Alberta Meeting & Event Guide Fall/Winter 2017/2018 | Page 38

The experts
be jumping up and down. That is also a
distraction from the live auction… the last
thing you want to have happening is having
people jumping up to go and check on the
silent auction. You want their attention on
the live auction because that is where most
of the big money is made. The second thing
is cash appeals (fund-a-need, fund-an-item,
fund-a-cause) and this is simply where
we’re addressing the audience and saying
“folks, a lot of you are probably feeling like
you already have enough stuff and you’re
not interested in participating in the live or
silent auction. Nonetheless the very fact that
you are here tonight says that you want to
support the cause, so right now we are going
to have a very simple cash appeal to raise
some money for [specific cause]. Would
anybody raise their hand and donate $1,000
(or $500 or $100).” The most successful one
I ever conducted was for Sorrentinos Garlic
Stomp in support of Compassion House
a few years ago. They were trying to raise
$250,000 to retire the mortgage on the reno-
vation of Compassion House, so I turned
to the audience (just on a whim – this was
not planned or scripted) and said “folks, we
have over 600 people here tonight. I know
that we have 25 of the most successful busi-
ness people in Edmonton here tonight, and I
am going to ask if 25 of you would consider
pledging $10,000 a piece so we can retire
this mortgage.” Well in the next 90 seconds,
35 hands went up. We raised $350,000 in 90
seconds. Cash appeals can be very very suc-
cessful if handled properly.
Would you say experiences sell better than
items in auctions?
Generally speaking, yes. People are inter-
ested in unique experiences. I had an event
a while ago where one of the trips was an
opportunity to fly to St. John’s, Nfld and
spend the day on the boat with a lobster
fisherman and it sold for huge money. I
had another event in Vancouver and it was
a flop. There were 100 extremely wealthy
people in this private home for this auction
and each of the 8 items included Learjet
trips to famous golf courses and I couldn’t
give them away. It was horrible. In the after-
math, when we debriefed to figure out what
went wrong, the light came on that all of
these wealthy people already owned private
jets, they already had fancy houses on golf
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courses, so there wasn’t a lot of attraction to
the packages that were being offered. What
would have worked better for that crowd
was a 10 day trip on a donkey up a mountain
in Tibet… that kind of an experience would
have been a huge home run with that kind
of a crowd. So you have to be careful that
you match your experiences to the crowd
that you have in your room at your event.
That’s where we work closely with our cli-
ents now – we have really stepped up our
game in the last couple of years. With the
downturn of the economy, we have started
working a lot closer with our clients in terms
of coaching them and consulting them to
make sure they have the event set up prop-
erly, that they have the right items for the
crowd, that they have the right people in
attendance for the event.
What are some of the most unique auction
items you have seen?
I did an auction for the NFL in California
back in March and a gentleman donated
his brand new Gulf Stream jet to take 10
people to any football game they wanted to
ALBERTA MEETING & EVENT GUIDE • Fall/Winter 2017/2018
see. The donor said the winner could pick
the hotel, pick the restaurant, and that sold
for $75,000. Then we doubled up on it and
made $150,000 on that one item. Another
cool item I saw was at an auction for the
David Foster Foundation in Toronto and the
featured entertainer was Andre Bochelli. He
donated 2 seats on his private jet to fly to
Florence, Italy to stay with he and his wife in
their home for 4 nights. That brought huge
money. Three nights later I was in a church
in North Edmonton trying to get $36 for 8
rings of garlic sausage!
What items don’t work at auctions
anymore?
You know what items don’t work anymore?
Whatever worked last year. The point I am
trying to underscore there is that very often
non-profit organizations get in a rut and
they repeat the same things over and over.
I’ve often said that Edmonton doesn’t need
another autographed Taylor Hall jersey in
an auction. We see it quite often where they
get the same 8-10 items and are trying to
sell it to the same audience as last year. You