Silent Auction Coaching & Design Webinar
By GiveGrove• 4 min read • Published 2026
Happy September!
We are getting into the swing of the second half of the fundraising season, which for a lot of you is the busiest stretch of the year. Three things in this one: a service we have been running with a handful of organizations that we are now opening to everyone, a short webinar on event design, and some new features.
We have hosted over 580 silent auctions, just under 25,000 items, and about 144,000 bids. For the last several months we have been using that history to help organizations plan their auctions, and it has gone well enough that we want to offer it to all of you.
GiveGrove Auction Coaching
It is included with your account at no additional cost.
How it works: we pull the data from your auction and generate the analysis, then someone here reads it before it goes out to you. A data analysis can be helpful in a variety of ways:
Before you build your catalog,we go through your past auctions and tell you which kinds of items your bidders actually competed over, how many items to aim for, and where to set your starting bids and bid increments.
Once your items are in,we review the whole catalog and send back a short list of the changes most likely to earn you more money. Usually, they are small things with real money attached: an increment too small for a price to climb, a close time scheduled after your guests have gone home, a starting bid set so high the item never moves, etc.
Before you open bidding: we provide a projected revenue range, and the specific numbers you would need to land to reach those ranges.
While your auction is running: we analyze which items are not drawing bids, and where to push.
After it closes: we provide a breakdown of how it went, compared to your past events and auctions the same size as yours.
Each analysis and recommendation comes with estimated dollar figures based on your own data and auction best practices. Not "consider raising your bid increments," but "these nine items have increments that will stall the bidding, and fixing them is worth about $350." Not "promote your auction more," but "ten more people opening your page is worth about $1,000, and here is where the next ten come from."
Does it work?
In April we helped a Montessori school get ready for their spring auction. We sent them four things to do: open the auction early, turn on anti-sniping, schedule the auto-close with a reminder text, and raise the bid increments on five specific items.
They did all four. Against their own prior year, they saw growth in all categories
$4,000 in additional revenue
16 more bidders
200 more bids
15+ viewers placed a bid
Their catalog only grew about 20%. The bidding grew much faster than that, which is why we do not think this was just a bigger auction. When their auction closed, they had 48 bids after close from the GiveGrove anti-sniping feature. They earned an extra $375 dollars.
We also gave another organization a projection before their bidding opened: about $9,300, somewhere between $8,400 and $10,700. They finished at $9,975.
This is a new feature in our customer service arsenal. We look forward to working with you as we continue to learn and develop these data reports!
How to get it
Email and tell us which analysis would be helpful. . You can also grab a time on our calendar and we will go through your auction together.
Timing matters. The catalog conversation is most useful before you enter your items. The pre-launch review is best a few days before you open bidding.
New Webinar: First Impressions Matter | Event Design and Essentials
30 minutes · Noon Eastern · Tuesday September 22 and Wednesday September 23
Jules DeLee, our Director of Design and Development, is hosting a short session on what makes an event page work. Jules has been with our businesses for over a decade and has designed over a hundred of sites, platforms, and projects.
This webinar is helpful to organizations without a graphics person on the team or committee. If your event page is being put together by whoever on the committee is best with computers, this is for you.
Same session both days, pick which day works best for you: Register Here.
New Features
Build an event before you create an account
You can now start a GiveGrove event without signing up first. Pick a template, add your items, upload your images, set up your home page, and only create an account when you are ready to save it. Everything you built carries over.
We also split the sign-in screen so it is clear which side you need: supporters signing in to an event on one side, organizations starting a new one on the other.
Why this might matter to you: if you have ever tried to explain GiveGrove to a board member, a committee volunteer, or another nonprofit, you can now just send them a link and let them build something in five minutes. No account, no commitment.
What's Next
Event duplication. Soon you’ll be able to copy and duplicate previous events, so you can create events faster than ever. The idea is to give you options: copy just the home page and the sponsors, or bring along each module's items with a couple of clicks.
Help Us Grow
If you know an organization that would benefit from GiveGrove, please consider referring us. We offer referral discounts for organizations who refer new organizations to GiveGrove.
Like, share, and follow us on social media. We want to follow your organizations back so we can celebrate your wins alongside you.
Thanks for trusting GiveGrove with your fundraisers!
The GiveGrove Team 🍋
A Code Works company
GiveGrove makes events and auctions for fundraising easy. Check us out at GiveGrove.com or email info@givegrove.com for more info. Click here to sign up for our mailing list.
