Team fundraising pages and auctions together

If your event runs on team fundraising pages, an auction is not a new audience. It is a second thing to send to the households your captains are already asking. Run deliberately, that is an advantage. Run carelessly, both numbers go sideways and nobody can say why.

Decide the crediting question first

Before anything else: does a winning bid count toward the bidder's team total?

There is no universally right answer and it depends on what your platform supports, but there is a wrong way to handle it, which is not deciding. Captains will ask on day one, and an answer invented mid-campaign looks like a rule made to suit whoever asked.

• Credited to teams — captains promote hard, because bidding advances their own total. Requires reconciliation work and a clear rule on split items
• Counted centrally — simpler to run, and captains have less reason to push. If you choose this, give them a different reason: recognition, a team-versus-team item, a captain leaderboard for items sourced rather than raised

Whichever you choose, publish it in the first message to captains and do not change it.

One leaderboard, not two

If the event has a fundraising leaderboard, the auction should appear in the same place, whatever the crediting rule. Two separate totals that nobody reconciles read as two campaigns competing, which is exactly the impression you are trying to avoid.

Give captains items, not another ask

This is the practical move that makes the pairing work. A captain has already sent several donation requests. Handing them a fourth is a burden; handing them something interesting to send is a gift.

• Send individual item links, not the auction link
• Write the message for them — one they can forward unedited
• Time it: one item mid-week, one when bidding gets competitive, one before close
• Tell them afterwards what their sends produced

A captain forwarding "someone donated a week at their cabin, bidding closes Friday" is sending news. That reaches people a fourth donation request does not.

Sequence the asks

Do not open bidding during the final team fundraising push. Bidding a week out, closing at the event, sits after the main fundraising window and before the day. If your event's push runs right up to the morning, open bidding earlier and close it at the event rather than overlapping the two peaks.

Team-versus-team items

One or two items that teams bid on as teams — a trophy, the lead position at the start, naming rights to a rest stop, a captain-dunk-tank-style item where appropriate. They give captains a reason to rally people who were not going to bid individually, and they cost the organization nothing.

Cap the competition sensibly and say so. A bidding war between two teams is good fundraising up to a point and an uncomfortable one past it, particularly in a community where money is already being asked for hard.

What to auction: item ideas that actually sell. The event timeline: walk plus auction.