger Devine [00:14:04]:
Me too. Give me some of that sweet swee. Yeah. So those are the top tips I have for getting started at the beginning. The other one that comes. The one that comes right after that, though, I really kind of like, which is, if you’re gonna do a live auction, convene a little brainstorming party. Wine and cheese and crackers and, you know, fun little nibbles and whatever. And the point is that you’re gonna invite over the, say, eight to 10 people who you strongly suspect are gonna be the fattest wallets in the room.
Alysse Bryson [00:14:38]:
Mm.
Roger Devine [00:14:39]:
Okay. And, yes, I should refer to them as people, but I think of them as wallets. But we’re gonna invite our fat wallets into the wine and cheese little party. Maybe we’ve got something fun going on, and you sit down and you say, hey, look, I’m about to go start getting ready for the auction, and I’m gonna go out and kick off our live auction procurement. And you know what? I could use some. Some help in the brainstorming. I know you guys are the kind of people that get invited to other fundraising auctions. What have you seen at the other ones that.
Roger Devine [00:15:11]:
That gets people excited? What you’re actually asking, without using these words, is, what do you want to buy? What do you want to buy? When you come to my event, Mr. FatWallet, and you’re taking notes on all of that kind of stuff, and this is going to give you targets. Are you going to be able to go out and get all of them? No, but you have this data in the back of your head. You have this knowledge so that maybe it’s coming down to the line, and your biggest, most fattest wallet is like, ah, you know, I don’t. It’s gonna be kind of tough for us to come this year. You know, maybe I’ll. Maybe I’ll just get you on the other side with something. And you’re like, no, I really like to have you there.
Roger Devine [00:15:50]:
But you know that this guy has on his bucket list, or rather, it’s on his wife’s bucket list. His wife has always wanted to go to Bali, and he knows he’s got this on his list of things to accomplish. Got to get her to Bali at some point. And you can come to them and say, hey, I just made sure we have a Bali trip in our live auction. You know, if you may not have gotten it donated, you may have gotten it through a consignment company, but at that point, you’re getting a good wallet into the room. So they’re there for your paddle raise moment. Will you make a lot of money on that Bali trip? No, because some of it’s possibly on consignment or what have you, but you’re making up for it with the other spending that that guy is going to do while he’s in the room. So have that brainstorming party really early, and you know you’re going to help get those wallets excited about the upcoming event.
Roger Devine [00:16:45]:
They’re going to be invested in it.
Alysse Bryson [00:16:47]:
Okay, so for the raise the paddle, I have been to many events, and it is awkward when they start at the top dollar. I’m going to say, for the sake of this exercise that it’s 25,000 and nobody raises their paddle. Like, you need to start at a level that you already know there’s one or more people in the audience that are going to raise at that high level, correct?
Roger Devine [00:17:12]:
Absolutely. That is the best thing to do.
Alysse Bryson [00:17:15]:
The best kill. If they start in that high and.
Roger Devine [00:17:18]:
Everybody just sits there, what you have to be prepared for, if you’re not going to poll your audience ahead of time, make a few phone calls again to the suspected fat wallets and say, well, we’re going to be doing this. I’m trying to figure out where we’re going to start. Can you give me a sense as to where you might be when things happen on event night? They’ll give you a sense. You’ll have some numbers there. If you really think that there’s room and you need to start higher than that. The way you mitigate the crickets is that you need to have a dummy bidder. You absolutely need to have a dummy bidder in the back of the room. Somebody who you have given a, you know, bid number.
Roger Devine [00:17:54]:
It’s not assigned to anybody else, and they don’t have to commit to it. But if. If nobody else goes, they go and they are a credible straw man out in the audience just to get things going because. Yeah, no, nothing will kill your paddle race faster than the crickets. They just.
Alysse Bryson [00:18:12]:
Libby, that’s not T.J. for the record, your husband.
Libby Sundgren [00:18:16]:
My husband has been known to try and raise his paddle during auction when the items are being auctioned off. And we accidentally won one one time, and it was not expected. And we had to very humbly give it back right after he accidentally bought it. And they very kindly said, do not raise your paddle again at all for the rest of the night. We said, got it. We will not do that. But it was good intentions.
