Hiring a nonprofessional auctioneer for

your gala is like putting a high school

quarterback into the Super Bowl and

hoping for a miracle.

Hey, I'm Danny Dar Roa. I've helped over

400 nonprofits raise over $50 million.

And I'm consistently surprised and

shocked when a nonprofit does not see

the value of hiring a professional

auctioneer.

years ago, I had a client who was a

school. And a school gala by nature is

extremely rowdy. It's a hard audience to

control because you have an entire group

of parents that are super excited to

finally get together. They've seen each

other at pickup and drop off. They've

tried to have conversations out on

playdates, meanwhile having to pay

attention to their kids, and it's

constantly getting interrupted. And now

they're having a night where they

finally get to get together. They got

nice outfits. Maybe it's a fun theme and

they ordered costumes. They got Ubers.

They got babysitters and they're super

excited to be there. Once they're at the

gala, they want to socialize. They want

to talk. They want to drink. They want

to party. They want to have a ton of

fun. So, by nature, a school audience is

pretty wild. Now, there's a a school

here in my area that they're

particularly crazy and particularly

rowdy. I did their event one year.

It was not the easiest event ever, but

we still raised a a a good amount of

money. The following year, they let me

know that there was a parent at the

school who he was a comedian. He was a

speaker and he after watching me do the

gala, he thought he could do as well as

me or better than me. I mean, I guess I

made it look pretty easy. So, I was a

little disappointed, but he went ahead

and took over. did the event that year.

The following year, they called me back

and they were like, "Danny, we made a

huge mistake. He got chewed up and spit

out by our audience. We lost $40,000

from the year before working with you,

and we really want to bring you back."

They ended up bringing me back. Not only

did we get their fundraising back to

where it was, but we increased it by $10

to $20,000

that following year.

The reality is that a professional

auctioneer

is a role that gets taken for granted a

lot in the fundraising world. There's

this idea that anybody with a microphone

and a certain amount of outgoingness and

directness can can do the job just as

well as an auctioneer.

The reality is though that in a

fundraising gala, just like a Super

Bowl, you have offense and you have

defense.

The way I want you to look at this is

offense is your fundraising success and

defense is your event planning success.

Now, they're two totally different parts

of the game. They require different

skill sets and different thinking. On

the defensive side, your event planning,

that's logistics and details and

budgets. Think catering, organizing

other vendors, decor, entertainment,

check-in and checkout. On the offensive

side, you have all decisions related to

making money. So, building a program

that helps them want to raise their

paddle, gives them all the right

information, a mission moment video

that's really going to tug on the

heartstrings and open the wallets, and

of course, your professional auctioneer.

These are all decisions that affect

fundraising.

When you think about your professional

auctioneer, this is often considered a

cost that goes in the cost column. But

by definition, an investment is

something that makes you more money. And

your auctioneer is technically the only

investment in your event. They are there

solely to make you more money. So

thinking of them as a cost rather than

investment, an investment is a huge

mistake. Oftent

times we think that our MC will be able

to be the auctioneer or maybe our DJ,

especially when our MC happens to be a

local newscaster or a radio personality.

We we tend to think that they'll be able

to do the auction just as well. I mean,

they have a ton of stage presence.

They're commanding. people want to

listen to them, but it's actually not

fair to put them in that position. And I

have spoken with several newscasters and

radio personalities that they say yes

because they care about the nonprofit,

but in reality, it makes them really

anxious because it's a lot of pressure

for them to raise money when that's not

their job. That's not their expertise.

That's not what they spend all their

time figuring out how to do. A

professional auctioneer knows exactly

how to create the right pacing, the

right sense of urgency. They know when

to move on. They know when to push. They

know how to raise as much money as

possible. Now, when you have spent over

500 hours planning and executing your

gala,

answering tons of emails at red lights,

spending nights and weekends working on

this thing, coordinating sponsors and

speakers and vendors and volunteers,

making hundreds of decisions, putting

down out a ton of tiny fires that you

didn't even see coming. When you've

spent all of that time and you get to

event night and you don't maximize the

amount of money you can raise, it's

highly disappointing because you lose

thousands of dollars and ultimately your

mission and the people, the animals, the

families, the environment that you

serve. That's who ends up paying the

price in the long run.

The last point that I really want to

make about hiring a professional

auctioneer is back to that Super Bowl

analogy. A professional auctioneer is

like your star quarterback and they have

starred in hundreds of games.

Auctioneers will do anywhere from 20 to

80 events in a year. Meaning that after

a few years, they have so much

experience and so many events under

their belt that when you hire them and

bring them onto your team, they are

going to be able to bring you the latest

and greatest in strategies and tactics.

Even their presence alone on your team

can help you raise thousands more

dollars even before event.

After all your hard work and effort,

at the end of the day, I guarantee that

your donors would prefer for you to make

tens of thousands of dollars more by

hiring a professional auctioneer than

saving the few thousand dollar that you

would by hiring a non-professional.

To recap, there's offense and defense

within fundraising. The offense is

fundraising success, the defense is

event planning success. Your auctioneer

is on your offensive team. they are the

only vendor in your event that is going

to make you more money by trying to save

money on this line item. You will be

costing your organization thousands.

I implore you to find an auctioneer that

fits the personality of your audience.

That is somebody that you feel

comfortable asking questions to to help

you make really great pre-event

decisions. And just somebody that you

trust that at the point they get to the

the final finish line at your gala to

pull out every penny that you will feel

really comfortable and really excited

about having them on stage.

To learn more about this and a few other

key decisions for planning your gala, go

ahead and download the PDF below. It's

the the the five secrets to 10X your

fundraiser. It will help give you a

clear idea of the most important

priorities in your gala.

To talk about this decision and some of

the other priorities that really affect

your gala, download our free PDF below.

Making money, the five secrets to 10xing

your fundraiser.

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you have your most profitable gala yet.