1 HOUR 7 MINS
ReadySetAuction…GO!
This webinar will review the important starting blocks for a successful event. We will start with the basics of navigation, getting help, and terminology. Then we will move onto understanding the purpose of an administrator, designing an event website, and entering donations of various types, including items to be auctioned. Finally, we will review entering RSVPs by adding donor and bidder information, how to send solicitation letters and invitations, and some best practice tips.
Agenda:
Before you start resources, Critical setup steps for getting started, Setup details, & Tips for before the event
**You can find the handout for this webinar here:
https://softerware.my.salesforce-sites.com/handouts?id=a235A000001oowA
Categories: Training Webinars, Preparing for Events, ReadySetAuction
ReadySetAuction…GO! Transcript
Print TranscriptSo fantastic. It is now one o’clock Eastern time, everybody. So we are going to get started. Norma says we have a yearly event, and want to see how this will work. Whoo! Okay, so thank you, Norma. This is fantastic. I am thrilled that all of you are here today.
My name is Janet Read More
So fantastic. It is now one o’clock Eastern time, everybody. So we are going to get started. Norma says we have a yearly event, and want to see how this will work. Whoo! Okay, so thank you, Norma. This is fantastic. I am thrilled that all of you are here today.
My name is Janet Carroll, and I’m one of our DonorPerfect trainers, and we all overlap with helping you out with our Ready Set Auction software. So we are thrilled to get going today, learning the ins and outs. This is the first of two webinars in a series. The second part is going to be on Tuesday, one o’clock Eastern time for the at event webinar in this series, and I’m going to show you that right here. So let’s look and see what today’s agenda is going to outline for us. We’re going to be getting started with it all, setting things up, right? We’re going to look at the details, we’re going to look at data entry, and we’re really looking at all of the before the event detail set up. Lindsay says, If we’re not able to attend the live version next week, is it possible to receive a recording? We automatically send recordings as a follow up to the webinar. We always include the link to the recording, so the attendees, the actual attendees, are automatically included, okay, in that so Lindsay, just reach out if, in the end, you’re not, you’re not able to, so even if you log in and can’t stay for very long, you’re still considered an attendee, and if you have a partial meeting conflict, you’ll still be getting that recording. Okay, so I hope that helps you there. So we have the before the event details they at the event, details like what happens from at the event going forward, that is part of the at event webinar. Again, what’s going to be presented on Tuesday, and again, the after the event, also in that same webinar. So at and after the event, all of those details are part of Tuesday’s webinar. So what do we need to think about before we get started? Well, we need to remember that we do have online help. Okay? Within Ready Set Auction, there is a help desk for in product learning. We also have a chat feature that when I go into Ready Set Auction, you’re going to see that there is online help via chat right there, that in there, we do have a countdown checklist that is indeed part of the help desk. You can go in there and just ask for the checklist, the user guide, again, same thing coming into the help desk. Okay, and there are a lot of question mark bubbles throughout the entire Ready Set Auction software. So if you’ve been in here before, you likely have seen a lot of those question marks, so I know for me, I love clicking on them. They are great reminders. We’re going to get started with the dashboard, and I will be going in and out of the presentation to show you live in action in setting some of these things up. So right now, we’re looking at the dashboard, and I want to point out that we do have a I like to think about as multiple menus. So if you’re looking at this, look across the top. We’ve got our Main Menu, and yes, we have our admin that is separate. So you can see that separated out. But even without that admin, right? We’ve think about we’ve got the menu, and I we have a sub menu over here, but we’re going to see another screens. There’s going to be a menu somewhere in the middle here, somewhere, because there’s details about that sub menu. So there’s a lot that we could be looking at. And it does really keep us organized. We just follow the path of what is clicked and open. So here on the dashboard, we do see the at a glance event stats simply right on the dashboard screen, you see your progress with these green I like to think about these thermometers, horizontal thermometers at that where we see the progress right then and there. We have links to lists or reports throughout the screen as well. And the screen also includes shortcuts to common tasks. So you. It can continue. Let’s say where you left off. You may have come in to check the status, let’s say and then we go back to where we were. So that itself is super nice. So I’m going to come into the software here.
