Benefit Auction Specialist Class

Last month I went to Las Vegas with my wife Tina and attended the National Auctioneers Associations (NAA) Benefit Auction Specialist (BAS) class. The class was fantastic. The class was held in the New York, New York casino. While I took the BAS class Tina took the Graduate Personal Property Appraiser (GPPA), Expert Witness, and Uniform Standards for Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) class. I also taught part of the GPPA class but more on that later.

The BAS class teaches auctioneers how to run a professional benefit auction. The class attracted benefit auctioneers from all over the country. We had students from Florida, California, Hawaii, Texas and all over the USA. The students were true professionals and added a great deal to the class. I love these NAA classes and the classmates can really amp up the classes, the ideas were flowing like a river. I have been conducting benefit/charity/gala auctions for years and helped raise hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity and I was blown away by the information I gleaned in this class. They say in each class you should expect an AhHa moment, that moment when someone says something that just clicks and you think, that idea just paid for my whole class! I had an AhHa week. If you are reading this and you are an auctioneer but have not joined the NAA, I recommend that you join right away. If you are an NAA member but have not availed yourself of the training that the NAA provides I'd say sign up for some, and do it now! Each class I have taken with the NAA has paid for itself over and over. I have not received my BAS designation yet. I passed the test with a 100% but I still need to turn in 6 proof of having participated in 6 benefit auctions after the class, and a report on 1 auction from start to finish. I'll post here when I complete these tasks and receive the designation.

Ashleys Army

My brother Rick lives next door to a young lady who had a horrible car accident while attending the University of Evansville in Indiana.

Her name is Ashley and she was left paralyzed from the chest down. I met her parents at a bar-b-que at my brothers' home a while back and let them know that I would be happy to help them out if they wanted.

Last week we helped with a silent and live auction/trivia night to raise money for a new car for Ashley equipped with a ramp, a swivel seat, and hand controls so she can drive.

We had great donations, a generous crowd and a great auction. We met the goal and Ashley now has a new car free and clear.

http://www.ashleysarmy.com/

The thing I like about charity auctions

I like charity auctions, I admit it, they are fun.

I get to act like a combination of a stand-up comedian and a clown and get paid while I do some good for someone else.

I do not have thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to help someone with, but I can get others with that kind of money to show up and give it someone who needs help. I can have them laughing while they reach for their wallets. It is a fun job. Usually when someone calls an auctioneer it is not happy days, this is particularly true of charity auctions, someone is sick, someone has died, some tragedy has occurred, or else someone wants to fight a horrible disease. But, the auction can be a blast, it is a large crowd coming together to give, there is power there, just waiting for the auctioneer to tap into it. Dynamite, electricity, a dam holding back a tide of giving, one push in the right spot and the flood starts and when it happens it is a magical thing.
The people at a charity auction almost to a person come because they care (OK, a few of them are drug there kicking and screaming by their spouse) but, buy by in large they came because they want to help.
My job as the auctioneer is to get out of the way and let them do what they came to do. It is the best time I get to have as an auctioneer when it happens. I once sold a cool package where a group of 4 could tour a local firehouse and the fire museum, eat lunch with the fire fighters, then ride to the local fireworks display on the back of the firetruck and watch the show, then ride back to the firehouse on the firetruck. A woman with a small boy was bidding against another woman to my far right. At about $180 the woman with the small boy dropped out as she had reached her limit. The little boy looked crestfallen. Another bidder got into the mix, she was seated just to the right of the woman with the boy who had just dropped out. The bidding intensified and went up to $425 when the woman in the corner dropped out. When I handed the package to the winning bidder she turned and handed it to the woman setting next to her (the one with the little boy). The wining bidder didn't know this woman, she just wanted to make the boy happy! His face lit up like a Christmas Tree. People come to a charity auction to give, they are generous people, it is our job as charity auctioneers to give them the gentle nudge they need to do what they came to do.

Your Charity Auction and the web

A local charity in St Louis is holding an auction this week and they brought in an auctioneer from out of town to do the auction. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for charities flying in auctioneers if the want to, in fact my wife and I have been flown in to do auctions ourself. But what I do not understand is when I saw that the auction was advertised online, there were no details about what was for sale at the auction etc. The auctioneer put a link to his website for more details, I went to his website and there was not only no additional details on the auction, there was not mention of the auction at all. If your Charity Auctioneer dosen't put your auction on his website (or worse yet dosen't have a website) it may be in your organisations best intrest to look for a new auctioneer.

A website is as neccessary to conducting business today as a cell phone an auctioneer without either of these tools may as well go without a sound system (by the way if he doen't have one of those it is a very bad sign too). He should put the details of the sale online; date, time, place, what you are selling, pictures etc. and if he dosen't you are only getting a part of the money for your sale that you should get. You should ideally get your auction online at least 3 months before the day of the auction, and anything less than 1 month online is to little. Put as many details about your sale as you can. Does your auction have tickets? Then include the game day, time and seat numbers, if you can include a map of the venue. Most cities have seating charts online for major venues, have your auctioneer put that information online for you. If you can't get this level of support from your auctioneer perhaps you aren't paying him or her enough. If you are "hiring" an unpaid auctioneer, you can't expect much in support work. But then again if you don't get the support work you are most likely selling your items at a lower price than you could have sold them for. As time gones on this will only become a bigger problem for you. Your older bidders at your charity may not even own a computer while the younger bidders might we able to look the auction up on their cell phone. Your orginization ignores younger bidders at it's own peril. And don't think for a minute that younger bidders are not using the internet for almost everything

A Charity Auction IS a Business

Too often those who conduct a charity auction take the short view. They are either elected or volunteer for a short term (often for a year or less) and then they pass the batton to the next person and move on. However, a charity auction is a business, and like most businesses it is in business to make money.

