Sharing my secrets for a successful Special Appeal

To increase the total amount raised at non-profit dinner/auctions, almost every event I have worked or consulted on in the last decade has added an “Appeal” (called many different things: “The Ask”, “Fund a Need”, “Raise the Paddle”, “Reverse Auction” – where there is a direct ask for cash donations). In many situations, the appeal can actually generate more revenue for the non-profit than the live auction total. In some cases Appeals have been so successful the non-profit organization has eliminated the live auction from the evening schedule and only uses an appeal for fundraising. Let’s face it most people don’t want to take home more “stuff” – they would rather just give a straight donation to the non-profit organization full well knowing that 100% of their donation is tax deductible.

Unlike live and silent auctions where only winners pay if they win, an appeal is an opportunity for every attendee in the room to participate in the fundraising. Special appeals involve asking the attendees directly for cash donations to help fund a special cause that is generally more specific the overall mission of the non-profit organization; i.e. a scholarship fund, new computers for the third grade classroom, new security cameras for front door, etc.

So how does an appeal work? Appeals are best positioned when the audience is sitting down and you have their attention. The auctioneer will ask everyone who can donate to raise their bid number. After providing a brief explanation of the specific need that is the focus of the appeal, the auctioneer will begin asking for fixed donation amounts from the audience, starting high and then going down in price incrementally. The starting and finishing dollar amount depends entirely on your crowd. One event may have a starting point of $50,000, while others start at $100. An experienced auctioneer can help you set the donation ladder amounts.

Successful appeals do not happen by accident, there is a lot planning involved and pre-work required in order for an appeal to be exciting and successful. Take the time to plan and coordinate before the event, because a special appeal that falls flat can be uncomfortable for everyone in the room. A well-executed appeal can be a “water cooler moment” and actually draw some of your largest donations at the event.

Here are 7 secrets for a successful Appeal

1. Determine a specific emotional need

Special appeals involve asking your auction attendees for money to fund something specific that relates to your cause or mission rather than general undesignated funds. If you’re going to ask the event attendees to make a cash donation, they really need to know exactly how the money will be used. Since attendees will be contributing without winning an item in return, it’s essential that your organization make the appeal something that is concrete and your audience will relate to.

An appeal could be a scholarship funds for financially deserving students, new NICU hospital beds, 7 new iPads for a second grade classroom, a new security camera for the front door. The key here is to tug at the emotional heartstrings with a story that will get people to open their wallets. Appeals work best for a finite and specific cause. Instead of a general scholarship fund, discuss a scholarship appeal for students who have lost their parents. Rather than an appeal for technology at your school: it is better to ask for 10 chrome laptops for two 3rd grade classrooms. Rather than state an appeal for additional security, it is more emotional to mention that the building has been broken into 3 times in the last 7 months and an upgrade to the front door locks and adding a security camera will help employees and clients feel safer.

2. Set a realistic monetary goal

Any organization is more likely to achieve a goal if you know exactly how much money is needed beforehand. Setting a monetary goal will also give your auctioneer/presenter an important tool in working with the audience.

Secondly make sure the goal is realistic and achievable. Many organizations determine a financial goal without considering who is giving and how many will be attending the event. In one specific event I worked with recently as we discussed the appeal I asked what the goal was, they answered $30,000. When I asked how much was raised last year, they answered $4,500. And when I asked how many were attending and how many donation levels were pre-sold for the upcoming event, they answered 100 people attending and none pre-sold. I quickly explained it was unrealistic and almost impossible to announce $30,000 as a goal without other efforts in securing pre-committed bid amounts.

Realistic goals can also be interpreted as “conservative”. Said another way, if the non-profit organization has a goal of $20,000 for the appeal and believes that achieving $18,000 is very realistic – I recommend announcing $18,000 (or even $16,000) as the goal. This conservative number provides an expectation that as monies are accumulating during the appeal the total will most likely go over the goal. Exceeding the goal is much more exciting than achieving a goal.

After the goal has been announced and the appeal is being conducted during the evening, have “the total raised so far” be announced after each level (or if your event is using electronic bidding – most of those applications have a “thermometer” to display totals). Consistently mentioning the amount raised at each level allows the audience to become more and more emotionally involved in the appeal goal and ppeal process. The more the audience gets involved, the more likely more audience members will participate in the appeal and collectively try and meet the overall goal.

In my personal experience, when you emotionally connect the appeal’s message to the audience – they are more likely to help the organization achieve and exceed the goal. The audience can feel emotionally let down if the appeal goal is not achieved. To avoid a possible emotional rollercoaster ride for audience, set your appeal goal at a realistic and conservative number.

3. Find an effective speaker

After your organization determines the appropriate time slot in the agenda for an appeal, after you dim the lights, set the stage and create a transition and grab your guests attention to let them know something big or important is about to happen – you will need an effective speaker to tell a story.

Who can tell your story best? The best spokesperson won’t always be your CEO; sometimes it might be the program director, a personalized video, a teacher or someone who has been significantly impacted by your organization’s work. Depending on the event theme and tone, you may want someone to speak with authority, or maybe you want someone with a more personal tough, i.e. a client, a child, a survivor, Brainstorm with your event committee team as to who makes the most sense for your program.

The person behind the “ask” will play a huge role in the success of your special appeal. The speaker should be comfortable talking in front of a large group of people and passionate about your cause and talk for less than 5 minutes. If possible, try to find someone who is directly affected by the special appeal and therefore can make an emotional impact. While facts have a place in fundraising, your audience will react to the emotional connection a story makes with them. People in the audience will give based on how they feel, and the narrative you present should inspire them to take action. The most important thing is to keep the energy up during the special appeal, encourage participation and feed off any momentum that is generated. Have the speaker (such as a scholarship recipient, a heart transplant patient, a cancer survivor, etc.) tell the audience how the Appeal donations will or have impacted their lives specifically.