There we go. So here we are. I’m in a test system, so we can try and pretend anything we need to hear, in case you do have any questions. So what I want you to do, what I want you to see, is what I was just mentioning. We’ve got this menu go that goes across right. We’re on the home screen right now, and within the home screen we have our dashboard and look at what else is on that home screen we could preview our event website, so I’m just scrolling through that here. If your organization happens to have the setup or two events either being set up or run simultaneous. You could click into switch event and switch to your other event, and then we have this extra option on the bottom, news and tips, I’m going to say here in the dashboard for a moment, and just kind of go through a little bit of this. We can see here in the top section, right there is a checkbox here, you know, show Getting Started help. So I see three hyperlinks here for tell me how, right, if I don’t want any of that, I can easily just uncheck that. So I can come in here and start setting up my auction in three different ways, right? Different parts of the setup. We have our progress here. Look at all of these different options and opportunities to just taking a look at what is going on. So we again, this is a test system, so your database, if it has not yet happened, right? Your your event is still coming up. My hope is that you’re going to be having your packages that you’ve already gotten to the point of entering donations. You can see the donations here on the left. And when we get donations, we put the donation as a package to be auctioned or purchased or sold. Right? We also can have different donations put together and creating a package to be bidable, buyable, offered as a raffle. So we have all different ways of putting the the donations together. So you’ve got lot of different statistics right here on your Dashboard right, which is part of your home screen. I mentioned the checklist before. So over here on the far right, and right next to log out there is help. Over here, when I click and help my Ready Set Auction Help Desk comes up. There are a lot of articles here, if you scroll down right now, I’m looking here in the knowledge base, and this is just some of them. And at the bottom, of course, it does say all articles. I suggest that you come in here, at least to get started and do a search. If I say checklist, if I here, I am starting to type checklist. Here I have two different checklists. Here I have a countdown to the checklist, and I’ll count down to with a to do list. Select one. You could look you can use it as it is here as a resource. You can bookmark that you can see up here on my right. I do have mine bookmarked right under for me, I have a folder called Help Desk articles. That’s what I’ve done if you needed to. You can always, you know, probably come in here and send this to the printer as well, whatever it whatever works for you. All right, so I am going to come back in and let’s come back into here and let’s continue on. So before we start right, we already saw a little bit of the home screen right at a glance summaries, preview area, lots of different details. We just took a look at that. There’s a setup tab where we can be setting up our auction staff, creating goals. We can see it right here, sponsorship levels, ticket various kinds of ticket levels. If you are offering meals and you they need to choose between the different kinds of meals, you can put your meal choices in here as well and simply other details for the auction item is where you put in what’s been donated to. And then when you either use it that what was donated by itself to be raffled or biddable or sold off, then that is its own, what we call a package. Packages is what is used in the auction. So you get donations. You can put them together if you want, or just keep them as it is. You could and manually enter them. You can import them, you can update information. You can also have access within the items area to create an E catalog, even printed materials as well. When we’re talking about patrons who’s supporting you here, we’re talking about the donors and the bidders as well as their guests. Okay, we have in there the data entry. We have RSVPs and where the communication is done. So you get to set up some of the communications right here, the Add Event tab is used for event tasks such as checking in at the event, recording sales, checking out and producing receipts. Simply what happens at an event? Well, whenever we whenever we’re doing anything in a database, we know that data goes in, so we know that we need to pull out reports. So yes, we’ve got a tab for reports where all your event data can be viewed, printed as well as exported, and we have that admin tab that I showed you kind of stands by itself, where the administrator have access to the settings for the event. Let’s take a look and start with the Admin Details. At least one administrator needs to be for each event, of which, of course, means you can have more than one administrator, but minimum one administrator you get to put in all of the organization details. Again, this is only for those that are in here as an administrator. So those organization details includes what’s used for invoices, receipts and reports. We have the merchant account, so if you are collecting payments electronically, okay, this is where that information goes. If you’re using DonorPerfect and Ready Set Auction, and you have the safe save processor, the gate, save save gateway. Then we put a code in there, in that merchant account. So it’s going to be connecting the two. So the same processor within DonorPerfect is used within the merchant account, within Ready Set Auction. And of course, we have event settings themselves. So we need to be able to add staff to your website and create a staff event access code, and we also set up preferences for what you want access on your website to for your patrons and your participants. And of course, when we think about the behind the scenes part, we have already created our staff, we now need to invite those staff okay to become the staff and give them an access code to be part of the staff, so it gives them those I’m going to say access rights in there.