The one year plan would not work in most businesses. Can you imagine going into your boss and saying "Wow we had a great year, sales were great (I think) and we made some gains over last year (if only we tracked our sales we could document this) and I feel next year will be even better, so I quit."
That is the playbook for most charity auctions, only you need to throw in a comment like, "Hey boss before I go, next year why don't we hire a guy who looks like an engineer to help us design this bridge?"

Charity auctions are netorious for hiring celebrities to conduct auctions, they may look like auctioneers but the are not auctioneers. Would you hire a celebrity to fly your airplane? Would you hire a celeb to treat your child medically? I doubt it. I imagine you are saying at this point, "Rob, we are not talking about flying a plane or operating on my child, we are talking about an auction." I would have to admit to you that you are correct, to a point but so am I. Having a large charity auction is important, LIVES may be at stake, please don't tell me that when you are looking for someone to help you raise money for lukemia lives are not at stake, my brother-in-law Tom died from lukemia. I know raising money may not be the same as being a doctor, but raising money for lukemia might put the young man or woman through school who cures this desease. Please do not hire an amature to get this job done. If you want to have a celeb host the evening I would say great! Have them help the auctioneer, terrific, do the auction, NO.

Back to my first point a charity auction is never over, as soon as the auctioneer drops the gavel on the last item on the auction block, next years auction begins. New donors need to be found, new ways to promote next years auction need to be dreamed up, new relationships need to be formed, you need to review what happened that was right and what could be done better next time. Ideally the staff from year to year will overlap, the batton will not only be passed it might be re-designed a bit with input from last years batton carrier and advice on how the auction can be better and and the process improved. You might notice I just said the P word, an auction is a process, it can be documented it should be documented.

You may have noticed I said large auctions need an auctioneer. I believe even small auctions can benifit from an auctioneers help, the problem is that an auctioneer can only conduct so many auctions each year and we must choose which causes we can help. That being said, you might look for new auctioneers to help you with your auction if you can't interest the local "old pro". You might tell me "Rob, my group can't afford an auctioneer". I would counter that a good auctioneer not only pays his own way he more than pays his own way. He brings not only experince to the auction, he often brings his own staff. But more on that later.

Charity Auctions 101

If your group is thinking of having a charity auction here are a few things you should consider:

• Auctioneers need to see to do their job.It should go without saying but I'll say it anyhow, If I can't see a bidder (let alone a bid) I can't take that bid. If you want flowers get short ones. I once did an auction where they put flower arrangements on every table that must have been 2 feet high (you can see them over my right shoulder in this picture), I couldn't see half of the crowd through the jungle. Balloons are not an auctioneers friend either, if you feel the need for balloons at a charity auction put them behind the crowd or in the silent auction area, never between the crowd and the auctioneer. In the picture with all of the ballons do you think you could see a bid? At least 1/2 of all of the potential bidders in the crowd are hidden behind a wall of ballons. Projectors can help but not if you point them in my eyes. I love an auction with a projection team, it helps show where those great seats are in the ball park, a close-up of the item I am selling but if you put the projector pointing up in my face I will spend half the night dazzled and will miss a lot of bids.

• Auctioneers need to hear to do their job.It may seem odd to you but it is true, an auctioneer needs to hear to do his or her job well. First of all we need to hear ourselves to tell how we are sounding to the crowd, it is like a musician who likes a monitor speaker, without the feedback of the sound of our voice we can't tell how we are coming across to the crowd. We also would like to be able to hear a bidder who is screaming YES, YES! If you are having a silent auction, end it before the auctioneer gets up. I had a charity auction where half of the crowd got up to make last minute bids on the silent auction and they all started talking loudly with each other I couldn't hear anything.


• Auctioneers need to be able to be heard to do their job.An auctioneer makes his or her living by talking, it is very rude when the crowd gets loud and makes the auctioneer shout, it hurts their voice. Ending the silent auction first will go a long way to help this out, but giving the auctioneer a sound system with a volume knob will also help. Consider extra speakers for your auctioneer's sound system to spread the sound out and not blast the people by the one speaker.
  Auctioneers need bidders to do their job. If you are going to the charity event, then you must have some regard for the charity, so bid. If you want to bid do not be afraid to make yourself seen, bring a little flash light, wave a colorful rag, hoot, holler, jump up, have fun with it. You can really set the crowd on fire by yelling YEP, when you want me to see you! When the crowd gets involved this way it is a lot of fun.


• Auctioneers need help to do their job.If you are running the event you know what a big task a charity auction can be, soliciting donations, food, decorations, entertainment, etc... but a good auction also takes ring persons (people to hold up the items for sale so the crowd can see what is for sale), bid spotters (people who concentrate their attention on a particular part of the crowd to look for bids and entice bidders to bid again (it really helps if the auctioneer can't see because of balloons, flowers, people walking around, projectors, etc..). Invite the auctioneer to bring his own table full of helpers, and give them complementary food. An auctioneer with his staff can give your a Much Better Auction! It will pay for itself.


• Auctioneers need to not be interrupted to do their job.Once the auctioneer starts do not stop him to read numbers for a raffle, or to entice people to buy 50/50 tickets, or to let a band play or to make announcements unless you want to kill the auction. An auction is designed to mesmerize the crowd, not let them think and good one gets you hooked. To interrupt the auctioneer it to kill the momentum, it costs you money every time.


• Auctioneers don't need to be thanked to do their job, but you should thank them. Never let your auctioneer set alone at a table, even if you can get him back he will charge you a lot more next year! Nobody likes to be alone and an auctioneer is a social creature by nature. Always let your auctioneer know if you think they did a good job. Saying thank you goes a long way, a card is better.