When to open and close your silent auction: 5 approaches

During recent client consultations, discussions turned to when my client should open and close their silent auction.

The best answer is, it depends.

• Do you desire wide participation? Better have your silent auction run entirely online, so more can participate.
• Do you want to avoid shipping items, or having winners drop by your office to pick up their winnings? Better close the silent auction at the gala and ensure that only gala guests can win packages.

There are any number of considerations that will determine the best open and close time for you.

Here are five approaches used by my clients to open and close their silent auction.

1. Open it online a few days (typically a week) before the gala. Transfer the high bid to a paper bid sheet for the gala. After the gala, transfer the high bid from paper back into the online auction and run the auction for a few more days.

2. Open it online a few days (typically a week) before the gala. Transfer the high bid to a paper bid sheet and close the silent auction at the gala.

3. Open it online a few days (typically a week) before the gala. At the gala, guests can bid on it using mobile bidding (and others participating from elsewhere can use their phone or computer). Close it online at the gala.

4. Open the auction online a week or so before the gala, and close it online a week or so after the gala. In this example, the auction is running in tandem with the gala, but isn’t really a integral part of the onsite festivities.

5. At the gala, announce that the silent auction has now opened online and will be close a week later. Note that some will simply call this an “online auction”; the changes in technology have blurred what we call a silent auction and an online auction.