So I’m going to jump back into Ready Set Auction, and I’m going to click on Admin, and now I see my admin menus here on the right, but look at this. I have that menu that I alluded to earlier, and here it is. So within admin and my organization settings, I have my organization details right. Just follow the screen down. And now I’m reminded here about all of these question mark bubbles that I mentioned before. I’m just clicking on the first one to change organization name. Okay, this when you put your organization name in, it sticks. If you need it change, you will need to contact the support team. Here’s again, the question mark over here, right? It reminds us our nine, nine digit IRS issued number. But follow through everything where there is a an asterisk you need to fill in in order to click Save or update. So earlier, there was a comment about online support, right? So while we have that help desk over here, when I just clicked on help again, sorry about that. So here is that help desk, and I had clicked on help right next at log out, but look on the bottom right here. Sure it’s right now with his agent offline, is that simply because our support staff takes a lunch break and catch up time from one to 2pm Eastern time. But other than that, the chat agent is always available until eight o’clock Eastern time. Okay, so the that lunch time catch up time from the earlier chats is that’s from one to two o’clock Eastern. All right, so we have our DonorPerfect account. Look continuing on our organization settings. This connects your Ready Set Auction to your DonorPerfect account. If you happen to have a PayPal account, here’s where that PayPal account email goes, and the merchant account, if you have a safe, safe pace payments gateway, then that name here in this list, the vantam, is for Canada. And so we’ve got the Safe, safe payments there, and then the security key that allows that the tie in to your gateway, all right. And if I come down a little bit further here, just to walk us through this admin tab and look at this, this admin event settings also has several sub menus, or sub sub menus, okay, there might be a fancier word for it. Okay, so under event settings, we’ve got here event details, again, general information here, you know the the date and time that your event is going to start as well as end. Right here, we have access keys, access codes for your staff right here. This access code on the left is going to be used for the staff here in the admin. The authorization code is only for admin. So you only your admin. Staff should be seeing this authorization code there. If I continue down, it’s all about your event website address. So when we are going here, we need to remember one thing we get reminded, of course, with that question mark here, this is the web address. So you’re basically, you’re filling this in, and this creates the website that web address that everybody’s going to go to for the auction that’s going to allow them to purchase tickets and to see your catalog, etc. But this last statement in here is worthy of a moment’s attention. Once you submit this information, the URL cannot be changed. So think about what it is that you want to call your website for the event and enter it here and just put it in once you click update on the bottom of that green, you won’t be able to change that website address. So just to take an extra moment to think about what you would like to call it, and you can see here that you have the opportunity to enable lots of different information, and even require some information, such as requiring a stored credit card for E bidding if you’re not doing any e bidding, okay? And if it’s just a live auction, then you don’t need to have that box checked. Okay? So recently, I worked with somebody that they had a small auction, and it was a lot of it was it was paddle, it was only paddle raising. It was only the fund to need, and they had a lot of that, but that’s all that they did. They did not have any e bidding. They did not have to check that box. Okay? So it’s all a matter of, what do you want to have? What do you need to have? Options for the donors. So again, all of the question mark against every single one of these will help guide you along. And then we come as we go across here. These are noteworthy, and again, take your time when you’re setting this up, so that you don’t have to go back necessarily, to be reviewing everything if you know what the setups are supposed to be. So because there’s a lot of details, right, so that the event is going to run smoothly. So here we are at the payment methods. What payment methods will you be allowing, permitting at the event again, we have that information bubble again, right? So think about what is possible, and select the boxes, keeping in mind that if you have some payment methods that could be electronic. It means that you could allow and enable here on the bottom bidders to check themselves out on their own devices. So that itself is pretty nice too, but only, of course, if you have a payment method that can be electronic. Yeah. So here are more options for patron accounts, right? Should we require them to provide a full address and phone number? Right? Ask. Should we be allowing or asking bidders if they will be attending or bidding remotely? So there’s a lot that could be going on, and I know certain things change a little bit for COVID. And now, now post the big COVID shutdown, so take a look at each of the options. Bidding stations. That’s all about saying people are going to be bidding at the event electronically. And what if somebody’s mobile device ran out of juice and they don’t, you know, they want to have an way to be able to bid, okay? Or what if somebody doesn’t have a smartphone or an iPad or something, a remote device with them, or portable device with them? Rather, then you can have what’s called a bidding station. And there’s a lot of details here about recommendations. And in essence, you’re going to have these a few stations depending on the size of your event, number of people wise, right? So that is basically a shared place where people can go in, log themselves in, and make their bids, right? So that’s what this bidding station is all about, right? And you can also have a showcase, which in essence, is a an electronic display that goes in a loop, and some of the event details, and let’s say catalog items and such can be in your Showcase. I mentioned earlier about putting in staff. So we add staff here. You can see in the green, add a staff member. When I click on that. I’m just adding basic information at the top and at the bottom here, it’s a matter of, what do they need to be allowed to do? Are they just in here? Because we need to document that they’re part of this event or part of the communications, so you have a staff access of level of none, and that’s actually a real thing here. So if you add somebody as staff, but don’t give them access to anything, it really means that you need to use their name and email address in one of the community, one or more of the communications. So when you are communicating with your patrons here, you need to be on staff for the event. But if that person on staff is not ever going to be logging into Ready Set Auction, then all you need to do is have them as staff and make their access as none, but you can have a view only.
