Kara Barton We had our annual fundraiser last October and during our debrief with Givebutter, we let them know how critical the raise the paddle function is to the event. At the time, we were told that this would be added to the Givebutter request list, but I see that it still has not been addressed. I would like to know the timeline for this to be addressed as we have our annual fundraiser in November and want to have an effective way to raise the paddle.

Sherie Valderrama I am with a nonprofit and added my comment to support adding a raise the paddle option. We created live auction items for each person and manually assigned the winner so it would show up on their total due at check out. It wasn't ideal but worked. I hope this gets added before your event.

Kara Barton Thanks for the suggestion!

Monica Wyche - we just completed an event this past Saturday where we also finished the auction with raise the paddle. Here are the steps I used for both the Live Auction and Raise the Paddle, which worked great. I had pre-created the Live Auction items, and pre-created a Raise the Paddle "Template" as well. These were all marked as Private. All of these items used the same Auction times as our Silent Auction. Our Auction End Time was 8:30. Live Auction began at 8:30. As each Live Auction item was sold, I then "unhid listing", "Extend", clicked in on the item, entered the winning Bid Amount and Bidder # as a manual bid, then finally clicked "End Listing". Wait a minute or 2 and viola, the item is now sold, the bidder gets a notification they won the item, it gets added to their item list that they can pay for in one shot during the complete payment steps (as long as you don't have pay immediately turned on). The only additional step I had to do for the Raise the Paddle was to "duplicate" the template as the first step. Hope this helps.

Steve Otto Thank you!!! I will definitely do this. So, could bidders see the items at all before the live event? We want them to see the item ahead of time, to get excited for the live auction- only NOT be able to bid until it's time. Thank you for your feedback!

Monica Wyche This is controlled by whether you have the item Visibility set as Private or Public. We had an in person event and we had an actual auctioneer for our Live Auction items, so we didn't want people using the online system for their bidding. We wanted them participating in the Live Auction instead. I created the Live Auction items ahead of time, set them to Auction Style Selling Format and Visibility Private. As each Live Auction item was won, a runner brought me the winning bid and bidder. I then followed the steps above (unhide, extend, manually enter winning bid and bidder, end listing). The steps take about 3-5 minutes before the winning bidder receives the text saying congratulating them on winning. Followed these same steps for Donations. We are a non-profit so every penny raised counts.

While bidders could use the Donations link, if they won other items, the payment for the Donation and the payment for item(s) won are separate charges, each with credit card fees. We didn't want that to come out of our funds raised or have the bidder pay multiple swipe fees for different payments. Hope this makes sense! The system worked fantastic for us. The only issue we had was people didn't register as a bidder ahead of time. We hung sheets at the door so when they arrived, we had a couple people help them scan the QR code, click Auction, click Register as Bidder, then make sure they entered their card info and received the "Congratulations" splash screen. Worked great for 95% of the people that showed up without registering ahead of time.

Monica Wyche Ah, one other suggestion. To generate excitement ahead of time for the items, we had our "Event" schedule to start a week or 2 before the actual, in-person, event and end a week after the event. The Auction was set to the exact date/time of the actual auction. Then as long as you have item visibility set to public, people can see the items well before the event, but can't bid on them until the date/time of the auction. Hope this clarification helps.

Monica Wyche Hi! I'm confused how you used the private item as the Paddle Raise, can you provide more steps? I can't figure out how to do this. If I set an item for $500, how do I charge multiple bidder for that set amount? This is my first time using Give Butter and I had realized they didn't have a lot of features like OneCause or Classy I wouldn't have had my client use them :( Our event is coming up very soon so I need to figure this Paddle Raise issue out ASAP and I'm starting to panic.

Amanda Jamison I actually have not done this yet- Steven Otto (highlighted above) was offering me some guidance, too! :)

Steve Otto Hi Steve, can you explain more on how you did the Paddle Raise? I still can't figure this out and event is coming up quickly.

