One of our consulting services most utilized by clients is helping put the live auction lots in order. We always strive to create a natural flow to a live auction that readily engages the audience and builds to the ultimate climax, the fund a need. Our ability to do this is based on our knowledge of the flow of auctions and an understanding of the value of the live auction lots themselves.

Value plays an important role in the flow of an auction and in the capacity to develop a structure and narrative that works. There are a few simple guidelines, such as don’t open or close with your most expensive lot, and don’t place the most expensive lots back to back. One of the greatest challenges in ordering an auction is determining where to place those “priceless” items, especially class projects for schools.

One school event we work with presents a particularly unique challenge: nearly half of the 45 lots in the live auction are school projects. When initially confronted with the challenge of ordering this auction, we asked Kelly, the event chair, to assign an arbitrary value of “A”, “B” or “C” to each project.

Kelly took the time to look at each and every project from many angles. She looked at what they had sold for last year. She looked at the bidding history of the parents who spent the most money. She utilized ticket sales to identify which classrooms would have the most or least parents in attendance the night of the event. Kelly even applied a little subjective evaluation, to determine if something had any special appeal beyond what “only a mother could love.”

Kelly’s valuation of her auction was invaluable for us, and the event. It also showed a level of knowledge and creativity that underscore a few key points any auction could benefit from:

• Know your audience, especially your highest bidders
• Utilize previous years’ results as a foundation to learn from
• Approach event planning with a creative eye
• Tackle each task within the larger focus of the goals of the event

In Kelly’s case, this knowledge, focus and creativity resulted in the highest-grossing live auction her school has had to-date, including a record-setting fund a need, in the midst of incredibly challening economic times. 2009 is going to call for extra hard work to just make the same as years past.

Odds are, your auction benefit from some simple ABC’s as well.

Who would have ever thought that I would start to think of 2007 as the good old days.

In the last year the combined loss in property values and the stock market amounts to over $9 trillion, or approximately $90,000 for every household in America.

I suspect that it is the secret hope of every director of development that their wealthy benefactors have somehow come through this unscathed and will continue to support their charity with the same vigor as they have in the past.

Unfortunately for donations, the rich have taken a double whammy. Not only have their investments taken a hit, but the percentage return they can expect over the next few years will also decrease. They may still have more money than they can spend in a lifetime, but the wealthy will feel poorer. If you once had $300 million and you now only have $200 million, I suspect that it is human nature to focus more on the missing hundred million than to celebrate the amazing quantity of money you still have left.

The pool of donations to be divided amongst all charities will shrink for the foreseeable future. This will be going on at exactly the same time as most charities face increased pressure to provide more services.

Sadly, for your charity to survive, others will be forced under. The next couple of years will be tough, and, as shocking as it may seem, we may all start looking upon 2007 as the good old days.