You can have modify rights so they can not only view but they can make changes. And then, of course, admin allows a lot more of capabilities, okay, like overrides, removing something that maybe somebody complained about. I didn’t, I didn’t bid on that, or I didn’t win that bid, or something. You need admin rights to make certain kinds of changes like that, to remove, in that case, from somebody’s receipt, you get to put in tax rates. Okay, and yes, you could add new tax rates different kinds, and then assign them each of the different kinds, if there’s more than one, and where appropriate, of course, when setting up each of your packages, and we will be indeed talking about packages, the donor, perfect transfer. I’m going to ask a quick question. Instead of asking if everybody here is a donor, perfect user, I should be asking, Is anybody not a donor, perfect user here? Because my presumption is everybody is here is a donor, perfect user. So this is all about transferring data to DonorPerfect so nobody has responded. So that means that everybody’s a donor, perfect user, which means that you’re going to have a couple of choices and how the data goes over to DonorPerfect. Most of us like the DonorPerfect transfer. You can only do it transfer one time. We do it when our event is locked, nothing else being touched or changed. Typically, that’s four weeks after the event, if the database locks up, it gives you a chance to finish off whatever might not be sold you can do or not get paid for. So after the event, you can have some follow ups dealing with that. The idea here is when you are going to be doing a donor profile. Transfer. You want to set up some of your data that’s going to come over, not some, but all of your data that’s going to come over. You want to assign it DonorPerfect codes. So you’ve got a few different tabs here that are all about different parts of why somebody has either paid or bid and one something, and you get to for each one of these, you get to have a unique set of codes. And as general perfect users, my hope is that you will then recognize right here, right general ledger, campaign solicitation, all of these six fields. So very nice if you need to purchase services, such as extra training for Ready Set Auction personally, where one of us trainers connects up with your computer and works with you in your Ready Set Auction database, if you want support during your event, okay, so that any really event related support, then fill out this form or go and reach out to or reach out to your account manager. So if there’s any questions, please let me know. All right, somebody is asking if you’re a DonorPerfect user. Does it automatically give you access to Ready Set Auction, or do you have to pay for this service? Additionally, I’m going to say that it is based on your DonorPerfect package, because certain DonorPerfect packages will already include Ready Set Auction. So if you want to hang around at the very end and tell me what your client ID is within DonorPerfect, I’d be happy to answer that and actually look it up for you. Okay, so if you want to hang around after we’re done with this presentation, just let me know, and I’ll be happy to help you out there. Or you can reach out to support who can look it up. You can also reach out to your account manager as well. All right, let’s look at some of the setup details. We have goals, right? We want to set up our goals. They are tracked on our dashboard, and it appears in this showcase. So when I think of goals, I think about dollars, I think about seats. I think about how many people are coming, right, reaching your seats. Goal does not limit the number of tickets sold. Is simply your goal. When I think about defaults, I think about part of that setup is to save me time, really when I’m entering new packages, because if I have some defaults, and a lot of my packages are using those defaults, such as, when this when is this package available for auction, and that is biddable? Let’s say if that the majority of my packages are going to be opening up at a certain time in the auction, and they are going to be biddable in a certain way that I want to have all that set up for me, because it’s going to save me a whole lot of time when I get to that package by package part, right? And sponsorship levels. So think about when I’m thinking about sponsors. I think about selling tickets, but in a special way. So I think that as event people, you’re all running it, getting ready for an event, or learning about setting up an event, how it you know, as enormous, said, having a yearly event, wanting to see how this will work. We’re thinking about, we typically think about selling tickets and selling sponsorships. There’s one little caveat here. Okay, so when you are selling multiple tickets at one time, that’s typically, I’m going to say, let’s say a group of friends. Let’s say that’s coming, hey, I’ll pick them up. They’re a certain amount of money a piece. Somebody buys them. But when you’re selling tickets, let’s say per couple, okay, and let’s say you’re off. You’re offering a slight discount on, you know, two people, yes, they can purchase two individual tickets, but if you’re selling, let’s say a couple ticket, okay, or whatever you may want to call it, those are all under sponsorships. So all of different kinds of groupings and different levels that you can set up different levels of sponsorships that has, let’s say, certain number of tickets involved already. So if I if as a sponsor, if the, let’s say a company is sponsoring, and there’s certain number of tickets, a certain number of attendees can come to fill those spots, then when people. Check in at the event, they are basically checking in as one of those attendees from the sponsorship. So when we create those sponsorships, sponsorship levels is going to include how many attendees is part of that sponsorship level? Okay, so that’s part of the levels, as well as that group of tickets, such as a couple. So you might say, I want a table of my friends all together, and I’m going to pay for a table. Okay, somebody might be sitting at your table those you can set that up and have, let’s say, a group price, all right, as opposed to people buying individual tickets. All right. So a matter of how you would like to set it up. Any questions so far? Okay, let’s continue with some more of this set of details. So, admission tickets, right, admits one person to the event. And I’ve seen people some organizations where you have a pull down, and you you might have, or you might be, people might be buying more than one ticket, but if you want to have some of those, I’m going to say, quote, unquote, like couples, some deals, then have those, but it’s under the sponsorships. If you need meal selections at an event, of course, there’s the option to set up meal choices, right? That is part of the bitter registration where they will see what those meal choices are and sign that up at the same time, right? And, of course, going for tables, right, where bidders are literally assigned to sit, where there’s assigned to sit for the event, right? You want to set up your tables in advance, whether they are numbers or names whatnot, set them up in advance. You can always rename them later to have them be what you what might be better for names? Okay, as your setup continues, as that event gets closer, you might come up with certain names or naming conventions that were not there earlier on, and that’s absolutely fine, right? And of course, part of the setup is the information about the venue itself, and of course, that’s going to be on your event website. So let’s now take a quick look at that event website setup, right? So remember that this is how the bidders, they’re going to be first seeing you in interacting with you right here at that event website. So this is how they are, literally seeing you. This is that front or public facing information about your event.
