Live Stream Auction - Post Mortem
Our first annual, 4th of July Freedom Fundraiser has come to a close. We were streaming for 24 hours (with some breaks and technical difficulties). I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that attended and especially those that donated and bid on (and won!) any of the items.
While I think it was a great success, it was our first attempt. Right now, I would like to take the time to talk about what went well and what we need to work on.
The Good
Auction Item Donations
So many amazing artists, small businesses, and creators showed love and support for our mission by donating items for us to auction. The variety and quality of the items were insane and, I am delighted with what we were able to present to people as unique ways to help support our mission.
To keep this as a possibility for next year, we need to start gathering auction items from the start of the year. We plan to host a different auction-style event at the beginning of each December and will be working to be prepared for that event from now until then. The 4th of July event will need to be our focus as soon as that event is completed.
The GiveButter Website - Auction Feature
I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use of the GiveButter website. I was not able to find a good resource for hosting the auction until the very last minute. When I searched again for a way to host the auction, GiveButter showed up and, I remembered that Hunt-Fight-Build created our organization on GiveButter for the fitness challenge fundraiser they ran for us. When I saw that they had an auction tool for their platform, I had to try it out.
The auction function was everything I needed. I originally planned for each item to have unique start and end times, that feature was available. I ended up choosing not to it that but, it is possible for different auctions in the future. The interface was intuitive for me and had all of the options I wanted for the items from reserve amounts and setting bid increments. I would genuinely use this tool for in-person auctions as well.
Knowing that we will continue to use this tool, we need to complete all of our information for the site and really make it a centerpoint of our fundraising campaigns.
Live Stream Guests
Despite some issues regarding guests that will be addressed later, the conversations we had were great fun and helped to keep me going. I know that I would have struggled far less to stay awake if we had conversations going the whole time.
People had a chance to talk about what they donated and what they are doing in their lives. It was great to draw attention to specific items and see bids come in for many of them while we discussed them. Having people come on and talk to us was by far the best part of this whole event.
The Bad
Preparation
I waited until the last minute to build out the auction site. In my head, I was trying to make sure we had enough items to fill the 24 hours before building out a site. Now that I know how good the GiveButter auction feature is, I will be building auctions out ahead of time. I will also be specifically advertising the auction site and encouraging people to register early and review the items.
We did not practice the live stream setup and took nearly 8 hours of streaming to really get a groove. Hopefully, this experience would improve our chances of a quick start but… we also had some struggles midstride. Running a practice stream the day before to ensure we are running properly needs to be a part of our processes.
Guests
Need to fill all but the very start of the stream with guests. The conversations made the event and we need to emphasize that.
We need to get people scheduled earlier. Start getting people locked into a timeslot as soon as possible. Several even confirmed timeslots during the live stream.
Call and Audio check. The day before the event, I need to confirm/remind guests about the time of their participation and confirm how we will contact them with the method for joining. We had to flex a few times during the stream but we were sending the links in the same way for most.
Design / Concept
Several aspects of the design/plan for this event had issues.
Running the items for 1 hour only would have been insane. Only having them up for 24 hours was clearly not enough. For an online auction, we may need to extend the concept to a week. Maybe just close out the week with a stream to draw the final attention… or kick it off with a long stream… or maybe just a short stream each day with 1-2 guests to highlight their pieces that day.
Reserve amounts caused some issues. Many auctions had decent (not great) bid amounts but did not meet the reserve I set before we started. I could not change the reserve and many people didn’t know what a reserve was or how much it was. GiveButter does not show the reserve amount on the item page. We need to either remove reserves entirely, ensure that the reserve amount is mentioned in the description, or set the starting bid to what we feel the reserve should be and just start from there.
Lack of clarity for people to watch the stream and find the auction site. The auction was only available through the live stream chat and description. We need to push people to the auction site as early as possible. They need to register and they can bookmark the site. Our website ad on the main page should link DIRECTLY to the auction. We will push for more people to sign up on YouTube when pushing any future live stream events.
Great Success
For our first big effort at a fundraiser, this was a great success. Once the auctions that met the reserve closed out and were added to the direct donations, the event raised $1115. We still have several items that people placed bids for but did not meet the reserve. I believe the best thing for us to do will be to attempt a variation of the strategy we employed to see if we can get these items auctioned off.
So, stay tuned because we will likely be announcing that the remaining items will open back up for a more extended time and we will hope to do better to get the information for the auction and any live events we run. Alternatively, we could hold the items for the December AmboCon Event. Send us a DM on Instagram telling us which way you think we should go with the items that did not close.
We know they don’t get any coffee.
“Coffee is for closers...”
Thank you again to everyone that joined us to chat, bid on any items, donated to the event, or just watched as I fought to stay awake…. and played a little Diablo IV and sang some songs with Radio.
