Lighting sets the tone for an evening, it creates ambiance, it affects mood and most importantly it enables your crowd and your fundraising auctioneer to see each other. Good lighting will strike a balance between ambiance and functionality, creating a warm atmosphere that we as charity auctioneers can still function in.

Our role as fundraising auctioneer is to be able to look people in the eye and encourage them to spend more in support of your cause. The ability to engage a crowd is based on trust, and the lighting impacts our ability to establish that trust.

If the lighting on the stage is dim it makes us look untrustworthy. If the lighting is too bright, or aimed directly in right at our face with a follow-spot, it means we can’t see the crowd. It also means that we need to have the crowd lit well enough that we can see the expression on the face of a bidder in the last row of tables.

We don’t expect you to wash the crowd in a blaze of white-hot light, antiseptic light. It wouldn’t work for your crowd or us. But you do need to be thinking about lighting, especially if you are in a space that is not traditionally used for fundraising auctions – like a wine cave, an office building, a private home or a restaurant.