So we have that, we have that event website. We have the ability to purchase tickets and sponsorships there. They can also say they would like to donate money as well as an item. Again, it’s whatever’s turned on in your setup behind the scenes, they get to view your auction catalog. Again, it’s a matter of, do you want them to be able to see that auction catalog, right? Do you want to offer them the opportunity to bid online, or is it only a silent and live auction, or silent or live auction? So it all depends on what you’re doing, and, of course, how that’s happening, right? So we took a quick look through that screen just before, right that event website. Here we are when we have the we’re still under admin and we’re under event settings. And now here are these event details, so that itself is super nice. Here again, I like to follow, as they say, Follow the bouncing ball. Click on any of these question marks as you go through wherever they might be, just everywhere. And it really does help guide you. It’s just, it’s always there. It’s always reliable. So I certainly encourage you to be able to see and make all of those decisions. Remember, you’re just a chat away from it getting online help. You’re also a click away from your help desk. You know, in that upper corner under Help opens up your help desk, so there’s a lot of information, but the bubbles are literally right here in the moment, text sensitive right where you are, so you have all of that set up, and then look at this. We have our website, and it’s nice to be able to see what that looks like on that mobile device. Please. So we already took a look at that event website screen. Would anybody like to see that again? I guess I did that a little bit prematurely because it was nice just sitting right there. All right, if you’d like to see anything again, just give a shout out. Happy to show you when I am here within the setup, right? It’s really nice that when I have the setup, I get to preview it, I get to see what’s going on, right? So that itself is super nice. Again, it’s all here within the setup. I fill in the closing message. I get to see it. I have I get to see my options that I’m presenting to my potential attendee. They get to see it so I get to check it out. I get to preview that, which is, again, super nice. Here I’m going to jump in. I’m going to jump back here and just kind of walk through a little bit more. Alright, so here I am, I’m going to come in, and here I am, I’m in the admin, I’m in the admin, and I’m going to come into my event settings, and then I have my event details. And as I recall, from before, all of these event website information really makes you know, it’s a difference of what you want the bidders to see, what you want your attendees to see. So what I’m going to do right here is I’m going to copy what’s in here. Just going to highlight this copy. I’m going to open up a new tab, and I’m going to do a paste. Whoops, let me come in here and log in. Do I have it? Let me type in one, right?
All right.
Okay, so here I am, I have. I’m at that URL that was within Ready Set Auction. Here we go. I copied this and I paste it in, and now I logged in and look at this. I have, I get to see what I’m being offered for this auction, right? I get to see the catalog. I’m going to view the catalog. I get to see this. Now again, this is used for demonstration, so you can see leading bids. The here. This is something that can be bought. It says what the price is. This one is view only, so I guess this is just in person, right? I have a starting bid. It has not yet been bid on, right? So there’s a lot that goes on here, right? So I’m just going to come back here. I’m just going to come back here and come down. Look here. If I want to buy tickets, I can click over here, right? That’s for my tickets. Now look at this half price student tickets, right? How many do I need? And it says includes one seat. Okay, so sometimes you want to just put in a number and have that go over for you. That’s absolutely fine, but you can see all sorts of options in here, whatever it go, whatever it is that you need. And here I have sponsor tickets, sponsorships. And you could say, Look at this. Each extra special sponsor. It says for $750 includes four seats. My couple ticket includes two seats. So you get to give it the names, right? These are all your names. And when you put in the dollar amounts in that setup behind the scenes, you say, of course, how much money you say, how many seats it is. You’re also actually saying whether it’s a possible to be used online or manual or both. So if you’re offering some complimentary tickets, you make that one manual only, so that somebody behind the scenes, let’s say staff are the only ones that could literally sign you up for that. But here, these were available here because it says that it was available online, right? So you can see all of these different options. This table of eight clearly includes eight seats. So if you are purchasing this, then when somebody checks in, right there at the event, they’re checking in and they’re say they’re seated with you, you’re going to they’re going to be. Using one of your eight seats. So this is all really nice. Adding a donation. Here you can have a financial donation. Pretty nice. It all goes on your account, so later on, you’ll learn about, on Tuesday, about using that account. You know, you come into your account, and you could, in the end, settle up at the end of the night by coming in here and going to your account and checking out. So I find that very handy. And let’s come in and continue. Let’s look at the items tab. Remember, an auction is not an auction without selling something, right? Whether we have just a fund, a need that I mentioned before, that I helped somebody with recently, or where we have auction donations, goods and services donated. So here we’re saying we’re talking about now the items tab. And on this Items tab, we are certainly marking the donations, what we’re receiving, we package them together. Either a donation is its own package, or multiple donations come together for a package, in essence, it is what is auctioned off, right? That’s what we’re always that’s what we’re looking for here, what is auctioned off. So one to one ratio of donation to package, or multiple donations for a package, when you are filling in the information about what you’ve received, you get to assign it one or more categories. So imagine that you have sports equipment, you know, and within the sport, let’s say there’s a package that has some sports equipment and tickets to some kind of a professional or local event, so you might have it under entertainment