Learn how to create and run an Online Auction on RallyUp, select your preferred bidding style, and boost fundraising with Auction Gifts.
Hi! I'm Catie with RallyUp, and today I'm going to walk you through how to run an Online Auction. So when you first log in to your RallyUp account, you'll go to Campaigns in the left menu and then select New Campaign. And then when you get to Campaign Setup, you'll select Auction as your Campaign type. And now I'm gonna skip ahead to Auction setup. So the first question it's going to ask you is if you want to group items into categories. Now this can be really helpful if you have a lot of Auction items because it can help donors find what they're most interested in very quickly, but it's completely optional. You don't have to sort things into categories if you don't want to or don't need to. And then next, you'll go down to Add Auction items and select Create an item. And this allows you to add images (you can add more than one), add an item title, and then you'll add your starting bid, which can be whatever amount you want, and then your bid increment, which can also be any amount you want. And the bid increment is how much each bidder must bid in order to beat the current highest bid. So for instance, if the current bid is a hundred dollars and the bid increment is ten dollars, then the next bidder will need to bid at least a hundred and ten dollars, but they can bid more if they want to. And then there's also a Buy It Now option, and this allows someone who really, really wants an item to just go ahead and purchase it for a set amount instead of participating in bidding. But this is not required. You don't have to turn this on if you don't want to, and you can turn it on for some items but not others. And then you can add a detailed description, which you can format however you like. And then you can customize each item's sharing link to make them easier to remember, and you can create QR codes for each Auction item. And this is great if you want to run a Silent Auction because then these QR codes can replace bid sheets. And then if you want tax receipt options, then you can include the fair market value of each item. But, again, that's optional. And then I've got a couple of pretty cool features that I wanna show y'all. So the first one is called Auction Gifts, and this is a RallyUp exclusive. There's not a single other platform that has this. And, basically, what it is is that if a bidder doesn't win any of the Auction items that they bid on, they can opt to give a donation instead. Just a flat donation amount that will only be charged if they don't win any items, and they get to pick how much that Auction Gift would be. But, of course, this is optional. You can turn it on or off. You can customize the appeal that will display in checkout. You can customize how much the default Auction Gift amount is. I will show you all of this later in checkout. But this is a very, very cool feature that could really boost how much your Auction raises, because instead of just getting revenue from the winning bids, you could potentially get revenue from everyone who participates in the Auction. So that's really cool. And then the other feature I want to show you is that with RallyUp, you can choose your Auction bidding style. So each Auction or Online Auction will default to what's called English-style bidding, which is the traditional bidding where donors will manually submit bids. If they're outbid, they'll manually resubmit a new bid. But we also have Proxy bidding, which is a lot like eBay. So when donors first place their bid, they will set a maximum bid amount, and the system will bid for them, up until they either win the item or their maximum bid amount is reached. So that's a great option if your donors maybe don't have the time to be as invested as an English Auction would require. And then English Auctions are best for making sure that you get the maximum donation amount for each item. And now let's take a look at what Auctions look like from the donor perspective. So this is an English-style Auction, and donors will go to place their bids. They will enter their bid amount, add to cart. And then, at checkout, they have the option to receive text messages if they're outbid on Auction items. So RallyUp will always send an email, but getting a text as well can be very helpful. And then this is how the Auction Gift request displays in checkout. So there's the appeal text, the suggested Auction Gift amount, which, of course, they can customize if they want, and then they can set their Auction Gift, or they can opt out. It's always optional. Alright. And then we have a Proxy bidding example, which works almost exactly the same, except that when they go to place their bid, they will enter their maximum bid amount, which again could be whatever they want. And then if you have categories, then donors can search by category so that they only see the items that they're interested in. But, of course, if they want to see all the items displayed at once, they can always do that. And that is how you run an Online Auction on RallyUp. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.