Earlier this month I headed to Florida to again work with a Boys & Girls Club whose fundraising auction venue is a local car dealership.Clearly this dealership is a good partner of the nonprofit, greatly inconveniencing itself to transform its space -- sales floor, customer waiting area, service bay and lanes -- into a festive venue to host a sit-down dinner for just under 200 guests.Attendees begin the evening with a reception and silent auction in the service bay and customer ... Read On >
Benefit Auctions Blog
Five best free stock photography sites for live & silent auction displays
Last week I wrote about being busted by the photo police for illegally using a photograph on my website.A portion of that blog was devoted to sharing sites whereby auction planners could secure free stock photography for live and silent auction displays.To make it easier to find the sites, I've re-posted the list below.=============================== Here are my 5 best free stock photography sites for gala auction planners. This is where you can secure legal images to use in your ... Read On >
Busted! Be wary of images used in fundraising auction displays
In the summer of 2015, the nonprofit division of Venable law published "Busted: Nonprofits Will Have to Pay the Photography Piper." The article itself is short and worth reading, but here's the synopsis. For many years, nonprofits have pulled images from the internet and used them in their publications or websites.Until recently, software didn't exist to make it easy for photographers and their agents to track down these copyrighted images. Now the software exists, and nonprofits are ... Read On >
Finding a big donor – in prison
File this under the topic of "Donations found in the unlikeliest of places."While flying Delta last month, the inflight magazine Delta Sky profiled lifestyle company Beekman 1802.Years prior to starting the company with his partner, one of the two co-owners, Brent Ridge, was a doctor who was working at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.While Martha Stewart was in prison, Ridge wrote her a letter asking her to donate money to his employer, Mount Sinai.She did. The resulting gift of ... Read On >
Find Your Name Boards: Recognizing guests at large events (trade show, association and conference auctions)
Traveling fills my imagination with new ideas. I'm still writing about stuff I saw after last month's journey west.Before flying home after the fundraiser, I saw that the 2016 Honolulu Marathon -- the 4th largest marathon in the United States -- had a free trade show. The Hawaii Convention Center was just a short jaunt from my hotel, so I visited. Recall that I already wrote about how this trade show used a Graffiti Wall, which is an idea I've already seen used at a Florida benefit ... Read On >