as well as sports. Okay, you can have as many categories as you want, and you can check off as many as need be for each of these packages, which is super nice, and again, within the items tab, because we’re putting something in, we might need to be printing something right. So when I’m thinking about all of those details, I’m thinking about, how are these packages going to be sold? If you are having, let’s say, a silent auction. You might want to have those display sheets for the silent auction, right? You might have bid sheets for some of your packages, and, of course, having a catalog as well, right? So that people can flip through and not be surprised at what if something is coming up to be auctioned off, and they, you know, to kind of, let’s say, save their money for something else, so they’re aware of what’s going on, what becomes available. So I’m just going to jump in here. Let’s jump back in here, and I’m going to click on the items tab. And as we know there, here’s a sub menu for items. And right now, right now, I see that I’m on the donations tab or sub tab here, and I have a few different opportunities here. I can manage the donated items that I already have, and that’s absolutely fine, right? But I also have the opportunity to add a donation. And if I click Add donation, I say, is this an item or service, or is this going to be a donation of simply cash or, let’s say, being a sponsor here? So I’m going to come into item or service, and imagine here you’re filling in all the different information, and I’m just going to randomly select here, so I’m putting in George is donating this item and the donation name, oops. Let’s come in here and say that we’ve got a gift certificate to a local let’s do trying to think of the spelling of a name. Let’s just Jim Wharton Steakhouse. We have some of them near me. The invitation, the I’m sorry, the inventory tag over here is all about where you’re where you could find this donated item. I’m having a gift certificate. Okay, I may. They have to either send it to me or I’m going to print up a gift certificate. Okay, what’s going on with that, if I have this donated item, okay, or a certificate, maybe it’s somebody’s giving out services like consulting, legal services or marketing consult services, whatever it might be, where they’re again, a different kind of gift certificate. The question here is, where is this item located? If I’ve got a big. Sports package here, with all the different kinds of balls and whatnot, I need to know where it’s located. So this is that behind the scenes. Where is that located, right? We have a delivery status. Is the donor? Is George Arnold going to deliver this gift certificate? Do I have to still arrange for the pickup, or do I already have it in hand? It’s already received, right? Lots of different information. Look at just, I don’t want to fill it in. We have a lot still more to go over. You can see comments the kind of donation it is, what is the fair market value of each of these certificates? And of course, after that, how many do I have? Right? So here, if I have a $250 this is for each gift certificate, and what happens if they’re giving us two of them? So I have two gift certificates, each one of them valued at $250
Right? If there’s more than one category, I can or any categories one or more, I simply check them off, right? And of course, I have down here the gift certificate, right? Am I going to be generating it through the system, or is the donor going to be providing that right notice when I’m down here on that Categories section here, I just want to point out that on the right hand side here, there’s a screen for simply adding and managing those categories. You can see here I skipped over importing. Yes, we can import this within the help desk, there is a setup for the for importing, right, an Excel format that you could be using when I’m not going to change. I’m not going to keep this. No, I’m going to here. I’m going to come down to packages. And packages, remember is what’s actually auctioned, offer, bid on, purchase, raffled off, etc. So really, the same kind of options, except that it’s closer to the event. So we need some additional details. So I’m going to come in here and look for something that is not uh, let me see here. Here is. All right, let’s come in here has just been sold yet. All right, so here I have two round trip tickets on Southwest, all sorts of information I get to have an image nice to have if I’m having a catalog displayed. If I’m going to use a showcase, I get to have a showcase image as well. Fill in whatever you can, like really nice descriptions, right? The fair market value of the package. Keep in mind one thing here, remember those defaults that were said early on. What do I want to have as some of my defaults? So look at this on the bottom here, where it says, configure auction settings. A lot of this is really part of those initial defaults in the setup for the event, right for the package setups. So I have my starting bid, my minimum raise. Okay, it’s all this case percentages of the fair market value and the open and the closed, date and time. That’s all part of the basic default as well as is the bidding style, right, and the package kind. So it’s all here, okay? It’s a matter of, how do you want each of the packages go through. Package always go through from top to bottom. I’m sure you’ve likely heard that many times. To make sure that we don’t have any questions about, whoops, we forgot to do something on this particular package. We could always come in at any time and see what the bidding history is so I’ve got a bid here, but it has not yet closed. So we, oh, I’m sorry this did close. Whoops, my apologies. We had a winner here because it already had closed. All right, if I come down to categories, you can add a new category, right? This keeps it in the order that you want them, and it’s going to show you how many different unique donated items are in each of these categories, of course, and how many were signed each of packages were assigned, right? So that’s really kind of cool. There are typically fewer package the same or fewer packages than there are donations. But you might come in and have a package be simply in there itself. Certainly typical is a funded need. We don’t need to have anything else in there for it. It’s not a donated item, per se. It’s just being offered for raising some funds. So if I come in here under printed materials, I now have another set of categories that sub sub menus, so to speak, across the top. And you can see there’s a lot of different options up here. Take a look at it. Scroll down, do a bunch of previews. It really behooves