Scott & Steph W.
Auction Co-Chairs
Raised over $97,000
NEF Lighthouse
This is our second year of using Silent Auction Pro for our annual fundraising auction for our public schools and we can highly recommend it.
We looked at several competing products last year before deciding it offered the most-bang-for-the-buck for an Internet-based cloud solution (important for the ability to share access with many users). With only a few weeks to prepare, we were able to import the bidder and donor lists from previous auctions, set up all the new donation and auction items, export all the content for our printed program, run our auction smoothly and efficiently (the check-in and check-out process was MUCH improved from the previous years using spreadsheets), generate all reports needed to review and reconcile the results and easily print thank you letters directly from the software. Our bidders were all very impressed with how much better the auction ran that year and we raised over $41,000.
Our experience was so positive with Silent Aucion Pro, that this year we decided to try to take advantage of almost all of its many features. We added the online bidding option after again reviewing competing solutions, including those that cost thousands of dollars. This year, with more time to prepare, we had almost 300 items listed for bidding online, complete with pictures and links to donor web sites, and collected bids totalling more than $30,000 before our live event even started! I cannot begin to describe how excited our hardworking volunteers were to literally see the fruits of their labor increasing on their computer screens with larger and larger bid results every day of that online auction.
We also took advantage of the integrated credit card processing feature, which allowed us to easily pre-register bidders and sell tickets online. We even had volunteers using iPads to check people in and enter bid results during the auction. And within minutes of the completion of final bidding at our live auction, I checked the results on my phone's browser and realized we had just raised over $56,000 this year. Wow! THANK YOU SILENT AUCTION PRO! And a special thank you to your tech support for all the emails and phone calls you supported us with throughout the whole process.
Look no further. You have found a terrific solution to your online, silent and live auction headaches. We'll certainly be back again next year!