Alysse Bryson [00:18:47]:
Roger, what do you think? Yeah, good intentions. What do you think about the procurement team? How effective is it? Is. Is it to get a sponsor or a donor that does a matching and what’s the best level for that? Because I know when I hear if I donate $500, it’s going to get matched. And now my donation turns into $1,000. I’m. I’m more likely to do that than if I just raise, you know, at the $100 level. I’m making up bad examples, but you know where I’m going with this.
Roger Devine [00:19:18]:
Let me give you. Let me give you a really fun tip to kind of exploit this idea. A fun way to exploit it. It’s something that your auctioneer should know how to do. It is a game called the Last Ask. Okay. So we’re going through our paddle raise, and I start at $5,000, and there’s Libby. Yay.
Roger Devine [00:19:36]:
And then we go to 2,500, and we go down to 1,000. We go down 500. In my paddle raise. In my software, you can do monthly recurring donations. So we sweep up with a $10 a month for 12 months donation. Great. Fantastic.
Libby Sundgren [00:19:49]:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Roger Devine [00:19:49]:
And then the auctioneer pause.
Libby Sundgren [00:19:51]:
If you can do an auction where they have that option, it’s great because I would.
Roger Devine [00:19:56]:
You know how that as a paddle raises. Winding, winding down, and you’re getting to. The lower, the smaller numbers, people start getting itchy. And this is a way to round everybody back up and say, before we spend too much time collecting 25 donations and whatever. And let’s just not do that. Let’s not waste our time there. Let’s ask everybody for 10 bucks a month for the next 12 months. 120 bucks.
Roger Devine [00:20:20]:
Totally. And I can say, regardless of whether you’ve already made a pledge, I want to see every hand in the room go up. This is our recurring donation program. It’s a completely blah, blah, Blah.
Libby Sundgren [00:20:29]:
Yeah, that’s totally feasible no matter what.
Roger Devine [00:20:31]:
Totally.
Libby Sundgren [00:20:33]:
You know, previously, you’re like, oh, I can add that on.
Roger Devine [00:20:36]:
But then after you wrap that up, then the auctioneer does the following thing. He reaches into his breast pocket and he takes out two crisp 100 bills. Go to the bank ahead of time. Get fresh, crisp hundred dollar bills. He’s got to him. He’s like, folks, I didn’t make my donation tonight yet. I’ve got $200 here that I’m going to donate to the cause, but I’m not going to give it directly to our PTA tonight or our organization. What I’m going to do instead is I’m going to use this as an incentive to get some more donations out there.
Roger Devine [00:21:09]:
So if anybody else can donate $100, I will give this $200 to the last person to make a $100 pledge tonight. So is anybody else in for $100? And it’s like 312, 314, 316, you know, blah, blah. And then it kind of winds down. It’s like, okay, bidder number 212, you’re my last bidder at a hundred dollar. My last pledge at a hundred dollars. So you’re gonna win this 200 in 3, 2. And somebody else puts in another hundred dollar pledge. It’s great.
Roger Devine [00:21:41]:
And everybody catches on immediately and knows exactly what the game is.
Libby Sundgren [00:21:45]:
And that’s, that’s a fun game to watch.
Roger Devine [00:21:47]:
That’s.
Libby Sundgren [00:21:48]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.
Roger Devine [00:21:49]:
Exactly. And it keeps going. It can keep going even after everybody catches on. It’s like, yeah, sure, why not?
Libby Sundgren [00:21:54]:
That’s good.
Roger Devine [00:21:57]:
So that’s how I like to do matches or how I like to deploy the match concept in a way that, you know, doesn’t actually necessarily require me to go out and get a big sponsor for the match. I can bring in an extra, say, two, $3,000 for 200 bucks.
Alysse Bryson [00:22:16]:
Well, it’s the same kind of thing of. I’m sure you guys have seen this, but the, the dessert dash that they do at school auctions. And it’s just like people are paying a thousand dollars for a chocolate cake. That’s not about the cake. Right. It’s about the fact. It’s about the fact that they want to be able to dash first and their first choice of the delicious dessert bar.
