Use Bloomerang Fundraising’s auction platform to host live auctions. We recommend hosting silent auctions with mobile bidding, but you can still include live components.
But if you want your auction event to have a live component, you can still use Bloomerang Fundraising! This guide explains how to configure your item categories, enter bids in Bloomerang Fundraising, and finalize checkout for live bidding.
Contents:
Configure Item Categories
First, create an auction category for your live items.
To ensure that attendees can’t bid on your live items in Givi or a web browser, we recommend toggling the Private Category option. With Private Category enabled, any items in this category will only be viewable in the Virtual Terminal. This will also keep your items secret until live bidding begins.
If you want attendees to be able to view items in Givi or on the web before the auction, you can prevent them from bidding by using the Set a different bidding start date/time toggle and setting a date/time that begins after your planned live auction.
Note: We do not recommend allowing both live and silent bidding for a single item, so it’s important to either use the Private Category option or limit the bidding date/time.
To complete the initial configuration for your live auction, make sure to assign your live auction items to your new category.
Enter Live Bids
Next, conduct the live bidding. You can conduct the bidding however you want, but make sure to note the winner and the winning bid for each item.
Tip: Need help planning your auction? Check out these fun theme ideas on our blog!
To charge the winning bidders the correct amount for their items, you must adjust the winning cost after you open checkout for the category.
Open Checkout
You can only open checkout after an auction category has ended and bidding is complete.
To open checkout for the auction category:
Go to the Checkout tab in your Auction Virtual Terminal.
When you click Open Checkout, a Checkout Review modal appears. Because your live items won’t have any bids logged yet, Bloomerang Fundraising will prompt you to review those items.
Click Review Items, and then select the Items with No Bids tab.
For each item, click Assign Winner. A list of attendees appears. Locate the winning bidder, and click Assign Winner.
Type the winning bid into the box, and then click Confirm.
The next time you open checkout for the category, all live items will have winning bids, and you can mark the winners as Paid.