The Idaho Technology Council kicked off the first develop Idaho last April to unite a disparate software industry. Local software leaders then cited concerns about computer science education, a shortage of start up funding and a lack of connectedness within Idaho’s software sector…

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Statesman staff
Published: Mar 16, 2012

The Boise Brave Parent Boosters invite parents of past, present and future Boise High School students; owners and employees of businesses near BHS; and any and all other BHS supporters to help raise funds for school programs by participating in an online auction.

The goal of the online auction is to raise money for school programs that do not receive full or partial funding from the Boise School District.

During the current school year, the Boise Brave Parent Boosters have provided about $25,000 in funding to a variety of BHS programs that benefit students. These include the Math Assistance Center, which offers students help with math and science; the Student Assistance Fund, which helps students with financial needs; the Library; the Science Lab; the Music Department; and the Athletic Department.

The online auction features 75 items to bid on, including vacations, spa services, restaurant gift certificates and jewelry. The online auction also offers the opportunity to contribute directly to specific programs, such as a remodel of the BHS library and internet café and purchasing equipment for sports teams.

The online auction ends at midnight Monday, March 19. To participate: http://www.boisebraves.afrogs.org/ and click “Register.”

“Are you kidding? Do you know how much work is involved?”

Traditional benefit auctions can take a heavy toll on organizers, requiring tremendous time and effort to solicit donations and sponsorships, market the event, organize the details and follow up.  Traditional auctions can also be expensive, requiring space and security, catering, entertainment and decorations.

Auction Frogs does away with many of the headaches of this model, significantly reducing the expense and time in planning and executing a successful auction.  Auction Frogs clients have an array of tools at their disposal to infuse their event with energy and momentum.  Auction Frogs auctions are flexible, and can be part of an event, or managed completely online.  These considerations make the possibility of multiple annual auctions much more palatable to both those who organize them and those who participate.

Your auction analytics give your donors valuable information about the impact supporting your organization has on their visibility, and ultimately their bottom line. Once donors understand how easy it is to donate and take time to review data about the visibility they garner by supporting your organization, they might be eager to support you again even before next year.  Traditional marketing and advertising strategies can be expensive.  Donating to an Auction Frogs auction, with the exposure it affords the donor and tools to gage that exposure, could augment or even replace an existing advertising expense.

Auction bidders, having been through a painless, fun process to support the organizations they care about, might be enthusiastic about participating in a subsequent auction.  Chances are they’ve shared the experience with friends, and will happily introduce them to your subsequent auction while still enthusiastic about your last event.  Building and maintaining momentum is critical in any fundraising endeavor, and is less likely to cool with bi-annual or even quarterly events.

Auction Frogs auctions minimize volunteer and staff burnout, and build upon knowledge and experience.  With Auction Frogs, producing multiple auctions within the same year builds upon what your staff and volunteers learned strategically from the last such event, while the information is fresh.

Finally, producing multiple events every year allows room for strategic thinking in planning your auction.  Some donors require extensive lead times to process auction requests.  If you missed their window this time around, there’s ample time to apply for the next auction. Other prospective donors might feel challenged to meet all the requests they receive one month, but would be more willing to donate if a request came later in the year.  Auction Frogs founder and long time auction volunteer Kristi Saucerman said keeping track of this information helps auction organizers be more thoughtful in their approach to potential donors.

“If your organization is strategic in approaching auction donors,” said, “they’ll keep track of everyone who says they’ve met their quota this month or those who need more advance notice to consider a gift.  Keep this information in mind and schedule your next contact appropriately, and you’ll be successful.”

For all of these reasons, Auction Frogs has developed its 365 Agreement with one fee for multiple auctions within the same calendar year.  With a 365 Agreement, your organization pays a minimum fee and then a subsequent percentage of the gross proceeds over that fee from the first event.  Subsequent events do not need to meet the minimum fee, and are only subject to the percentage charge of gross proceeds.  The benefits can be cumulative as well.  If the total of your two or more auctions raises $25,000 in gross proceeds, that percentage charge for the gross raised over that total decreases.  With this in mind, subsequent auctions are often more profitable by far than their predecessors.