Roger Devine [00:22:38]:
And when I’m, when I’m telling people how to do a dessert dash, you know, I, I put in the following, I give the following story about our third grade auction. So we do a dessert dash. There’s 20 tables out there. We procured 18 really good desserts, beautiful stuff from local bakeries, whatever. And we rounded out with a bag of marshmallow peeps and a bag of Oreos we had. So if you didn’t. So if you weren’t at the. If you were last in line, you were eating peeps.
Roger Devine [00:23:08]:
That was what it was. Yeah. So we, we go do this. And out in the audience is at one of the tables that goes early is the husband of the second grade teacher. And he’s going to be the dasher. He’s going to run up and get the desserts and he’s a card. This guy has just never had a serious day in his life. And so he intentionally, as the fourth or fifth table to go, grabs the peeps and standing up at the front of the room, he tears the bag open and as he is running back to his table, he’s throwing peeps at people all over the room.
Roger Devine [00:23:40]:
They’re ridiculous amounts of fun.
Libby Sundgren [00:23:44]:
He picked the peeps.
Roger Devine [00:23:46]:
He picked the peeps. There’s another variation on dessert dash that we love, love, love to encourage people to do. We do have a feature in our software that allows for. It allows the organization to set up a talent contest and then having their guests use their smartphones to buy votes for the performers that they most want to support. So you can have your own private Dancing with the stars, right? Yeah. You know, you guys, if there’s. They’re dancing and I’m buying votes for you guys and then I see a big leaderboard and I see that you’re losing. So I buy some more votes to get you back up and you can utilize this for dessert dash where instead of performers, each table is the thing you’re voting for.
Roger Devine [00:24:32]:
And you see the leaderboard and it’s going up and down and you can kind of see where you are versus other people.
Alysse Bryson [00:24:37]:
That’s really cool.
Roger Devine [00:24:39]:
Can keep buying those dessert dash dollars.
Libby Sundgren [00:24:41]:
You know, I feel like you might make more money on a dessert dash in that way than if you just have people write a static number on the sheet and give it away right away. But maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know what is the data set.
Roger Devine [00:24:55]:
What you have is you have the opportunity to get. To give people a mid voting update. You know, it’s like if we’re doing it the traditional way, paper bid sheets, I can see where our paper is, but I don’t, I don’t know what the other tables are doing. So I don’t know whether or not I need to toss in another hundred bucks to make sure that I get a decent cake.
Libby Sundgren [00:25:17]:
I know. Oh, that’s really good. That’s a hot tip.
Alysse Bryson [00:25:22]:
Okay, I have more questions. You in all the auctions and your software, like, what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen donated or the crazy amount? Like, just the craziest thing that’s been donated. Because when crazy things get donated, like, you still have to keep in mind you need at least two bidders. Right. So just because something’s super crazy and cool, if you don’t have two bidders.
Roger Devine [00:25:49]:
There was a crazy trend. This didn’t show up in just one auction, but it showed up in every small fundraising auction I went to in our fair home city for about two years. Every single one seemed to have some local urologist who had donated a vasectomy.
Libby Sundgren [00:26:10]:
Oh, my gosh. I’ve seen that donated before.
Roger Devine [00:26:14]:
Yes, in the live auction, and you get more than two bidders. You get all of the women in the room bidding. It’s like, yeah, let’s do that. All the guys are like, no, no, no, no, don’t buy that, honey. No, no, sweetheart. I’m like, yes, yes, that. You know, that was.
Libby Sundgren [00:26:29]:
I have heard of that.
Alysse Bryson [00:26:30]:
Hilarious.
Roger Devine [00:26:31]:
Yeah. No, it’s. Amongst all of the services that I’ve seen auctioned off, that’s the best one I’ve ever seen. You know, with regards to other services, they’re not necessarily as much fun to buy publicly in front of a whole bunch of other people. You know, it’s like, I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna get everybody in the room excited about the fact that I bought tax preparation services. Yeah, no, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?
