A few weeks ago I had a great discussion with Laura Quinn from Idealware, a website that reviews software applications for use by non profit organizations. In addition to interviewing me, she also spoke with several other consultants and non profit leaders about their experiences with online auction software such as cMarket and eBay.

Her article is a must read for anyone considering an online auction. In addition to the software aspect she also covers some of the basics and best practices for running such auctions.

An online charity auction can be a good way to raise money, rally support for your cause, and, hopefully, have some fun. Like any special event, though, an online auction requires solid planning and a fair amount of staff time. What it won’t require, however, is substantial technical expertise. There are several good online platforms that will host and help you manage your online auction.

Keep Reading: A Few Good Online Auction Tools

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Harry Potter mania has hit a new high with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7). Many bookstores planned midnight sales events to celebrate the final J.K. Rowling book in her popular Harry Potter series.

A popular Canadian bookseller also turned Pottermania into a fundraising event. The Harry Potter Midnight Bash at Bryan Prince Booksellers in Hamilton, Ontario benefited The Hamilton Literary Council. The fun family event included a scavenger hunt, costume contest, a Hogwarts sorting hat and free pizza.

Approximately 200 – 300 adults and children attended the bookstore event. The Hamilton Literacy Council from the last Harry Potter bash raised $1,000 and they are awaiting the final fund-raising results for this event.

The Hamilton Literacy Council is very grateful to Bryan Prince Booksellers, which completely organizes the event. The charity is then given $2 for every Harry Potter book sold, which is a donation straight from Bryan Prince Booksellers. They have done the event twice to benefit the charity, and Bryan Prince Booksellers has hosted Harry Potter bashes for at least four of the books.

Valerie Sadler, Executive Director looks forward to the Harry Potter events tremendously. “The excitement in the air, people waiting for the Harry Potter book to come out. When I was on my way home I could see people sitting on the sidewalk, reading the book. Once they got it, people immediately started reading it. It was a sight to see,” said Sadler. “The books have brought so many young people into reading, especially boys.” Sadler believes the event has a wonderful connection to literacy.

The Hamilton Literacy Council is an adult literacy program and they provide one-to-one tutoring with trained volunteer tutors and also offer small group instruction with paid instructors. They serve people with low-literacy levels. “Next year we celebrate our 35th anniversary of serving adults in the Hamilton community,” said Sadler.

The Hamilton Literacy Council serves 180 people a year and has served thousands over the years.

While this was the last of the Harry Potter books, there will be two more film adaptations. There is still the potential for Harry Potter movie fundraisers to be held. Non Profit organizations can benefit from latching on to this and other popular films and entertainment events when planning fundraising events.

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Has your organization considered taking its fundraising auction online? eBay is great for small auctions and those just looking to get their feet wet in the auction world, but cMarket offers a lot of advantages for groups who are serious about raising funds with online auctions.

I first learned about cMarket over a year ago and finally got to meet them at the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference in March. Jong Soo Hallet (at left) has always been great about answering my questions about the cMarket system. Several of the other team members were there, and they were also very friendly and helpful.

cMarket really does place the customer in first place. They offer online training, free teleseminars and a help desk in case you need it. They are always improving their services so that groups can be even more successful with online auctions.

Two of cMarket’s services that compliment the auction software can dramatically increase your fundraising results:

cMarket Place gives you access to consignment items to add to your auction at no upfront cost. There are high ticket and specialty items that can get some big bids from auction “attendees.”

Bidding for Good is a way that your auction can reach a greater audience. People who may have never heard of your organization can search, view and bid for your auction items. (Just like on eBay!)

Find out More about cMarket

During a recent interview I gave an introduction to cMarket and some of its benefits. Now you can listen to this 8 minute audio clip for free

You can also visit the cMarket site, and watch a demo video.

Or just fill out a request form to get more information about cMarket’s services.

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Coffee aficionados were given the opportunity to learn just about everything they would want to know about their favorite beverage on Saturday, July 21st. The event at Prinnie Mack in Warner Robins, Georgia benefited HODAC, Inc.. HODAC is an organization which offers rehabilitation services to those battling addiction and other challenges.

The event included the proper way to roast coffee beans, how to make espresso and how to foam milk (for espresso drinks). Guests purchased a ticket for the event which included the coffee presentation and a lunch. They could also place bids on artwork at the silent auction.

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The Time Cinema Theater of Oshkosh held a fund-raising concert Saturday, July 7th. They raised $1,000. This was their first fund-raising event in an effort to raise $200,000 to renovate the theater.

The event included live music and a self-guided tour of the building. “We learned some things, what not to do next time,” Joe Grier, board president said. “We started at 1 p.m. and it was just too long … We had sparse crowds all afternoon until Gallery Walk started; then we really got a lot of people coming through.”

