Guest post by ClickBid

It’s no mystery that audience expansion is important to your nonprofit. To accomplish its goals, your nonprofit needs a growing supporter base. Supporter expansion leads to increased donations and volunteer involvement, which helps your nonprofit make a meaningful impact.

Auctions are a highly engaging fundraising idea that likely excites your existing supporters. But how can you leverage auction tools to reach a larger audience? In this guide, we’ll look at four ways mobile bidding can help you reach more potential supporters:

1. Increased accessibility

2. Donor engagement

3. Data tracking

4. Streamlined event management

For an auction to be successful, you’ll need to collect auction items, track your in-kind donations, plan event logistics, and promote your fundraiser. All of this leaves little time to focus on audience expansion, which is why you should leverage mobile bidding software’s outreach tools. Let’s get started!

1. Increased accessibility

Remote bidding allows participants to bid on auction items from their mobile devices, meaning they can take part in your auction virtually. This incentivizes supporters to participate even if they’re:

• Sick at home

• Out of town

• Committed to a prior engagement

Not only does mobile bidding make your auction doable for busy supporters, but it also attracts participants who aren’t involved in your organization. For example, people who have never donated or volunteered with your organization might learn about an enticing auction item through your online item catalog and register for the event in hopes of winning it. Other elements of mobile bidding that increase accessibility include:

• Push notifications: Mobile bidding software keeps participants in the loop, so they’ll be just as involved in the event from their phones as they would be if they attended in person.

• Self-check-in and payment processing: Participants can join the auction and pay for the items they won directly from mobile bidding software. 

The increased auction accessibility offered by mobile bidding capabilities broadens your potential audience to just about anyone. Not only is this a solution for your busy supporters, but it can also entice outsiders to become involved if you promote this in your auction marketing efforts.

2. Donor engagement

You might promote mobile bidding as you market your event, but the mobile bidding software itself can also be used as an outreach tool. ClickBid’s guide to silent auction software recommends using the platform to create an event landing page for your auction and providing the landing page’s link on all your other communication channels. You can also engage donors with targeted communications, through capabilities such as:

• Mass messaging: Send messages to all participants or specific groups of them. This makes widespread messages easier to send and organize, especially if you’re sending different messages to different groups of supporters. For example, you might send a specific thank-you message to only the winning bidders at the end of your auction, encouraging them to enjoy the item they won.

• Volunteer tools: Don’t just think of your donors as bidders in your auction—volunteers are also donating their time to make sure your event runs smoothly. Use volunteer tools included in your software to send important messages or fun event updates, keeping your volunteers engaged throughout the event.

• Outbid alerts: Keep bidders invested in the outcome of your auction by leveraging the outbid alerts feature of your software.

Outreach tools can help your nonprofit engage its audience, giving them a positive experience to share with their family members, friends, colleagues, and others when these supporters advocate for your organization. 

Your nonprofit won’t only reach out to auction participants—you might use your software to share an auction catalog with potential item donors to contribute to your event. By engaging the community through item procurement, your nonprofit will entice more auction participants, who can ultimately be converted into long-time supporters.

3. Data tracking

Whether you’re raising money for a school, church, or charitable organization, the importance of data-driven fundraising strategies applies to everyone. The same technique is important for auction management, and data can also influence the responsiveness of your audience. 

The right mobile bidding software can help your nonprofit track donor and fundraising data related to your event, such as: 

• Average bid amounts. Your auction will raise various monetary donations since auction items will vary in price, but you can still track metrics such as the average amount of bid increments to determine the success of your event. Use this data to adjust future item pricing strategies so that you can appeal to the budgets of more bidders.

• Bidder behavior. Evaluate how many people bid on each item and how many times they were willing to raise the price. This may reveal your auction’s most popular items, which can influence item procurement for your next auction. You’ll appeal to a larger audience of bidders when you collect a variety of coveted auction items.

• Participation history. Track participants’ histories with your organization—is this their first auction or are they regular attendees? When you understand their participation habits, you’ll know how to craft compelling appeals for support in future outreach efforts.

Use donor profiles or custom analytics reports from your mobile bidding software to adjust your fundraising strategy when approaching your next fundraising initiative. AlumniFinder’s donor data guide suggests collecting data in a constituent relationship management (CRM) system, which can be integrated with your mobile bidding software. Managing this data in one, comprehensive platform makes it easier to identify patterns or areas for improvement.

4. Streamlined event management

Unlike crowdfunding campaigns or peer-to-peer fundraisers, many resources are required to host and manage an auction. Mobile bidding software can streamline event management, decreasing the resources your nonprofit spends on administrative needs. For example, your auction will require:

• Item procurement and pricing. Mobile bidding software organizes items in a catalog as you collect them, along with information about each item.

• Day-of volunteer management. Volunteer tools will streamline communications and volunteer roles so that your volunteers won’t need to be closely supervised during the event. If your volunteers do need assistance on the day of your auction, choose an event management software provider that offers event advisors to guide your auction.

• Item display cards. Depending on how you host your auction, you might need to display additional context about each item for your attendees. When item information is input into your mobile bidding software, you can automatically print item display cards instead of manually designing the cards and adding item information to each one.

With all of these capabilities, mobile bidding software simplifies event management and allows nonprofit leaders to focus on supporter engagement. With all of the time and resources saved, you can instead focus on audience expansion through prospect research, targeted communications, and creative marketing campaigns.

Whether this is your nonprofit’s first auction or its hundredth, mobile bidding software can turn your fundraiser into an outreach strategy that will expand your audience and grow your supporter base. Research software options and determine which platform meets the needs of your organization and event.