Silent auctions for universities and colleges, set up in minutes

Talk to advancement before you talk to a donor

Almost every problem in campus fundraising comes from the same place: a unit that raised money without telling the office whose job it is to raise money. This is not a bureaucratic courtesy. Advancement holds the alumni database, the gift-acceptance policy, the receipting infrastructure and a live map of who else is already asking the same people.

Five questions, one meeting, before anything else:

• May the unit run this at all, and under whose approval?
• Who receipts bidders — the unit, a college account, or the university foundation?
• May we contact alumni, and if not, who does it on our behalf?
• Is anyone else soliciting these people this term — a giving day, the annual fund, a campaign?
• What may we use of the university's name, marks and imagery?

Bring the plan rather than the question. "May we fundraise?" gets a cautious answer; "here are the dates, the audience and the item list" gets a workable one, and frequently gets you help you did not know was available.

The alumni database is not yours

It is the institution's most protected asset and it is centrally managed for good reasons — donor fatigue, duplicate solicitation, and the fact that a major gift conversation can be worth more than every auction on campus combined.

What that means practically: a department cannot mail its own graduates without going through advancement, and asking is usually more productive than it sounds. Advancement will often send on your behalf to a defined segment, which reaches more people than the list you would have built and keeps you inside the institution's contact rules.

Build what you can own alongside it: current students and parents, event attendees, your own department's mailing list, and anyone who signs up at a table. That list is yours and it compounds.

Marks, licensing and the thing on the merchandise

The university's name, logo, seal and athletic marks are licensed property, usually administered by a trademark licensing office with rules about what may be produced, by whom and through which vendors.

This catches campus fundraisers out in one specific way: producing merchandise for an auction — shirts, prints, glassware with the seal — generally needs licensing approval and often a licensed vendor. Ask before you order, and note that the answer for a student organization can differ from the answer for a department.

Sizing an ask inside an institution that already asks

Working it out from the segment you can get

A campus unit's reach is whatever advancement will send on its behalf, which is worth establishing before anything else.

• The alumni segment advancement will mail for you, named precisely
• Your own department list, current students and parents
• An average winning bid for an alumni audience, which advancement can tell you from the annual fund

Full breakdown: how much can a campus unit raise?

When an auction is the wrong instrument here

If your college is inside a campaign, advancement will almost certainly say no to a competing solicitation and they will be right. If the need is a named scholarship or an endowed fund, that is a major-gift conversation and an auction will underperform a single ask to one person. And if the auction would run in the same fortnight as the institution's giving day, move it — you will lose that argument and you should.

Athletics is a separate matter entirely. Booster fundraising for a university athletics programme sits under its own compliance regime and is not covered here. Student athlete involvement of any kind is the first question to take to your compliance office, not to this page.

Reaching an audience you mostly do not control

Channel order: your own department or unit list, which is the part you own; current students and their parents; faculty and staff channels, within whatever the institution allows for internal solicitation; advancement sending to an alumni segment on your behalf; the alumni association's chapters and affinity groups, which are frequently more reachable than the central database; campus media; and the local community if the institution is a town fixture.

One move worth building in: ask advancement for a segment rather than a list. "Everyone who majored in this department since 2005" is a request they can fulfil and often will, and it reaches people you could never assemble yourself.

General mechanics: how to promote a silent auction and marketing templates.

The weekend everyone is already back

Homecoming and reunion weekends are the one time a campus assembles its own alumni at its own expense. An auction opening the week before and closing on the Saturday inherits an audience, a mood and a reason to give that no other date on the calendar provides.

See homecoming and reunion auctions.

Who is actually running it

Three arrangements, and they answer the receipting question differently: a department or college using an institutional account; a student organization with a campus account or an outside one; or a separate affiliated entity such as an alumni association or the university foundation. Establish which before the auction page goes live.

For student groups specifically, the account structure varies by campus and matters more than people expect: student organization auctions. For chapters, see fraternities and sororities, which have a national organization in the chain as well.

Twelve weeks, and the first three are meetings

• Week 12 — advancement, with the plan rather than the question. Dates, audience, item list, and the ask for an alumni segment
• Week 11 — dean or chair, and the business office on which account receives and whether it can be restricted to the purpose
• Week 10 — map every access item to the office that controls it, then ask each owner in writing for a specific thing with a date
• Week 8 — faculty and staff items, routed through chairs
• Week 6 — alumni businesses and the town; licensing check on anything branded
• Week 3 — catalogue closed and listed; confirm the segment send with advancement
• Week 2 — bidding opens; advancement sends to the segment
• Event — close during the reception or dinner, not after
• +2 weeks — report up to advancement and out to bidders, naming what it funded

Four jobs, and one of them is diplomatic

• Approvals and relationships — owns advancement, the dean, licensing and the access-item owners. Usually the most senior person on the committee, because it is the job that needs someone who can email a dean
• Procurement and listing — the item map, the follow-ups, the catalogue
• Promotion — the unit's own list, students, parents, and the segment request
• Checkout and reporting — invoices, the account reconciliation, and the report back to advancement

Where campus auctions go wrong

• Fundraising first and telling advancement second. Recoverable once, and it costs the unit the help it would otherwise get
• Selling an access item nobody owns. A parking space auctioned without the facilities director is an item you cannot deliver
• Branded merchandise ordered before licensing. Usually unfixable once printed
• Competing with the giving day or an active campaign, which you will lose
• Restricted-fund surprise — money raised for a purpose the account cannot hold, or a surplus nobody agreed the destination for
• Anything touching an academic decision. Never, at any price

What it costs, and what the unit keeps

The direct cost is close to nothing: the strongest items are institutional access that costs a permission rather than a purchase. The real cost is staff time on approvals, which is why a small first auction that clears the path is worth more than a large one that stalls in the approval chain.

What the unit keeps depends on the account. Confirm early whether the receiving account carries an administrative assessment, because some institutions apply one to gifts and a committee that budgeted the gross will be short.

After it closes, and the second year

• Report to advancement with the total and the segment performance — it is courteous and it is how you get the segment again
• Report to bidders naming what it funded, with consent where a student is involved
• Keep the access-item owner map. It is the asset, and it is what makes year two a fortnight of work instead of a term
• Note the approval route that worked, with names, in a place the next chair will find it

The second campus auction is materially easier than the first, and almost entirely because the approvals are already mapped. Units that keep that map run this annually; units that do not run it once.