you to come in and take your time with that. And let’s continue little bit about the auction catalog. So thinking about what it looks like, what information people have available to them right when they’re looking at it. So we’ve got a category, and we have the name of the package. Think about all the information that you entered earlier, all of those different details, and keeping in mind, of course, that the same package could be in more than one place in the catalog, right if it’s in more than one category. So we have the category here of clothing package name, and then we’ve got a package description right dress like a true fan, and we have the fair market value. So really, really neat. So if any, if information, whatever information is entered. It all gets accumulated right within the package that then goes up for bidding, live or silent. Yes, you might have some raffle item, raffle items. So here’s a question for everybody, do all biddable items need to be packaged? Think about it. Do all biddable items need to be in a package? Use that chat, if you will. Right? Do all biddable items need to be packaged? Yes or No. Do I have anybody taking a shot? Norma says no. Jill says no. Anybody else want to chime in? Lizzy says yes. Okay, so we have a lot more people. Anybody else want to chime in do all biddable items need to be packaged. And Shantae says, no, okay, so I’m going to go with Lindsay and say, Yes, I want to take advantage of having this biddable item have as many details as possible. That’s going to, then, of course, be traced back from the package, back to the donated items. So I get to track who’s giving it. Of course, I have the donor of the package. That donor might be anonymous, by the way, they they, or they might want to be listed as anonymous, and that’s okay, okay. But we want to, of course, be able to go back and follow the tracing of that the like the audit trail of each of the packages, as well as the categories. So when we put in the information, remember to have a anything that’s that’s up for bid, that’s biddable. It has to be a package. It simply has to be only packages are up for bid, donated items that are not yet in a package. There’s a report for that, so we need to be conscious of that. So yes, you can run a report for those donated items that are not yet in a package. Okay to make sure that we catch that maybe you’re waiting for something else to be donated that’s in a related type of of a category. You know you might have, you might have a tech package, and you’re waiting for some more tech items. You’re hoping that some of more tech items are going to be donated. So you’re just waiting. It’s not yet packaged. You want to know that, because that’s kind of your clue, that you’re either waiting for something or, oops, I forgot to do that. Let me create that package right later on. You need to make sure that that is indeed taken care of. So when we think now again, we talked about the what’s donated. We got those goods and services that are donated. We put them into packages, right? Those packages, or what’s going to be auctioned off, raffled off, purchased, all of the different options. But now we have to talk about the people, right? The people so and who is donating. So we go to the patrons tab. So a donor is those who are making the donations themselves, whether they’re a good or service or an item, okay, goods or services, monetary donations, sponsorships, all sorts of things, different options. There we have our bidders, those who are literally participating in an auction, right? Bidders can purchase an admission ticket online. They can also be manually entered by the staff. Okay, manually entered. They may have sent in you a sent in a check, and you’re logging that in. Yeah, okay, they might also be complimentary, in which case you can’t have that on online. You are going behind the scenes and say, we’ve got some special guests. I need to give them, put them in here as guests, as attendees, with a complimentary ticket here. So one quick comment here about the patrons is that companies can donate, but companies are not bidders. So a donor can be an individual or a company. Bidders can only be people. Can only be individuals.
So let me just come over here and click on patrons and just walk you through. I’m looking, I’m trying to be cognizant of the time. We still got just a little bit left to go over. So here I am. I’m on the patron screen. And yes, somebody could RSVP. They may already have information in here, where, right now it’s simply, it’s not checking in at the event yet is simply basically holding a spot, right? So you can say, Does this guest need to buy tickets? Yes or No, right? So if I need to, I’m, let’s say I’m going to say, yes. Look at all of my choices here, right? So I’m going to say, let’s say I’m going to buy a couple of student tickets, and I’ve got a VIP ticket or two that goes in there all sorts of different options, right? And I could con will confirm my tickets. Whoops, all right. Oh, I forgot to assign who I am, silly me. Okay, let’s say I’m Henry and I have this information. Whoops, part of it right, starting from the top and going down. My eyes just skipped that. I apologize. All right. So here I have it, right? I could record my payment right now. I can go right there, go to my step number three, Process Payment, or I can skip that and simply record my RSVPs, right? And here I have, I’m just gonna simply save my changes right here. I’m recording my RSVPs. I am going to come over here to everyone, and when I click on everyone, I have the ability to manage what’s here. I can also add an individual. I can add a business. I want you to just see the top of each of these screens. When I say, add a person. A person can donate. A person can be bidding. And of course, you’re going to fill in lots of information here at the bottom, I have affiliations. On the right hand side, there’s a choice of affiliations, which means I can add more affiliations, right? That’s here all up to you. When I click on Add business, I only have the option of donor. I don’t have the option of bitter, because a business can only be a donor. So I have slightly different information, because this, when I say, add business, it’s right here I have the appropriate information for adding a business. So pretty nice, right here. I then, if I need to, later on, I have my donors separate from my bidders. And yes, bidders need to create accounts and we need to invite bidders, okay to the event, so that will be discussed in the second half that second webinar that’s on Tuesday, norm is asking, does the system set up a DP constituent record for donor bidders who are not