Source: The Northwestern.com

People shared fond memories throughout the evening of what the theater had meant to them. The board felt its efforts to keep the theater alive were very much supported.

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A spaghetti dinner is a popular fund-raiser for many organizations. When planning your menu, you want to offer a delicious meal while keeping your costs down for your organization. You also want to offer people a generous meal that is delicious, in thanks for their donation. There are real benefits to holding a dinner for your charity, school or organization: the actual dinner is a great chance to meet n’ greet: to build relationships and meet with fellow volunteers and Board members. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet other people in your community who are interested in your organization, who may be interested in getting involved in some way.

Get Sponsors Involved

One thing to consider when planning your menu is involving “menu sponsors”. A grocery store or a restaurant may be happy to donate to your organization. Or you can ask people that support your organization to “sponsor” your dinner to donate items that you will need for the dinner. Obtaining sponsorship may help you offer a fancier or more generous meal to your attendees.

Spaghetti and Other Menu Ideas

When planning your spaghetti fund-raiser, keep in mind that one pound of spaghetti feeds about 4 to 6 people. It will feed more or less people depending on their appetites and also depending on what other items you are serving at the meal (salad, bread, dessert, etc.). A wonderful idea for your leftovers is to make plans ahead of time to donate them to a food bank or homeless shelter in need.

Making spaghetti with meat sauce: Plan a half pound of hamburger for every pound of spaghetti for a hearty meat sauce. You should also have a standard size jar of spaghetti sauce for every pound of spaghetti that you have. If you are making meatballs you will probably want a bit more hamburger than this. Sometimes someone that loves to cook has their own spaghetti sauce recipe and you may want to use this instead, depending on if time permits.

To make a great salad: plan 8-9 heads of lettuce to feed 100 people. Adding additional vegetables to your salad is a great way to make your spaghetti dinner seem fancier. You can add one to two red, yellow and green peppers. Color in a salad makes it look very appealing. Tomatoes are popular in salad, consider adding cherry tomatoes or several (5 -6) larger tomatoes. Add four to five cucumbers. Onions are another great way to add color to a salad, select several red onions and chop finely. Add croutons. Offer a variety of salad dressings – Ranch, Thousand Island, Italian, Russian and Balsamic Vinegar are some of the most popular types of salad dressings. You could also look for some light or sugar free versions of salad dressings.

Making a fruit salad: Again, this is another way that you can make your spaghetti dinner fancier, by offering some exotic fruits. By slicing some kiwi fruits on the top of your fruit salad, suddenly your fruit salad looks more fancy and stylish. Go for color and a variety of colors when selecting fruits for your salad. Fruits in season will be the freshest, tastiest and probably the least expensive. One idea for a fruit salad is to start with 1 ½ dozen bananas, 6 apples (try to find different types of apples, get different tastes), 5 pounds of grapes, 3 quarts of pineapple and 1 gallon of peaches. Add 2 lbs of mini marshmallows, ½ gallon mayonnaise dressing and ½ gallon whipped cream. Wash fresh fruit and slice and drain canned fruit. Put all fruit into mayonnaise. Whip the cream and fold it into the mayonnaise and fruit mixture. Serves 100.

Dessert table: a great way to offer your attendees dessert is to ask your volunteers to bake or make a dessert to bring to the event. They will bake cakes, cookies, brownies and other delicious treats. One of the benefits of having many people make dessert is that you will have a variety of lovely desserts to offer people.

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The “Stockdale Family Hoedown” was held outdoors in downtown Middleton to benefit the Stockdale family. The close-knit, small community became the first city in the history of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to create a special fund-raiser for a family featured on the program. “Extreme Makeover” and CBH Homes are joining together with many volunteers to build a home for Ryan and Karia Stockdale and their children.

The Stockdale children have eosinophilic esophagitis, a rare white blood cell disease. Kayden, 7; Jett, 5; Baylee, 4; and McKinnon,2 will now have a home that has been equipped to make thier life a bit easier.

The fund-raiser was organized by Becky Abbott who volunteered at the “Exctreme Makeover” work site where the home was being built. She printed up flyers and brought them to the work site and the reality show producers wanted to work with her. Radio station KIZN 92FM also donated time and sponsorship for the charity event. Response has been phenomenal — with 800 people calling the local City Hall for information about the event, and hundreds more calling Abbott and other volunteers for information about the fund-raiser.

The fund-raiser’s entertainment included local bands, a raffle, a charity auction, an appearance by the “Extreme Home” celebrity home designers and a performance by Abbott’s dance team. The fund-raising event was filmed for a segment on the show about the building of the Stockdale home.

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My son’s school had a raffle this year that was so successful that next year the school might just implement this raffle idea as the only fundraiser.