Alysse Bryson [00:27:01]:
I was at an auction earlier this year. It was a private Christian school that I am the alum of, and my mom used taught there forever. So I go every year, even all these years later, and they were auctioning off a goat, and the person who bought the goat actually bought it and donated it to someone on the other side of the room who then paid more money to donate it back to the original gifter. And this goat went back and forth. Not literally. The goat actually stood on the stage and took a. But, like, the battle between the two.
Libby Sundgren [00:27:35]:
So it was a live goat, or it was, like, the opportunity to have a goat go, like, eat your weeds and stuff?
Alysse Bryson [00:27:41]:
Nope, they were. I was a live goat on the stage, but they bought it, and then they made it go to somebody else. And then that person was like, I Don’t want it, and they spent more money to send it.
Libby Sundgren [00:27:50]:
It’s like when you flamingo negative auction, but you get. You got goaded.
Roger Devine [00:27:55]:
I will say, I will interject one thing there. The goat is a living being. So you absolutely. If you’re going to include that in an auction, you absolutely have to have a disposal plan, which is not have the sucker who wound up with it take it home if they don’t want it.
Alysse Bryson [00:28:12]:
Right.
Roger Devine [00:28:12]:
You know, you’ve got to have a plan for how you’re going to dispose of it afterwards. On a related note, I’m very, very reluctant to ever sign off on anybody auctioning off puppies. It does happen. I think it’s a bad idea. If you want to auction off a dog in your auction, do it in conjunction with the local humane society. Have them bring a sample dog to the event. Not the dog that somebody’s going to get to go home with. And then the.
Roger Devine [00:28:39]:
And then what? You’re good. You know, what they’re going to get is free all the fees and maybe vaccinations and food for a year and what have you. But the humane society will then do an interview with the buyer to make sure that they really know how to take care of a dog.
Libby Sundgren [00:28:55]:
Yeah, they got to be a good fit.
Roger Devine [00:28:57]:
But, yeah, I have seen that. That. That whole white elephant style auction where it’s like, let’s push this off onto somebody. You. Yeah, I’m gonna pay you $1,000 to take it away from me.
Libby Sundgren [00:29:06]:
Take that.
Alysse Bryson [00:29:07]:
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Roger Devine [00:29:09]:
There’s another crazy thing that tends to happen at fundraising auctions that I really, really love. And it kind of relates to the story you were just talking about. And this is another game. Most of the time when we’re playing games at a raffle, it’s heads or tails. You know, there’s just not.
Alysse Bryson [00:29:23]:
I’m so bored of heads or tails, too. Like, there’s gotta be something better than heads or tails.
Roger Devine [00:29:28]:
Allow me to introduce you to chicken bingo. Chicken bingo happens when you take a big old piece of plywood. It needs to be like, at least 5ft by 5ft. Divide it up into squares, put numbers on the squares. Like it’s a big bingo card. You bring that to your event. You have it in a corner of the room. You’ve got a little chicken wire fence up around it.
Roger Devine [00:29:48]:
In the back of the room, somebody has brought a live chicken, and they’re slowly feeding it lettuce throughout the evening. Meanwhile, people are coming up to your chicken bingo thing and buying spots on the board. And then at the appropriate time, you take the chicken out, you put him down on the board, and you see where he poops.
Libby Sundgren [00:30:05]:
I’m from the country, so I love that game.
Alysse Bryson [00:30:09]:
Yeah, you are. You are really glowing right now.
Libby Sundgren [00:30:12]:
I know.
Alysse Bryson [00:30:12]:
You really did just perk up quite a bit.
Libby Sundgren [00:30:14]:
That’s so fun. Where’s the bird gonna bomb?
Roger Devine [00:30:16]:
We don’t know exactly.
Alysse Bryson [00:30:18]:
Ah, yeah.
Roger Devine [00:30:20]:
And when you. And when you were talking about the goat taking a. On the stage, like chicken bingo.
Libby Sundgren [00:30:26]:
Speaking of animal shits. Okay. There are a lot of, A lot of these are really good ideas for keeping people engaged during an event, because I have been to many, many auctions where you lose the crowd. Whether people are over celebrating or distract, whatever the reason is. It can be easy to lose people. And sometimes when you lose them, they’re gone and you can’t, you can’t get them back. So what, what do you recommend is another way to keep people, like, keep attendees engaged and giving during the event? Because it is a fundraiser, we do want people there to be generous and fund whatever it is we’re all supporting. So how do you.
