Alberta Meeting & Event Guide Fall/Winter 2017/2018 | Page 37

The experts
How to hold a successful
charity auction
Q&A with Danny Hooper, Celebrity Benefit Auctioneer
By Meghann Tanner
When it comes to charity auctions, you are a very
well known name. Tell us about your background.
It began back in 1987 when I was invited by my
Uncle Wes Spencer to help him with a Ducks
Unlimited auction. Back at that time I was a
country music entertainer, and Uncle Wes
wanted me to come and provide some enter-
tainment for the night. And after watching him
do that auction for Ducks Unlimited I got the bug
and I decided that I would pursue that as part of my
career. Fundraising charity auctions are the only type of
auctions I have done.
Why did you choose charity auctions?
I just decided to specialize – I recognized there was a
real niche there within the auction industry. There are
many different specialties within the medical or legal
profession, and back then nobody was specializing full
time in fundraising auctions, so I decided to pursue that
niche.
Your business Danny Hooper Productions is more
than just a charity fundraising auctioneer business.
Tell us what else you do.
The three links of my business are 1) the fundraising
auction business, 2) corporate emceeing, and 3) speaking
- primarily personal development training and speaking.
I am a certified trainer for Jack Canfield (the co-author
of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series). He wrote a book
called The Success Principles and I was certified last year
to become one of the trainers in the success principles.
You have a book called Easy Money: How to Generate
Record Profit At Your Next Fundraising Auction. Tell
us what we can find in the book.
I put this together primarily to help non-profit organi-
zations, most of which are made up of volunteers who
often don’t know what they don’t know. It was becom-
ing very evident to me that a lot of opportunities were
being missed at these charity events where kind-hearted
volunteers were pouring their heart and soul (and all of
their time, energy and financial resources) into organiz-
ing these events and they often weren’t as well planned
as they could be. There were often lots of opportuni-
ties, and lots of money, left on the table. Well not left
on the table, but walking out the door at the end
of these events. I found that very frustrating so I
wrote a book and gathered up all the knowledge I
had learned over the last 30 years in the industry
into this book. So it’s been a great resource for my
clients, and other non-profits.
You know
what items
don’t work
anymore?
Whatever
worked
last year.
In your experience working at the charity auctions,
what makes a successful event?
I call it the three E’s. The first E is it needs to entertain,
the second is it needs to engage, and thirdly it needs
to extract. The number one reason that people choose
to buy a ticket to a fundraising event is not to raise
money for the charity, as we may think. The National
Auctioneers Association did a survey a few years ago
and found that 93% of the respondents said that the
number one reason they buy a ticket to attend a fun-
draising event is to have fun. So you really have to
provide the entertainment for your event. I think that is
one of the reasons we have done well in this space, with
my background as an entertainer, I am always bringing a
lot of comedy and humour to the event. The second one
is engagement… you need to get people’s attention and
hold it through the night. We’ve all been to those events
where the crowd is out of control, nobody is listening to
the emcee or auctioneer... the table chatter just drowns
everything out. When the room gets out of control like
that, you definitely are not going to achieve the results.
And finally, you have to extract the money.
A lot of events have both live and silent auctions.
What are some “hooks” that you have seen that have
raised the bar?
One of the first things that comes to mind is the grow-
ing popularity of electronic bidding. There ar