In the Club
Run a club or society? Here's how your tech can make it easier
Raise money through a silent auction
One of the best ways to raise money for your club or for charity is by selling items that have been created – or donated – via silent auctions online. They’re quick and easy to set up, and you can choose when to run them, and how many lots to offer.
Jumblebee ( www.jumblebee.co.uk) is our favourite silent auction site. It doesn’t charge a fee to set up an auction page, but it does take five per cent of any proceeds once the auction has closed. The site can either collect the payments for you, or you can use Paypal if you prefer.
Set up your auction page
Click the ‘Set up an auction now’ button on Jumblebee’s home page. Create a new account by entering your name, email address, mobile-phone number and a password. Agree to the terms, tick the box to prove you’re not a robot, then click Register. The ‘Your Event’ page will open. From here you’ll need to enter a name for and description of your auction.
In our example we’re running a photography club, and will be selling members’ photographs to raise money for equipment. Jumblebee offers a choice of six description layouts (see screenshot below left), which let you add images – such as examples of items you make or activities you carry out – alongside the text. Click the design you want, and if it includes a photo, click the grey ‘Select an image’ button to upload your own image.
Next, use the dropdown menus to set the start and end time for your auction. Specify if your auction page should be public – you can promote it via Jumblebee’s site and social media, and have it indexed by search engines like Google – or remain private. In the latter case it will be up to you to attract people to the page.
Click the Continue button at the bottom, and you’ll now be able to add your club logo to the page. Click the ‘Select an image’ button then find and upload your logo. Jumblebee’s preferred sizing is 250x120 pixels, but it will accept other sizes. A preview of the logo will be displayed and you can drag it to reposition it and adjust its size. If you don’t want to use a logo, you can select one of Jumblebee’s own images.
Next, create a unique web address for your auction page to make it easier to find. Type the name of your club into the box to receive an address, which will be something like www.jumblebee.co.uk/ myclub. Click ‘Continue’. On the next page you can choose whether to allow proxy bidding (whereby bidders enter a maximum amount they are prepared to pay, and the site will make incremental bids on their behalf up to this figure).
Click ‘Continue’ and then choose if you want to use Jumblebee’s own payment collection system or Paypal. You can also accept cash, cheques or bank transfers.
Enter the message that winning bidders will see, click Continue, and complete the final steps, which includes adding a sponsor if you have one. When finished, click ‘Complete your auction’.
Add items to your auction
On your auction page, click the red ‘Post an item’ button at the top (see screenshot above left) and fill in the item name and description. If it was donated you can give details of the donor. Set your starting bid, what the bid increments should be and whether there’s a reserve price. Finally, set the start and end date and time for the item and upload an image for it. Click the ‘Post it’ button to add it.
Once your auction is live, people can start bidding on items they want. They just need to click an item to see its current price ( 1 in our screenshot above) and number of bids 2 and, provided they have a Jumblebee account, can then make a bid themselves 3 .