Auction Director

Free up your auction committee to focus on the tasks where they excel, and ensure that every minute detail of your auction is taken care of with our Auction Director, Beth Sandefur. This new service offers in-the-trenches planning and implementation that will improve the efficiency of your auction planning process and help you raise more money. Clients who subscribe to this service will benefit from hands-on, professional assistance with the countless details required before, during, and after a fundraising auction. Focused on pre-event planning and night-of direction, our Auction Director will participate fully with your committee to make your auction a success:

Timelines and Schedules
We know what it takes to implement a successful auction, and more importantly we know how to time it. When should your committee start meeting? When should you start soliciting your auction lots? When should your auction lots be finalized?

We know the answer to these questions and more, and will craft an event-specific timeline for your auction committee. Best of all, we’ll work to keep them on-schedule by scheduling and driving your auction committee meetings.

Committee Participation
Building trust and establishing relationships with your committee starts by being an active, regular participant in your committee meetings. Once we’ve helped establish the timeline for committee meetings, we then participate in person with key staff and committee members.

Our Auction Director has years of experience managing the diverse needs and egos of high-powered event committees. She will help your committee build consensus, get your committee to commit to goals, and help define focused tasks to ensure goals are reached.

Our Auction Director is here to help take your committee and event to new heights, with less stress than ever before.

Back End Solutions
Our Auction Director has worked with all of the top payment processing and auction management solutions. She will recommend and advise on planning software, forms and paperwork, and can give your team a master class in implementing Greater Giving’s software.
Playing Nice Together
If you currently work with an event planner, we’re not out to replace them: we’re out to free them from trying to coordinate the element of your event that they have the least experience in: the auction. Our Auction Director will collaborate on all of the production details with your current event planner, representing the fundraising side of your event throughout the process.
Volunteer Training & Coordination
Volunteers ensure the success of every auction; volunteers staff registration, checkout, close your silent auction, spot for your live auction, process payments , handle customer service and more. We will identify the types and numbers of volunteers needed to make your auction a success.

Leading up to the auction we will set the day-of-auction schedule for volunteers, and manage communication with your volunteers. We will assemble training materials for checkout/check-in staff and volunteer team. Our Auction Director will create a staff and volunteer day-of plan, and then train and supervise staff and volunteers to help with registration and set-up for the auction.

Constant Communication
As Auction Director, we are a part of your team. We will be available to your key committee and staff members throughout the entire planning process, via email, text, and phone. Have a question? We’ve got answers, or know where to find them.
Night-Of Logistics
On auction night, your committee, board and executive staff should be left free to network, mingle and make the most of the opportunity to engage major supporters face to face. Leave “calling the show” to your Auction Director.

We will work with your committee to establish the timing and sequence for the program, and then prepare a detailed timetable. We will then manage the timetable, assisting with all night-of logistics, working behind the scenes with technicians for sound checks, synchronizing PowerPoint slides to assure accuracy with live program, and checking timing to ensure the program moves along.

Our Auction Director will also create a detailed plan for auction fulfillment and ensure proper staffing is in place to handle critical customer service issues. Does enjoying your auction and possibly even eating a warm dinner sound too good to be true? Contact us today.

Comprehensive Auction Tracking
Most auction planners provide you with a list of who won what lot and how much it sold for – at best. We provide comprehensive auction tracking, and our proprietary CAT SCAN follow-up report which reveals bidder behavior in the most granular detail.

Don’t settle for finding out who bought what. Take the opportunity to discover exactly how all of your donors behave during your auction, and from that learn who you should be cultivating and who you should be seating in the back of the room next year. 

When your auction is complete, we will compile all of your live and silent auction data and generate detailed reports that your entire development team will find extremely useful both for planning the next event and for integration in year-round fundraising efforts.

We have directed some of the largest auctions in the Bay Area, and know how to guide a committee to a successful event. Set your team free to focus on their most essential work: item procurement, donor development, and bidder recruitment. Let us direct your auction.