Too often those who conduct a charity auction take the short view. They are either elected or volunteer for a short term (often for a year or less) and then they pass the batton to the next person and move on. However, a charity auction is a business, and like most businesses it is in business to make money.
The one year plan would not work in most businesses. Can you imagine going into your boss and saying "Wow we had a great year, sales were great (I think) and we made some gains over last year (if only we tracked our sales we could document this) and I feel next year will be even better, so I quit."
That is the playbook for most charity auctions, only you need to throw in a comment like, "Hey boss before I go, next year why don't we hire a guy who looks like an engineer to help us design this bridge?"
Charity auctions are netorious for hiring celebrities to conduct auctions, they may look like auctioneers but the are not auctioneers. Would you hire a celebrity to fly your airplane? Would you hire a celeb to treat your child medically? I doubt it. I imagine you are saying at this point, "Rob, we are not talking about flying a plane or operating on my child, we are talking about an auction." I would have to admit to you that you are correct, to a point but so am I. Having a large charity auction is important, LIVES may be at stake, please don't tell me that when you are looking for someone to help you raise money for lukemia lives are not at stake, my brother-in-law Tom died from lukemia. I know raising money may not be the same as being a doctor, but raising money for lukemia might put the young man or woman through school who cures this desease. Please do not hire an amature to get this job done. If you want to have a celeb host the evening I would say great! Have them help the auctioneer, terrific, do the auction, NO.
Back to my first point a charity auction is never over, as soon as the auctioneer drops the gavel on the last item on the auction block, next years auction begins. New donors need to be found, new ways to promote next years auction need to be dreamed up, new relationships need to be formed, you need to review what happened that was right and what could be done better next time. Ideally the staff from year to year will overlap, the batton will not only be passed it might be re-designed a bit with input from last years batton carrier and advice on how the auction can be better and and the process improved. You might notice I just said the P word, an auction is a process, it can be documented it should be documented.
You may have noticed I said large auctions need an auctioneer. I believe even small auctions can benifit from an auctioneers help, the problem is that an auctioneer can only conduct so many auctions each year and we must choose which causes we can help. That being said, you might look for new auctioneers to help you with your auction if you can't interest the local "old pro". You might tell me "Rob, my group can't afford an auctioneer". I would counter that a good auctioneer not only pays his own way he more than pays his own way. He brings not only experince to the auction, he often brings his own staff. But more on that later.
