September 16, 2025 • 44 mins
Roger Devine has led a life based on service, communication, education, and entrepreneurship. As the co-founder of SchoolAuction.net, he has spent the past 20 years assisting and advising local and national nonprofit organizations and charities on how to grow their programs and ensure financial stability through fundraising events, such as gala auctions, golf tournaments, and trivia nights. Throughout his time at SchoolAuction.net, Roger has been an advocate for organizations to make their events equitable and accessible to supporters outside of the traditional top-tier donors, as a way of building a broader base of supporters. This attitude was born from the company’s decision to focus its marketing outreach on schools and PTAs, and from experiences during the 2008 recession, when many fundraising officers became wary of whether fundraising events could work in a time of economic uncertainty.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thank you for listening to the picture of the radiant.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Rat.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
You readything to me?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Oh well, well.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Say, oh well.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Not a bad stop alone, I see.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
So splash, So.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Along is it?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
An Hey everybody, While you're gathering up that last cup
of coffee and get in your seats and getting comfortable,
ready to listen, let's listen to a little bit about
Roger Devine as he has led a life based on service, community, communication, education,
(01:58):
and entrepreneurship. As the co founder of school auction dot Net,
he has spent the last twenty years assisting and advising
local and national nonprofit organizations and charities on how to
grow their programs and ensure financial stability through fundraising events
(02:21):
such as gala's auctions, golf tournaments, and trivia nights. We
all love a Trivia Night. Through his time at school
auction dot Net, Roger has advocated for organizations to make
their events equitable, accessible to supporters outside of the traditional
(02:45):
top tier donors as a way of building a broader
base of supporters. This attitude was born from the company's
decision to focus on its marketing outreach to schools and
ptas from experiences during the two thousand and eight recession,
(03:07):
when many fundraising officers became weary of whether they fundraising
events could work in a time of economic uncertainty.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
The school auction on net starts when I am working
in the tech industry and I get laid off here
in Portland, and around the same time, I had accepted
the position that nobody else wanted to be the PTA
president at my kid's school. And I've had a long
career in the software industry and during this time where
(04:11):
I was helping out the PTA where I was PTA president,
we needed to put on a fundraising event, and as
a software guy, I started thinking about, Okay, is there
software that can help us with this? And the answer
was that yes, there is. But it really was the
business models of everybody that was presenting it were really
(04:34):
bad for schools. You know. They were fine for the
higher end charities. We're talking about United Way, you know,
American Cancer Society, Red Cross, those kinds of things. You know,
there's a lot of companies that are vying for their business.
There are a lot of companies that will design their
software to get that end of the market. There really
wasn't anybody focused down on the school's end of the market.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And.
Speaker 6 (04:59):
So we start one. I started one with three or
four other guys in town, and we were all kind
of looking around for something to do professionally, and we
had my business partners, their wives were staffing their upcoming
fundraising auction. I had to do. I was pta president
my kids' school. We got together and we built it
(05:19):
for us. That's what we did. We built it for ourselves.
And then afterwards it was like, well, you know, there's
other schools out there. Let's see we can sell these
to other schools, and so we have. We've made quite
a business for the last twenty years of selling fundraising
software to very grassroots oriented charities. I mentioned schools you
(05:44):
know down here in the States, and it's the same
up where you are in Canada. At a given school,
there will be a parent group that wants that's concerned
about how things are going at the school and may
want to improve things at the school, may want to
buy some computers for the lab or something like that.
They will get together and hold these fundraising events every year,
and we've made a We've had a lot of fun
(06:06):
working with all of them to do those kinds of
grassroots fundraising events. Yeah, a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, I personally I enjoy working with the grassroots organizations.
Is like it's it's you see the instant result, right.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
It's great karma. I get to tell everybody you know,
I may not be doing a lot of good directly,
but I am helping people do a tremendous amount of
good in this world and I expect to get into
heaven as a result.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
He man. Yeah, so it's so you you help them
to use the software to develop auctions or how does
that actually work?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Yeah, so there's a there's a format for fundraising events
that kind of Coaliest maybe forty years ago for the
idea of a fundraising gala. And at a fundraising gala,
I like to describe these things as they're just like
a department store, only they're only open for six hours
a year. It's a party. It happens at a ballroom.
(07:17):
And when guests come to this party, they do so
knowing that they're going to be expected to donate money.
They are going to be asked for money. And now
the question is how do we ask them for money
in ways that are fun, that are that are going
to inspire them, that are going to move them to
do so. And part of what coalesced in this idea
(07:40):
behind the fundraising gala is that you could put together
various types of fundraising ideas all in the same place.
So if you've attended any of these events in the past,
the most common thing to find at them as a
fundraising vehicle is a silent auction, a bunch of items
sitting out on a table, bunch of bid sheets sitting
out table. People bid asynchronously. The items are donated, so
(08:04):
everything that the guest pays word goes to support the organization.
There's live auctions, there's raffles, there's special appeals, there's a
variety of other things, and the fundraising gall is a
place where an organization will pick those types of elements
that they want to combine together into an evening that
will appeal to their donor base, so that everybody can
(08:26):
come together, have a good time, have some fun, reinforce
each other's willingness to be good citizens, reinforce each other's
commitment to philanthropy, and help raise money to support an organization.
