As a profession, auctioneering has long had performance tied to compensation. Auctioneers have based their worth, literally, on their ability to market and sell assets for their clients. This makes complete sense in the world of antiquities, fine art, liquidations, estate sales, vehicle auctions, real estate auctions and the like, but it is unconscionable in […]

It takes a lot of people to put on a good fundraising auction, and they all have to be in tune with the goals of the event. We acknowledge that we spend a good deal of our time straddling the line between “fundraiser” and “party” and work with our events to make sure we are […]

The experience attendees have at your event is based upon each and every interaction they have.  From the moment they arrive until the moment they checkout, every volunteer and staff member at your fundraising event is helping set the tone for the evening and shaping your guests’ perceptions of how things went. And while it […]

At more than one recent event, I have been handed a catalog with inflated values on the live auction packages. There is an inherent danger in this, as it stretches the boundaries of trust with bidders. The desire to establish a high value for the auction packages one works incredibly hard to obtain is understandable, […]

At the end of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-award winning western, Unforgiven, Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman’s character) finds himself about to die at the hand of Edward Munny (Eastwood), one of the very criminals he’s spent his entire life protecting his little town from. “I don’t deserve this… to die like this,” Dagget says. Munny pauses […]

Reynolds & Buckley will be conducting a workshop entitled Fundraising Auctions in Hard Times on Tuesday, February 24th at the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County. Company founder and nationally recognized fundraising expert David Reynolds will be on hand to discuss the challenges facing anyone conducting a fundraising auction today, along with associates Greg Quiroga and […]

The question always comes up as we start working with a new client; “In the catalogue should we list value or opening bid?” In fact the choice is broader than that.  I have used the following options over the years, each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Value.  The advantage is that it is straight […]

Colleen and I have spent the last few days in the wine country.  We have had meetings in Napa, Mendocino and Sonoma.  It has given us a chance to talk to several vintners.  They are all complaining about wine sales generally but the bright spot is that direct sales and their wine club sales are […]

Disappointing News. I just saw a depressing report from the Spectrem Group of Chicago. They spend their time tracking trends among the wealthy. This is the first feed-back that I have seen on the effects of the economy specifically on the wealthy. The first question answered is whether the rich have, through access to some […]

One of the events I had the privlege of working with last year was Web 2.0 Summit, put on by O’Reilly Media and techweb in the first week of November.  2008 marked the fifth Web 2.0 Summit, and the first time that they opted to do any sort of fundraising in conjunction with the conference. […]