Consider a 365 Agreement with Auction Frogs and how you can launch multiple auctions in one year to increase your fundraising revenue and visibility and maintain momentum without sacrificing your volunteers and staff.

READ MORE From Beth Markley

BOISE, Idaho, January 14, 2012 -The red and black of the Idaho Stampede will change to pink.

The Idaho Stampede have announced a partnership with St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute and Boise’s own AuctionFrogs.org to help raise money for breast cancer awareness. The State of Idaho ranks last in the U.S. in mammogram screening – with this auction, all money raised will be funneled to St. Luke’s in hopes of raising awareness in the state, saving the lives of countless women, mothers, daughters, sisters and friends.

The Stampede are holding an online auction on the website, which includes items from the Stampede such as merchandise and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, along with items from the team’s sponsors. The spotlight items will be pink jerseys the team will wear for Feb. 3 and 4 home games against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Fans can bid on the jerseys while at CenturyLink Arena during the games by finding the auction kiosk, but the auction will finish online the next night at midnight.

To view the auction and make bids, go to idahostampede.afrogs.org.

• Use your organization’s Facebook page, and your supporters’ personal Facebook pages, to drive more traffic to your auction.
• Use Facebook as a touchstone for this auction and future fundraising efforts.
• Thank donors for their generosity and get their supporters to notice your auction. Supportive comments are like gold and businesses remember who thanks them publicly. Showing thanks makes everyone feel good and raises your stock as an organization.
Here are some simple ways to get the ball rolling. These are good techniques to increase your organization’s social media presence – even after the auction is over. A few of these are more advanced techniques, but most of these ideas are fairly easy for anyone with basic experience in Facebook.
Each social medium has a different vibe. LinkedIn is like a business meeting, Facebook is like a neighborhood barbecue, Twitter is like a cocktail party and MySpace is like the smokers in the alley. Consider which social media are appropriate to your event and use them!

BEFORE THE EVENT:
• If possible, designate a volunteer or staff person to assist with social media promotion before, during and after the online auction and, if applicable, the live auction event.
• If you are your organization’s FB page admin, go to your page and click “Use Facebook as page” on the right. You will need to do this to use your organization’s page fully – just make sure to switch back to yourself when you are done.
• Create an event attached to your organization’s FB page. Go to www.facebook.com/events, and follow the directions. The event should be called something like “Online Auction to Support NAME.”
• Using FB as you personally, return the event page, and under the event profile picture, choose Select Guests to Invite; invite any friends you think might be interested. Ask your friends to invite their friends to the event. But do this judiciously as you don’t want to pester people.
• “Share” the event on your wall. At the top of the event page, click “share” and say something about the auction and your organization. This will post a link to the event on your wall for all your friends to see. Have your friends and supporters do this as well.
• When you visit your Auction Frogs page, there will be a FB logo to “like” the auction. If you click this, a link will show up on your personal wall to the auction site, saying that you “liked” this auction.
• Write on donors’ FB walls. To do this, use FB as your page, find their page on FB and “Like” their page. Then write a comment thanking them for their generosity and put up a link to the Auction Frogs auction page that features their donation.
• When you are using FB as your organization’s page, your comments will show up as your organization – not you personally. But there’s nothing wrong with switching back to using FB as you and leaving ANOTHER sweet comment on the business’s wall as you personally! Ask your staff and supporters to do the same. Businesses appreciate – and remember – who thanks them publicly.
• While you’re still FB as your organization, notice on the left, under your profile picture, where it says “Wall-Hidden Posts.” Check this often as FB may be hiding good comments from supporters, mistakenly assuming they are spam.
• Tag donor businesses in posts on your organization’s FB page. To tag a business, your page must “Like” it first. Then say something like, “We’d like to thank XYZ Corporation for supporting our fundraising driving by donating three thingamajigs.” Type the “@” symbol and choose the XYZ Corporation. The post will simultaneously show up on the donor’s FB wall (assuming their page’s spam filter hasn’t trapped it, in which case you might want to do them the favor of letting them know they aren’t seeing nice comments on their wall.)
• If you have a real event (wine dinner, live auction, etc.) in tandem with the Auction Frogs online auction, publicize that as well. Remember to take photos of people having fun at your event and put them on FB and them (you have to be friends with someone to tag them).
• When the auction is done, thank the high bidders (whether people or businesses) by writing on their walls. You have to be friends with a person, or a fan of the business, to write on their walls.
• If you are having a live auction, gala or similar event, make sure to include links to your FB business and event pages and invite people to go there.
• If you are able to find out who bought tickets to the event, put their names on your FB business and event pages and thank these people. It’s not possible to tag people on a business page.
• If your organization has a Twitter account, link it to your FB page so all FB updated are automatically Tweeted. Search Twitter with Tweetdeck or similar program to find out what people are saying about your event and organization.
• If your organization has a presence on LinkedIn, set up a discussion group for it and use that to get the word out in a business setting.
• Set up your event as a venue on Foursquare. Announce a prize for whoever is the Mayor at the end of the event.