Libby Sundgren [00:31:16]:
How. What is another way we could keep them like in the room with us?
Roger Devine [00:31:21]:
So my perspective on this, you can provide some balance to it. Okay. Because you guys are professional event people here. Right. And my advice on this tends to be in the realm of don’t entertain too terribly much before you’re done raising money. You know, don’t, don’t try to do things like have, you know, have a speaker making a presentation while you still have the silent auction open. No, finish your silent auction then if you need to do a speech, do a speech, etc. But I would really try to say wait until after the live auction is done.
Roger Devine [00:31:59]:
Okay? So pair this with the fact that you absolutely need to have a way to securely store credit cards at the beginning of the night, if not before. Then tell everybody we’re going to be doing our program here. We’re going to be doing this fundraising and as soon as. At like 9:30, so it’s not gonna be late and like 9:30 the band is coming on and we’re gonna dance and we’re gonna do this and the other thing and you’ve got your lovely entertainment set up on the other end there to try to keep them in place a little bit longer. The other bit of this though is that you kind of gotta sit on the executive director a little bit. And what I mean is that right before you’re going to do either your live auction or more commonly, right before your paddle raise or your special appeal, your executive director or somebody who’s in charge is going to want to get up and talk. You’re going to want to get up and just say a few words and just, you know, tell everybody how much we love them, etc. Keep them to 90 seconds.
Roger Devine [00:33:01]:
Keep that to 90 seconds. Don’t let that go on for 10 minutes. You’re totally losing people while the executive director is droning on. And yes, they like to hear themselves talk and yes, it’s important to allow them to hear themselves talk. I get that we have to give them a little bit of leash, but I try to make sure that until we’ve finished the big fundraising, asks in the moment, that I’m parceling out the fun stuff little by little. You know, gotta do a little, keep them there. But. But you’re promising more after the live auction is wrapped up.
Roger Devine [00:33:40]:
Does that help?
Alysse Bryson [00:33:41]:
Yeah, it does. Mm. Do you. Are there any trends that you see happening right now in, in, in the, in, in the event world that maybe our listeners would want to hop on that are.
Roger Devine [00:33:54]:
Yeah.
Alysse Bryson [00:33:55]:
You know, on the other side yet?
Roger Devine [00:33:57]:
Yeah, I saw this happening and first I noted it, then I started thinking, oh, it’s kind of interesting now. I’m a complete advocate of it, which is that if you’re going to hold an in person gala event, you’re going to have multiple ways in which you ask people for money during that. You might have a silent auction, might have live auction, might have raffle, et cetera, et cetera. Take the silent auction piece, just that piece, not any of the other stuff. Put the silent auction piece online ahead of time and close it before the event. You can do your silent auction online. People who are coming to the event can bid. People who are not coming to the event can bid.
Roger Devine [00:34:34]:
There’s a whole bunch of stuff out there. You, you’re still throwing a silent auction. People love those. But you’re doing it online and you’re wrapping that piece of the fundraising up before you open the doors to your gala. The reason why, the reason I love this is twofold. One, we talk a lot about how many of the organizations that are putting on these events can’t staff them to the level that you would want to staff them at. You know, we’re going to be doing things with fewer volunteers than we had hoped for. So take this portion of your event, which requires a lot of setup in the room ahead of time.
Roger Devine [00:35:13]:
Gotta lay all your items out and put down, you know, all of the Collateral around them. And then that’s also gonna make up the bulk of getting people stuff post event and take care of all of that beforehand. So that on the night of the event, you’ve got your live auction, you’ve got your raffle, you got your games, maybe some sign up parties. You drink, you dance, you have a great time, life is good. I don’t think silent auctions need to come into the ballroom ever again.
