If your charity auction is looking for to be more environmentally aware, one approach is to reduce your reliance on printed substances. Here’s one concept: have guests bid electronically within the silent public sale and you may remove the want to print bid bureaucracy.
This article offers an overview of the idea.
Though they’re often used interchangeably, e-bidding and Silent Auction mobile bidding (additionally known as handheld bidding) are extraordinary. E-bidding may or might not be cellular, but cell bidding (or hand held bidding) is continually digital.
With e-bidding, visitors bid on silent public sale objects the use of a device. The device is probably an iPad (which might be cell, until affixed to the silent public sale table), a personal cell smartphone or a cellphone furnished by using the vendor (additionally mobile), or stationary terminals installation in the silent public sale vicinity (now not mobile). For the latter, the same old arrangement is one stationary terminal (a “terminal” which means an iPad or touch-screen laptop) according to handful of silent public sale objects.
My notion is to make the bidding cellular, except you are organized to set-up a desk bound terminal for each silent auction package. A one-to-one ratio is vital. After all, who might need to transport to an “improved” e-bid technology, most effective to have guests to line up in front of a terminal, ready to region a bid on an object? That wouldn’t be progress.
That stated, shopping for one hundred iPads in your 100 silent auction packages wouldn’t be financially savvy, both. Borrowing is a higher alternative. You might method a capability underwriter to loan you dozens of iPads for the gala, for example. Or use sponsorship dollars to rent them yourself.
On the handheld bidding front, carriers present several methods.
Vendors offer text bidding, net-primarily based bidding, and combos of the two. Additionally, a few vendors will installation a personal wireless community to your venue, even as others depend on present networks.
Without diving too deep into the generation, understand that you’ve got to fit your system to the venue. You’ve probable been in a region in which you may send a textual content, but the signal wasn’t robust enough to make a smartphone name or browse the Web.
If your venue is in an area with out a insurance, you’ll need a supplier that could set-up a non-public wireless community for guests to apply (or you may forego the mobile bidding option and use desk bound, wired terminals).
If your venue offers a few insurance, text bidding could be a extra low-cost option.
And in case you’ve got outstanding insurance on all networks, have a good time! Guests can textual content or bid thru the net.
In all instances, it’s an awesome concept to have some bid helpers with transportable hand held bidding terminals (like iPads) to be had to assist guests. Inevitably a person will forget to bring his telephone or will revel in a dead battery, rendering him without the capability to bid. Your helpers can proffer a terminal, granting guests a method with which to participate.