Charity auction is a success for local childcare company
Back in October Newport Pagnell based Childbase a leading local childcare provider approached CharityBid to use their new fundraising platform. Developed by wedoApps , a local Milton Keynes app development company the software platform is a new , simple mobile friendly way to raise money for charities quick and easy in a fun way. In fact it has been so successful in doing this companies and charities have managed to raise over £60,000 in total over the last year. Corporations have included it in their department fund raising and businesses of any size can use it alongside their other events.
This was the second year Childbase had used the software helping CharityBid shape their product, with some good feedback and recommendations. We felt it would be good to let one of our customers tell you about it a little more.
Questions and answers with Childbase marketing manager
1- Can you tell us about your position at Childbase. Marketing Manager.
2- How did you come about the idea for an auction. Our charity team organise a variety of activities each year to help raise money for our company’s chosen charity such as sponsored walks, sleep outs and cake sales. The auction idea first came about in 2017 and various company suppliers and colleagues kindly donated auction lots.
3- What were your initial ideas of how this would work?
Initially the idea was to have the families who use our nurseries bid on items at nursery level. This would be paper based with bids added to a central spreadsheet so that we could see who the highest bidder was on each item.
4- What was your preferred solution to run the charity auction?
With 43 nurseries and over 6000 families the paper/spreadsheet idea was time consuming at nursery level for the Managers. It also meant that parents wouldn’t know if they were the highest bidder in real time. Having worked with WedoApps for several years prior we were shown an auction website which they had created and were trialling. They kindly offered to let us test and trial the software in the run up to our auction, we were happy, it worked well and we implemented it in place of the paper bidding.
5- How did your solution help with the management of the auction?
The auction website was simple to set up in the backend and only took a couple of hours to upload all items. Items were uploaded with a description, image and bidding criteria such as bidding increments or a reserve price. The whole site could be customised to our brand colours, we added a banner and our logo to the home page, customised the email content for anyone registering and bidding and made a few changes to the details required to register. The registration element was simple for users and everyone could see real time bidding information throughout the auction. I think this made people bid more often to ensure that they won the items they really wanted.
6- How much were you able to raise.
In 2017 we raised over £5K and to date we are at £2795 (1st day) this time. We are hoping the exceed the previous auction total with all money raised going to the charity Mind.
7-The chosen charity how did they react.
Both charities were delighted with the professionalism of the auction website and felt this was a really good fundraising event for us to do.
8- What recommendations to other companies looking at raising money for charities would you suggest, was using technology a benefit and would you recommend the process and software?
The auction website it a great tool which is simple to set up and simple to use. It allows the real time bidding element that you would expect to see when bidding on items and is fully responsive on all devices. Registering is simple and you can even have notifications when someone has outbid you on an item. It has definitely helped increase the amount of money raised from our two auctions.