Alysse Bryson [00:35:42]:
And speaking of silent auctions, like, I have been to places where there’s actually too much stuff. And the thing is, there’s only so much money that’s going to be raised. Like it doesn’t matter how much stuff there is. It doesn’t mean more stuff equals more money. Right. So how do people manage that? Is it grouping things together and turning them into baskets? Is it saying no to some items? Like, do you have any advice there?
Roger Devine [00:36:07]:
I have definite advice. First thing, your first filter on stuff that’s coming in is does this belong in a garage sale? If the answer is yes, then the answer is it does not belong in your silent auction. Silent auctions and garage sales are completely different things. Some people try to conflate them. Don’t do that.
Alysse Bryson [00:36:25]:
Love it.
Roger Devine [00:36:26]:
Okay. Second thing is base your number of silent auction offerings on the number of based on the number of bid numbers you’re going to hand out. So if you think that you’ve got a hundred and say you’ve got 130 people committed to your event, I’m going to say that maybe 10 of those people are there on their own. The other 120 are couples that are going to want to share a bid number. So that’s a grand total of 60 bid numbers for the couples plus an additional 10, that’s 70. Now divide that by some factor. I Recommend Divided by three. I’d say for 70 people there have 28 items, 27 items.
Roger Devine [00:37:05]:
Cool, we’re good. 25 maybe. You know, fine, you want to go lower than that? Go lower than that. That’s totally fine. If you acquire more than that or more than you want to have, let’s say you set your cutoff at, you’re going to acquire, you’re going to have 50% the number of items to bid numbers. So in that case you’d have 35 items. And let’s say that you, you get 40 or 45, you can bundle things together and you can absolutely do that. And I think there’s a whole lot of items that just do better if they’re bundled together.
Roger Devine [00:37:41]:
You know, a restaurant Gift certificate and a movie theater gift certificate, date night. There we go. Terrific. But the other things you can do is when you’re looking at that, when you’re looking at some of those things, and especially with gift cards, consider making some of them fixed price gift cards you can offer at face value to the first person who will take it. And the reason that I suggest this is that these things, I don’t count in your number of silent auction items because those are all going to be competitive and you don’t want everybody to be able to win one. You want there to be some scarcity, some fomo, right? You know, this is going to help you get more bids on those items. But, but the fixed price things are kind of off to the side. There may be less sexy things.
Roger Devine [00:38:23]:
If you can get face value for them, you’re happy. So you do a pickboard of, you know, fixed price, face value gift cards or similar items like that. And then the other thing would be, feel free. Even with good stuff that you think is going to sell well to your audience, feel free to just hang on to it until after the event. You may have a half a dozen, a dozen things left over from the event. Right. There may be a few things that just don’t sell. Whatever.
Roger Devine [00:38:55]:
You can take those, plus anything that came in too late and you can have a cleanup auction afterwards. Little cleanup online auction. Hey folks, three weeks ago we held our big event and it was a lot of fun and you should have seen the principal dancing in their chicken suit. But it’s over and, you know, now we’re moving on and we got some things that we have to clean up. And so here’s your, here’s your blue light special. I don’t ever like to do a discounted run, you know, dash for the last remaining items at the event itself because that’s just imported chaos. But to be able to do a blue light special online afterwards, like, great, let’s clean this stuff up and go. You don’t have to take everything you procure and sell it at the same time.
Roger Devine [00:39:42]:
You can spread it out a little bit. Those helpful bits for you. You’re getting a lot of my good stuff.
Libby Sundgren [00:39:45]:
We’re getting all the good stuff. One thing we talked about the last time we connected was kind of the state of nonprofit fundraising and just what organizations and, you know, people who want to support nonprofits are really facing right now. What strategies do you recommend for turning a one night fundraiser into, into a long term, whether it’s year round, decades long, whatnot, donor Relationship.