DURING AND AFTER THE LIVE AUCTION EVENT (IF APPLICABLE):
• Make sure you have a wireless network accessible to your guests at the event.
• Create a photo gallery for the event on your business page. Take pictures of the event, people having fun, in groups, at tables, etc. Post them immediately to FB gallery and tag people in the photos who are your friends.
• Set up a computer and projector and display your organization’s FB page. Encourage those at the event to write on the wall/tag your organization in their status updates from the event.
• Invite people to Tweet about the event, upload to Twitpic, etc. Create a hashtag for the event to make it easy to find on Twitter. Send out regular updates from your personal and business Twitter account.
• Encourage guests to check in on Foursquare and Facebook.
• Put social media badges on the evening’s printed programs, banners, signs, etc. The MC should occasionally remind people to use Twitter, FB and other social media.
• Take video of the event and put it up on your organization’s YouTube channel, if you have one, shortly after the event to sustain good feelings. Get the video on your FB page too. If you don’t have a YouTube channel, just upload the video to FB.
• Offer a prize for whoever posts the best photo, best status update, most Tweets, etc.
• Use good judgment when photographing, videoing or writing about others. You want your social media to document the good times and good deeds of your supporters; avoid anything that could potentially embarrass anyone and immediately remove pictures and tags on request.

For more information about this article or Alexander and Associates, contact Martin Johncox at martin@alexanderandassociates.com or visit them at

I by far prefer Auction Tracker. There are many reasons, but to simplify – you pay once for the software, their support is great, you can literally in 5 minutes move your items to the online auction and move the information back. Having helped organize over 30 auctions since 2000, I know that you’re going to find lots of ways things can be done for auctions, but I’ve never had a client go back who has opted for Auction Tracker and their new connection with Auction Frogs. Do I like this match up, yes, as I was priveledged enough to do the first test auction for these two companies with Rainier Christian Schools in 2009. Since I’m very familiar with auctions in general, I was allowed to give feedback and input. They always listen and answer my questions when I ask. Do I get everything done “my way”… no, but they explain the restrictions available if there are any and they let me know if it’s something they can work on in the future.

As far as experiences of the users, I’ve had no negative feedback in three auctions with Auction Tracker/Auction Frogs. We used another online auction service at the school district in 2006, I believe, and they charged a fee to register so you could bid. Auction Tracker/Auction Frogs does rather charge the organization a fee for the sales. Do I think one is better than the other? No. And I’ve never encouraged handling fees, though many organizations do so to cover these types of fees.

TO summarize, once you buy Auction Tracker, you have paid entirely for your software. We’ve ran A.T. since 2003 at Rainier Christian School and only paid $300, I think, when Northwest Software revamped the entire program a few years ago and we required an entire new software package. They didn’t make us spend another $1595 or $1795 or whatever it costs now to buy it again. They instead gave their current clients a rate that helped them cover their expenses of the program upgrade and our receiving new CD and stuff to upgrade.

You have my 100.5% support of Auction Tracker and Auction Frogs. Let me know if you want to ask further questions, but I have an event that I must get ready for.

Thank you!!!
Kristine

D. Clark
Frequent bidder

More features rolling out soon, stay tuned!