Amanda Jamison Hello Amanda. I sure can try. High level, our event had both a silent auction and a live auction. Our silent auction ran for the first 2 hours of the event. We wanted to make sure the silent auction closed before we started our live auction so people would be 100% focused on the live auction. After the first 2 hours, when the silent auction closed, the auctioneer started the live auction.

The Auction setup in Givebutter was set for the first 2 hours. All silent auction items were entered and marked as "Public" and used the default 2 hour window for the auction. We also enabled automatic bidding on the auction settings so people could choose to enter either 1 time bids or enter a max amount and let the system bid for them (based on the item bid increment).

We also created separate Live Auction items. We left them with the default 2 hours like the silent auction items. We marked the live auction items as 'Private" so people couldn't use the system for the bidding.

Once the Silent Auction 2 hour window ended, the auction is technically closed. As each Live Auction item bidding completed, we had a runner bring us the bidder number and amount of the winning bid. I then clicked on the 3 dots/ellipsis on the right side of each Live Auction item, selected "unhid listing", clicked the ellipsis again and selected "Extend", then clicked in on the item name itself and entered the winning Bid Amount and Bidder # as a manual bid at the top of the item, then finally clicked the ellipsis to the right of the item again and selected "End Listing".

What you are basically doing is extending the Auction time for each live auction item individually as it is won and entering the bidder information at that time, then ending the auction for that item again.

Hope this helps clear it up more.

Steve Otto Hi, thanks for explaining this so its a live auction not a Paddle raise. Shoot. We need help with a Paddle Raise.

Amanda Jamison Sorry Amanda. I should have also added. We followed the Live Auction with an actual Raise the Paddle auction. We used the exact same method for Raise the Paddle winners as we used for the Live Auction winners. I had a "Raise the Paddle" template item configured exactly like the Live Auction items (Private, 2 hour window like silent auction items). Our Live Auction runners brought us the Raise the Paddle winners bidder number and $ amount, we then "duplicated" the Raise the Paddle Template and followed the same steps I outlined above on the duplicated Raise the Paddle item (unhide, extend, manually enter bidder and bid, end listing).

Worked great for Raise the Paddle at the end as well as the Live Auciton items.

Steve Otto thanks. So you made a package for each bidder at the set paddle raise amount?

Monica Wyche We have an event this weekend and we are thinking of doing the same thing. How did it go?!

Steve Otto Hi, can you tell me how many guests were at your event? We have 500+ guests.

Paula Vrattos - Hello. We had approximately 250 guests, 195 of which actively bid on different items. I'm certain GiveButter would have handled far more if our venue would have been larger.

Steve Otto does this method (creating auction items for the Raise the Paddle) cause an issue with donors' tax write-offs? Or does it really not matter because it's the donor's responsibility (not the non-profit's) to show proof of that?

Lexy Backstrom - I can't seem to find a way to view the email that was sent to each winner to verify this. While I am not 100% sure, it shouldn't matter because the value of the item is $0 so whatever amount they end up winning it for is a straight up $1 for $1 donation. I see Givebutter has the "Raise the Paddle" in a status of "In Progess". I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Steve Otto hi Steve! You seem like a real expert here!

I'm wondering if the workaround is even simpler than you described. Can you create "buy now" items (with unlimited quantities) for the set paddle raise amounts ($50, $100, $200, $500, etc.) and then you can "declare winner" on those items based on the auctioneer/spotter telling you who bid at what levels? Seems like a lot fewer clicks than what you described, BUT I am very new to this platform.

Thank you!

-Katy

MSB Auction You cannot declare winners on Buy Now items. You can declare a winner on a regular biddable item or a hybrid biddable with a buy now price. We may try the latter for our Paddle up, so we can send an invoice for each one right away, but it still requires duplicating (ahead of time or in the moment, I guess) because there's only a quantity of 1 with a regular or hybrid item.