Roger Devine [00:40:20]:
One of the key things you need to be really good about is that when you’re selling tickets for your event that you’re collecting the data you need to collect for your donor database. You know, so if you need some sort of a classification, you know, are you an alumni, for example? Collect that data when you’re selling tickets to the event. The great hope with events is that your committed supporters will bring with them like minded individuals who may care about the same things, but may not necessarily know about what your group does to make those things happen. And so capture the information you’re going to need for your donor database long term and take those recurring donations in your paddle raise pledge. Try to establish in the minds of everybody who’s there that this is more than a one night stand, that you’re in here, you know, you’re here tonight and you’re opening up your wallet in order to help our organization thrive and survive. And at this point I think we have to start doing a lot more of that with our small dollar, our mid dollar donors, our grassroots donors, we absolutely have to be doing this. Our big dollar donors are getting squeezed, they’re getting squeezed from every direction and they need to be taken care of, they need to be treated well, et cetera. But at an event there, I wouldn’t necessarily use the event to develop your relationships with your committed donors any further other than by giving them some recognition from the stage, that kind of thing, things that events are good at doing.
Roger Devine [00:42:04]:
But you know, it’s really about broadening the base there, getting those people in, getting the information you need in there, etc. Then there’s some other things you can do to help make your event feel like a part of the social calendar. You really want your donors to think not just that they’re coming to this event because this is a crazy year, but that this is an event that they’re going to start coming to every year. This is going to be a thing that they like doing. One of my favorite tools for doing that is a particular type of a thing you would sell in an auction. We call them signup parties. They’re fixed price items. Getting back to you need to have some fixed price stuff in your event.
Roger Devine [00:42:48]:
If we haven’t gone over that, I’ll go over that in a minute. But in addition, these are for future fun events. So let me give you an example. I chair an auction for my Rotary Club. I also every year on July 4, roast a pig at my house and I have a whole bunch of people over and we Have a great time. It’s a great party. At my Rotary Club auction, I have a sign up sheet. Anybody who’s willing to pay 25 bucks ahead to the, to the club can come to my pig roast now.
Roger Devine [00:43:20]:
A. This is fun. It’s fixed price. So anybody who’s on a fixed income or what have you will be able to find a way to participate. Auctions are very elitist when everything is biddable, but if you got some fixed price things combat that. The other, the other thing though is that my pig roast is a banger. It’s a lot of fun.
Libby Sundgren [00:43:38]:
We have best pig on the West Coast.
Roger Devine [00:43:41]:
It’s one of the best pig roasts on the West Coast. I would absolutely put that out there. It’s total banger. And so people starting in the second year that I was chairing my Rotary Club auction were like, yeah, I got to go to the auction this year because I got to sign up for the pig roast again.
Libby Sundgren [00:43:55]:
Oh yeah.
Roger Devine [00:43:57]:
Okay. So you’ve, you can create these little traditions that are inextricably connected to your fundraising and your fundraising event. And this can be a way to weave people into your community, weave them into your donor database, make them productive long term.
Libby Sundgren [00:44:15]:
That’s such a good idea, Rodrick.
Alysse Bryson [00:44:17]:
You’re clearly winning the game of events, in our opinion. Thank you. And the only way you can really win is because at some point you’ve lost. Right. That’s at least how I learn. So what is the lesson that you’ve learned the hard way while running an event and how has it shaped your approach today?
Roger Devine [00:44:36]:
What I learned the hard way. Early on, I’m going to go into the weeds a little bit. You get a little bit technical, but we’ll come out of it with a more generalized piece of advice. Early on, we built a system where ticket sales is part of our software. When somebody buys a ticket, they are automatically assigned a bid number. Good and bad. Because turns out in between the time you give somebody a bid number and they actually use that bid number, all sorts of life happens in between. And they may, yeah, they may get married and so now they want to share a bid number with somebody or they may, you know, there’s all sorts of things that can happen out there.
Roger Devine [00:45:13]:
And early on we did. We were not good making or allowing for those kinds of changes to happen on the fly. And as a result, we. And as a result, as we started to confront the problem and how are we going to fix this now, are we going to make this better, etc. So that at check in at the door, it’s as smooth as possible. And I began just to learn the hard way. And it took a year that getting your ticket list really well groomed so that every ticket has a name on it. You know who it’s going to be used by if it needs to be updated, needs to be updated.