In some cases a short 3 or 4 minute video of the story surrounding the “ask” can also be very effective if more than one person’s story can be highlighted or if many faces of impact can be flashed across the screen quickly (young school children, people in hospital beds, clients afflicted Alzheimer’s, etc.)

4. Change “ask” to “give”

An appeal should include everyone in the room. A common appeal statement “for the next 5 minutes I will open up the floor to everyone and give you the opportunity to donate at whatever level is meaningful to you or whatever level is comfortable to you.” This is a subtle, but important distinction, rather than being another “ASK” of your attendees during the evening, it’s their opportunity to “GIVE”. The change in words makes a tangible difference in how it is perceived by the audience and how much money is generated. It is key to make sure that everyone is thanked in the same way – regardless if they give $25 or $2500. If you think carefully about your audience, the person giving $25 is most likely giving a higher percentage of their disposable income than the person giving $2500.

An important part of “give” versus “ask” is the thank you given to all givers. One example in my experience was the appeal “thank you’s” given by a ballet company while I conduct the appeal. The non-profit dance company made sure ballet dancers (male and female) came down from the stage with a rose and gave a personal thank you and hug to each appeal bidders. After a few minutes of calling donation levels, the bidders started asking for specific dancers to (Claude or Grace or Mallory, etc) to come and give hug to the bidder. The audience was blown away by the personalization of the appeal and the emotional thank you connection from the organization.

A second example is a nearby catholic grade school. During the appeal all the volunteer kids were called to appear on stage. As each donation level of the appeal was called – an individual school child came down from the stage with a special hand drawn thank you card which was given to every appeal donor. The committee goal was to get enough bids to allow every kid off to leave the stage. The appeal effort went so well, all the school children had to come back on stage for a second round.

5. Limit the donation levels

When the appeal is announced, offer your audience several different pledge levels so everyone in the room can participate. The appeal is a cumulative “group gift” of the event, but not everyone is going to be able to give at the same level. By offering five to seven different levels of descending pledges, you ensure everyone in your crowd can give and feels good about giving. Generally I recommend that the appeal should not take more than 15 minutes total: 5 or so for the speaker and approximately 10 minutes or less for the “ask”. In my experience, having more than 7 donation levels drags out the “ask” and can literally move a spontaneous moment to a tense filled section.

Begin by asking for the most amount of money (your highest giving level), and end by asking for the least amount of money (your lowest giving level). This is simple psychology. Asking a guest to pledge $100 seems a modest request after they have just witnessed other guests pledging $1000. I also recommend telling the audience the values of ALL levels that will be asked or called out – that way the audience has a chance to digest the bid amounts (and sometimes talk to their spouse) and then make an informed decision on what level they will/can give at.

Also make sure you have a low number $100, $50, or $25 which will allow everyone in the room the opportunity to give. Which lower number your use will depend on what the highest amount is asked for. By offering a lower number you increase opportunity and inclusivity. In fact, as the economy has its ups and downs, giving amounts and giving ability changes over time. The more bid paddles that are raised at the appeal time – the more successful overall the appeal is. Said another way – if 50 bid cards are raised during the appeal and $9000 is pledged – it is more successful to your organization overall than if only 20 bid cards are and $10,000 is pledged. 50 people are giving to your organization for the right reason during appeal versus just 20. In other words, your organization’s story emotionally connected 2.5 times more people.

Make sure you have volunteers writing down donors' bid numbers and coordinating payment entry so that the appeal can continue smoothly and the speaker can move on without any hang-ups.

6. Using bid cards (or bid paddles) for the appeal are very important for quickness

During the appeal the auctioneer it is very common to ask guests to raise their bid cards to make their appeal pledge public. With few exceptions, public pledging will raise more money than silent pledging. Appeal pledges written on notecards and then collected by volunteers aren’t very effective. When a attendee watches a neighbor raise his bid card, there is subtle pressure to do the same.

Even if your event is using electronic bidding for the silent auction – I still recommend using bid cards for the appeal. Asking the audience to raise their paddle at a specific donation level and having volunteers read off the paddle numbers as the auctioneer quickly reads them off – is the most efficient manner to run an appeal.

7. Create a visual selling point at each donation level

Often, including tangible examples (a PPT slide of pictures and descriptions) at each appeal level increases the amount of participation and emotional connection. The example allows the audience to connect their financial gift to your appeal need. In other words, it is often easier and more satisfying for a donor to understand what $500 covers when they raise their paddle at that level.

Examples might include:

$5000 covers 22 classrooms (tuition and transportation) to attend an day-long field trip at the Audobon Nature Center,

$1000 – Cost of one new metal reinforced security door for front entrance

$500 = paying the utility bills (keep the lights and heat on) at the women’s center for one month

$250 – cost of one Chrome laptop for one student

Use your marketing department (or your marketing skills) to craft a simple story or statement around each level. Make the statements short and sweet – too much information on the screen is too busy and overwhelming; guest won’t read it. Come up with an emotional connection for every level that the potential bidders could connect with. Round up or down – in other words – make the examples fit the pre-defined donation levels. If the actual cost of the utility bill described above is $410 a month - $500 is a defined level, so round up the description to match the level.

It is also common to print the descriptions on the invoice. If your organization is using electronic software to manage your donations, bidders and invoices, add the same brief marketing description in the software for each donation level. When the invoice is printed, the description of the donation level appears on the invoice and the bidder will be emotional reminded of your event story and their donation.

I pray you have good luck with your event and continued success!

Daniel Pronley

Professional Benefit Auctioneer in Milwaukee Area

Copyright 2016 - All Rights Reserved.

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