currently in The database? You could actually bring that information in Norma with importing, okay, so under patrons and everyone, there’s an import option, and you could use that import and if you’re bringing in data from DonorPerfect, one of the columns literally could be the donor ID, okay, and that’s really cool, because then there’s that, then that donor ID is stored here in Ready Set auction, which helps that at the end, going back and transferring the information back into DonorPerfect. So that itself is pretty nice. All right, communications before the event. Okay, we have solicitations. We’re literally asking for donations. The body of the email can be modified because, of course, you want to send everybody, all of your potential bidders, right? Everybody who’s in there. You want to send them a communication, right? Invitations, we are inviting to the auction, right? Again, that email body can be modified. When we are inviting to the auction. We want them to basically purchase tickets, and we’re asking them to literally create an account that they can use for bidding later on, which is pretty nice, and again, before the event. And we have different kinds of printed materials, letters, labels, merging, templates, anything that helps you get indeed, to that next step, because we want to be at that event and have all of the information stored to make that checking out of the event easier. And of course, all the details on the packages surely makes a difference to make sure that we are setting it up for the particular audience, from the timing of each of the packages that are being offered all at once, or maybe some added, let’s say every half an hour or an hour to keep the interest of, let’s say new packages being offered. So as a summary, right, we know who’s we want to know who’s coming. So we want to say we want to make sure that we record as many people as possible before the event. Encourage everybody to sign up, to register, to create their account before the event, because it makes everything at the event simply run smoother, right, easier and faster. Check in because the information is already there. Your participants can purchase tickets at the event website if you happen to have sold some tickets for your event with a donor, perfect with a donor, perfect online form. Then talk to one of us here on the DonorPerfect side, a trainer or somebody in support, and we’ll talk to you about putting them into Ready Set auction without the need to purchase tickets, because it’s already been done, right? We simply want to have an accurate count for the event attendance. So like we always want to do, putting everything in advance makes the event run more smoothly. It makes everybody more relaxed, having fun and making that everybody simply ready for that excitement of your auction. So I’m happy to hang around to answer any questions. We’re right at that hour mark right now. So I want to thank everybody indeed for joining me today and joining with other colleagues around to as you’re all getting yourselves ready for that, for that upcoming event, or simply looking to see what Ready Set auction is all about. Norman is asking so the communications are specific to the Ready Set Auction platform. For example, it does not use Constant Contact through general perfect That is correct. Although, to be honest with you, you could use, you can put that website link within Constant Contact communication, right? It doesn’t have to be your donor, perfect online form. It could be your Ready Set Auction link. The question is, is everybody that you’re sending it to and Ready Set auction? Are they in donor? Perfect? Okay, so if you’re setting it from a DonorPerfect, let’s say a DonorPerfect list is that are that? Is that the only ones that are in here in Ready Set auction. So I’m not sure if the lists are the same. You might have others in this list that are not already donors or prospects in your DonorPerfect database. So you just have to be careful with that. So it’s, no, it’s not, it’s not linked there, but here, under patrons, here I am on the patrons menu, and one of the sub menu options here is communications. So here it’s customizing my solicitations, right, and I the earlier comment about adding staff, right? Right now I have all these people in here, right? It’s from somebody here that’s on staff, okay? And if you need a particular name that is coming from, like, let’s say you’ve got a founder or a particular well known person, whoever it is, you can put them in a staff with no privileges, you know, with with the option of none, and they’re then part of this, this particular list, and that’s who it’s from. And you get to customize this message body, and that’s for the solicitation communication, right? And you we have a separate one for the invitations. Similar concept. You get to choose who it’s from, and you get to customize your message body, right? And you can see all the other options up here so it’s not connected to constant contact. And I’m not sure if your lists are really the same Norma. So I would think about that before you start putting a link from your Ready Set Auction website into constant contact. So unless they are the same list, then I would prefer to do it right from within Ready Set Auction. And you know which of your records are here. But. Because you sent them over, possibly like with the donor IDs. Any other questions? Hope that helps you. Norma, one of us might need to connect up computers with you. And you know, if you wanted to check that out, what’s going on here, and oh, it does. Thanks. Okay, very nice. When we have someone has computers connected together, we can look at it certainly at the same time. Fantastic.
And since it was an anonymous attendee before that, asked about is Ready Set Auction automatically included with their package. If you’re still here, please, you can send me a direct chat. You know, doesn’t have to be to everyone. You can just click on the pull down and just send it to me, okay, the host and panelists, and then it will come to me confidentially, and I could look that up for you, if you would like me to look up on your account.
My pleasure. Lindsay, thank you. All right. Happy to answer any other questions that you may have, and I hope that many of you will be joining us on Tuesday for the second of The two webinars in this Ready Set Auction series.
It looks like there’s no more questions. So I’m going to say thank you all again for joining me today and look forward to seeing you at the next webinar, in this case, on Tuesday, at the same time, one o’clock Eastern take care. Everybody. Bye, bye.
Read LessRelated resources
Request More Training