Roger Devine [00:45:52]:
But you know you’ve got a plan there. You know what every guest wants to eat if you’re doing plated dinners. You know what their relationship to the organization is. You know who they want to share bid numbers with. You link all those people up ahead of time and I will tell my customers, I want to give you a task that’s going to be a lot of work, right? So I’m going to tell you to do this thing that’s a lot of work, but it’s going to save you so much trouble if you do that work a week before your event. Go in, look at all of your guests. Look at every single one of them. Update everything you can with regards to them so that you front load all of this work before the door is open.
Roger Devine [00:46:30]:
I tell everybody it’s like, do everything you can before the door is open. Because once they do the tiger by the tail here and it’s off to.
Libby Sundgren [00:46:40]:
The races, it’s chaos in a fun way.
Roger Devine [00:46:43]:
Yeah, usually. So is that, is that a helpful answer? Cool.
Libby Sundgren [00:46:48]:
I mentioned this before, but I just want to say again, because we are winning the game of events and you are as well. One of our values that we hold close to our hearts at our company is a saying called for fun and for free, no strings attached. And I mean, that doesn’t mean we give every, all of our services away for free. But that means that if we can be helpful, if we can give somebody some information just to be helpful and get them into a better spot, then we’ll totally do it. And one of the values that School Auction.net has is sharing is caring. And I want to say you have really lived up to that today with sharing. So much advice. There are so many tips in this episode that are, I mean, we’ve got reels for days here, guys.
Roger Devine [00:47:42]:
Fantastic. Glad to be of service and be helpful there. It is a thing that we try to embody. We try to embody the concept of sharing is caring because, because we sell to volunteers for the people, you know, and I, I absolutely embrace that. It’s like my company is called School Auction. I sell a lot to PTAs. PTA is turnover every year. Nobody gives you much time to Train them.
Roger Devine [00:48:08]:
That’s a particular set of challenges for a market. Right. And I think the only way that you can help people feel secure in what they’re about to do is by telling them it’s going to be okay. And here’s why. Because here’s how you who have never done this before and just were a well meaning volunteer, here’s how you can pull this off. They need it, then, yeah. Then they’re more inclined to go ahead and pull it off and do it and make money and come back next year and stay in business.
Libby Sundgren [00:48:40]:
Do it again.
Roger Devine [00:48:41]:
Yeah. The other concept that I think is really important for all of us who sell into the nonprofit sector is the idea of enough. I have to be an advocate for my customers in their dealings with me. I have to know that unlike earlier in my career when I was selling to Fortune 500 companies, these organizations don’t have a buyer. They don’t have a software buyer who’s skilled at doing it and knows what to look for and can read a contract and all of that. They don’t. So either I’m going to take advantage of them or. Or I have to be the one who says, no, we’re going to charge enough.
Roger Devine [00:49:18]:
You know, it’s not free to use our software because, you know, it’s valuable and we built it and we have to maintain it. But I don’t have to take all your money. Really, I don’t. I can just take enough. Enough is an important value for us that we try to bring to every customer interaction.
Alysse Bryson [00:49:39]:
Well, that is really a great way to live by because it just feeds into the community, which is what your organization and you are clearly all about. And I’m so grateful that we got to meet you, Roger, and that you shared so many amazing tips with our audience because there was a lot of gold thrown down here today.
Roger Devine [00:50:07]:
Fantastic. Well, I got more. So if you ever want me to.
Libby Sundgren [00:50:09]:
Come back, there’s going to be a part two for sure. There’s definitely a part two. Stay tuned.
Alysse Bryson [00:50:14]:
Part two.
Libby Sundgren [00:50:15]:
All right, well, that’s a wrap for this episode of Beats Working. If you’ve got an idea or want to reach out, email us at infoatsworking show. Remember, every detail matters, every moment counts, and no matter what, the show must go on.
Alysse Bryson [00:50:29]:
Thanks for listening to Beats Working, Winning the game of events, where we explore what it takes to make moments unforgettable.
Libby Sundgren [00:50:36]:
If you’re leaving with a little more inspiration, a little more perspective, and a big sideache from all of the laughing at our funny jokes, then we’ve done our job.
Alysse Bryson [00:50:46]:
Beats working is a work. P2P production. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on your favorite podcast platforms.
Libby Sundgren [00:50:56]:
Your support helps us keep the magic going.
