2014 Success Stories Be Inspired For Your 2015

2014 SUCCESS STORIES - be inspired for your 2015 fundraising events!

Well it's been a fantastic year of fundraising at GalaBid with over $10 million raised through our fundraising platform.

We've seen some absolutely amazing fundraising events and creative ideas being put into place to achieve outstanding results so we've shared a few of these with you for your own inspiration when working on your 2015 fundraising events and campaigns:

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE PRIZE BOX!

How To Be Inventive With Your Auction Catalogue:

St Mary's Catholic School (NSW)

GalaBid has seen an array of different school events smash their fundraising targets with the GalaBid platform in 2014.

From small outdoor fetes to large gala dinners the event sizes and budgets have all varied but the outcome has been the same äóñ a big increase in fundraising revenue.

One of our favourite school events for 2014 was the St Mary's äóÖCoffey Cup', a fundraiser that combined both a normal auction and a horse race (calcutta) auction. The GalaBid platform allowed guests to bid to become 'racehorse owners' - the bidding for horses was fierce with everyone wanting to own a runner in each race.  An actual pre-recorded race (professionally re-called with jockeys named after teachers and horses named after students) was then broadcast and the winning owner walked away with a valuable prize while the winning jockey (a surprised teacher) was awarded a bottle of champagne.    This is a really fantastic way of putting a great spin on an auction and fundraising campaign and made the event that little bit extra special compared with the usual prize-based auctions. The school raised substantially more than it had achieved in previous years and captured over 40% of their final revenue prior to the actual event via GalaBid's pre-event bidding feature.

Try to think outside of the box when it comes to sourcing and listing your own auction prizes: sometimes there are some great resources at our fingertips we haven't even thought of. For example, one of our hospital research clients auctioned off a canvas display of your own brain scan äóñ a fantastically unique gift that was easily obtainable from their own resources.

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GETTING THE GOLFERS INVOLVED!

Tangible Donation Campaigns

Cerebral Palsy Alliance

Each year CPA run a beautiful golf weekend in the Hunter Valley where family, friends and colleagues come together in various fundraising activities.

With the main gala dinner taking place in a pool area in the middle of the countryside with little phone connection, the GalaBid team work with the venue each year to provide a secure Wi-Fi connection to the 450 guests to ensure seamless bidding can take place.

This has been working well for the charity with auction fundraising revenue up by 60% and nearly 30% of this being captured pre-dinner in the lead up to the event.

There's nothing like outbidding your buddy on the green as they take their swing! It seems like golfing competitors started to realise: äóÖIf you can't beat them on the golf course, beat them in the auction'!

One thing we really like about the CPA auction campaign is the way they offer up tangible donations to their supporters allowing them to purchase valuable pieces of equipment to aid in the support of their clients.

The auction obviously gives a fun and competitive edge to giving but for those that want to make a tangible contribution this is a great way to feel involved.

Supporters simply click on the piece of equipment they would like to purchase and funds are collected instantly via a secure payment gateway.  

CPA are constantly using their brains to think of engaging ways to connect supporters with the people they are raising funds for, which is an amazingly powerful way to fundraise.  

Have a think about how you can really tap in to emotional giving at your next fundraiser. A collaborative giving section with a totaliser screen and your MC energising the room can also be super effective. People like to leave a fundraiser feeling like they've made a difference and collaborative giving can be a really effective way to achieve this.

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BIDDING FRENZY!

How to Engage Your Audience in Your Silent Auction

West Coast Eagles

The West Coast Eagles were äóÖstoked' with the results from their fundraising auction back in May when they increased their auction target by 42% with the GalaBid platform.

Their auction is a great example of how to build and manage a big catalogue. They had a huge variety of items from $10 DVD packages up to luxury holiday getaways to give a range of price points to suit all supporters.  The GalaBid catalogue made for easy viewing of the items and guests could keep a äóÖfavourites' watch-list and receive outbid notifications to keep them up to date on what they were winning.

This meant that every single one of their 266 items was sold with an outstanding 3236 bids being placed!

The other great thing about their event was the way they created a real sense of urgency about the auction, using both the MC and their auction leaderboard screens with countdown timers to create a bidding frenzy in the last 10 minutes of the auction.

There were also regular reminders and spruiking of items throughout the evening, as well as a dedicated team of staff that were offering a äóÖpersonal shopper' service to guests via designated iPads. This really saw engagement levels stay high and the fundraising revenue skyrocket.

The payment desk was also pretty impressive with WCE taking advantage of the mobile invoicing and payment option that GalaBid offered its guests to ensure queues were kept to a minimum: 60% of payments were processed via the mobile phone gateway.

The events team at WCE are one of the best we've had the pleasure to work with äóñ organized, efficient and on the ball from start to finish. This definitely helped ensure the best results were achieved on the night.

Keeping engagement levels up in an auction is essential to great results: Think about some of the visual and aural stimuli you can provide to encourage people keep people hitting that bid button.

Another fantastic resource you can take advantage of is your staff. They can be amazing sales people on the night, especially if they know your guests äóñ don't be afraid to get them out on the floor and engaging people in your auction, donation campaign or raffle draw.  They will know which guests to focus on and where the money in the room is.