Our school like most schools has an auction/dinner fundraiser every year. An event that a handful of parents work on all year long for weeks and weeks and the rest of the school parents put in a pretty good share of time too. This year was one of the most successful ones because we also implemented a raffle that raised a quarter of the whole event!

The truth is I think that raffles rule! But you have to do it in a smart way. Here is what we did:

Since kids are great raffle tickets salespeople we wanted to make it fun and rewarding for the kids to sell the tickets. We made a list of all the coolest raffle prizes that our kids would love to receive. The #1 thing was a Unicycle (we have a circus performing arts class that all the kids take), after that we came up with a Tamagotchi , a skateboard and tons of beanie babies!

What we did is organize in effect two raffles, one was the fundraising raffle and one was the “kid raffle”. You cannot buy raffle tickets for the “kid raffle,” you can only earn them. For every 10 tickets that a kid sells they get one free kid raffle ticket. Naturally, the kid raffle’s main prize was a unicycle (which we got donated) and the rest of the prizes were bought by us.

The kids went nuts!!! We gave each child a packet with all the instructions and got them psyched… We made an executive decision that no kid will go empty handed at the end of the raffle and we bought beanie babies for all of them (we got them on eBay for a dollar each).

In order to try and inspire people to buy more raffle tickets for the regular fundraising raffle we awarded those who spent a lot of money with loads of tickets. One raffle ticket sold for a dollar, 6 for 5 dollars all the way to 500 tickets for $200! The thinking for the high amount is that many family members, friends and grandparents live far away. They would be happy to support junior’s school and cannot attend the fundraiser BUT they can buy raffle tickets… and would make junior really happy because the more tickets they buy the more the granddaughter receives free “kid raffle” tickets.

In my opinion, the only reason for having a raffle that compliments an auction/dinner is to be able to squeeze money from people that are not going to be at the physical event.

In order to solve the problem of filling in your name and number on each ticket we offered a “free fill in service” for those who bought $40 worth of tickets or more. We devised a system at the end to make this easy for us to do. I can’t tell you how many of my friends added $20 bucks just so they won’t have to fill out 30 tickets…

Out of about 50 kids (we are a very small school k-6) we sold about 6 $200 deals (which also included 2 free tickets to the main event, a $50 value)..

Some kids sold hundreds of dollars worth of raffle tickets just by approaching their church members or even at the local market (naturally, we made it clear that kids do not sell on their own and must have an adult present). What I found is that people will be happy to give 5-10 bucks to a local school not really caring what the raffle prizes were.

This was a way to get money from school supporters who could not attend the dinner event for whatever reason.

We ended up raising over $6000 with this raffle which was huge for us. I am already thinking of ways to refine this system in order to make it even more successful next year.

When I think of how much time and energy goes into doing the fundraiser dinner and relatively how little time was involved with the raffle I wonder if it is possible to stretch these ideas and make it the main event.

I think that the key to the success was having the secondary kid raffle. Because once you charge up the kids they not only do a great job but most of them love it too… And also I think that people are quite tired of buying from those catalogs stuff that they really don’t need or want and would prefer to just give the full amount of money to the school….

If you were given a choice between buying overpriced $8 gift wrap (which the school only sees $3) or buying 12 raffle tickets for $10 which all goes to the school what would you choose?

About the Author: Frustrated with the usual unorganized school fundraisers Suzanne Wouk turned to the internet in search of a better way. She started the site FundraisingMom.com in order to share the information she found with others.

For a general guide that will help your group set up a raffle see How to Organize a Raffle Fundraiser. For a more extensive course check out Raffle Secrets.

For more information about school fundraisers visit Top School Fundraisers.

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Langley’s Critter Care Wildlife Refuge of Langley, British Columbia takes in abandoned wildlife. They hold an open house only once a year, when the public is a allowed to visit. Visitors take a guided tour to see wild animals — such as baby coyotes, beavers, fawns, raccoons and bobcats.

The open house fund-raiser helps the organization pay for needed expenses to care for the animals. The organization is run completely by volunteers and they are dependent on donations, memberships and grants for funds. Funds helps pay for animal food, vet bills and housing for the animals. The milk bill for the animals each year is $15,000. The centre accepts an average of 800 animals each year.

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Harry Potter fans were given a special advance screening of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” at the Fifth Wizard’s Ball, a fund-raising event for Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan and also for the Pediatric Oncology Resource Team.

The event was held at Celebration Cinema North of Grand Rapids. They raised $140,000 for the two charities.

600 Harry Potter enthusiasts came to take part in the event. The Fifth Wizard’s Ball included a live owl, food from local restaurants, a magician, fire eaters, live people in picture frames and also costumed characters. The event also had an auction.

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