They're fun when done well, they can be expensive to
(08:47):
put on, and so many professional fundraising organizations tend to
not like them for that reason. But that's only because
they're doing them at the American Cancer Society kind of level. There.
They're putting on the kind of galls as you might
see on a TV show. You know, we do see
those every once in a while. I think the current
season of Wednesday on Netflix has has Wednesday's mother chairing
(09:09):
the gala at nevermore. So if you want to watch that,
you'll you'll find the idea there. So these do appear
in public, in the public consciousness, but schools know how
to put them on in a really cost effective way.
You don't have to do black tie, you don't have
to you know, hold it at the most fancy hotel
in town, et cetera. And they've turned this into a
(09:31):
really durable, reliable fundraising method for these grassroots fundraising organizations,
the kind that not can't necessarily afford to hire the
best fundraising talent and are going to be doing things
with volunteers, are going to be doing things with you know,
(09:53):
committed people in the organization that are you know, a
little further down the food chain, a little further down
the org chart. And they're amazing. And the reason that
I'm out talking about these again this year is well,
a I have a company, you know, I soil Software,
But also because I think events need to come back
in a little bit better or a little bit bigger way,
(10:14):
especially down here in the United States. This year, nonprofit
fundraising has been turned upside down. I'm sure there are
cross border effects here, but it all sort of starts
at the beginning, and our government has decided to put
under review and cancel a phenomenal amount of federal fundraising
(10:35):
grants that are given to a lot of these organizations.
If they're not going to get those, they need to
do something else to make up the gap. Private foundations
can only do so much, so you know, you got
to turn to other fundraising efforts there. So part of
what I'm doing is try and create some awareness around
our company, but also I want to create awareness around
(10:55):
the idea that you can step in and these things
can be cost effective successful fundraisers for organizations that may
not have anything else going on in the way of fundraising.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well, yeah, I was gonna say that that with the
with the way the terror for shall we say, uh
sure going on because we're speaking in twenty twenty five,
uh that the current United States president with him starting
(11:32):
this terwer wars and turning off fundraising and everything for
different things. And I was gonna say for some industries
that are across border industries, which some charities include that
that oh, now, what do we do for money?
Speaker 6 (11:51):
You know? And any organization that has relied on the
United States government for federal grants has been worried this year.
They've all been a little insecure about where their fundraising
is going to come from, you know, and it cascades down.
There are other there are other entities in the fundraising world.
(12:11):
There are private foundations, you know, run by philanthropic individuals.
They're under a lot of pressure right now because they're
being asked to pick up some of the slack here.
And then you go down the line with other other
things you're doing. You know, if you've got a development
department that can, like I say, if you can find
old people with fat wallets and get them to leave
(12:33):
you in their will, then do that. That's a good
thing to do. That works really well. But if you
don't have all of those old people with fat wallets,
you're going to need to rely on your grassroots supporters.
You're going to need to let the community come together
and tell you that you are important and that you
are needed in the community, and fundraising events are you know,
(12:55):
the way to get that commitment out of your supporter
by your local supporter base.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Because we're in two different cities and also across the
US border from each other. Also, I can tell you
the tale of two hospice organizations and one one foundation
has managed to find that person with the fat wallet
who left them the endowment and uh, and they have
(13:24):
what's called charitable trust. Ye don't ask me how to
set one up. Don't ask me. Oh, you know, I
got I just volunteer at the place, right And the
other one has not did not get that doesn't have
that endowment. And the one that doesn't have is really
struggling to with fundraising and budgets and uh and very
(13:48):
interesting board meetings over how to run the organization off
of off of a budget.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
You know. And well there's you know, there's a there's
a trenremendous amount of for profit and nonprofit organizations who
are navigating twenty twenty five with a lot more uncertainty
than they used to. Many of us find this in
our professional lives. That our professional lives, you know, we're
(14:18):
playing by different rules, there's different different things going on
out there. My my point today is that that does
not and it seems like you know, you're you're reinforcing
this here that does not exclude charities, That does not
exclude the organizations that we're relying on to fill in
gaps across the country, across our communities. You know, certain
(14:44):
gaps really only get filled by people who are doing
it out of you know, extra uh motivations, outside of money,
extra profitable, you know, outside of profit. And we need that,
we need that in our communities, and so we need
to try to keep as many of these little grassroots
organizations alive during this time period as we can. Unfortunately,
(15:10):
you know a lot of them are just muddling through.
Many nonprofit organizations are not terribly well funded. So you know,
we're trying to get the worry out here that we've
got effective tools for putting on effective fundraisers, getting them going,
getting your community involved, getting them to reinforce that you
at your organization is needed and should exist. There's a
(15:33):
lot of nonprofits, a lot of charities that are having
to confront the question of whether they are redundant or
whether they are unnecessary, and you know, it's at times
like this that you turn to your community for feedback.
You turn to your community and you say, you know
who's supporting us? You know, are we do? We do?
We have a thing here, And I think you want
(15:57):
more than just your volunteers hands in the air and
they're cheap. You want them to support you with whatever
they can in terms of money as well keep the
organization running.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, that's true. At least we do this. Do you
have a message for those charities that may think that
they're redundant to the very big charity, but but maybe
their work is more needed because that bigger charity doesn't
have the ground reach that the smaller one has.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
That's why the smaller ones exist. That's why we love
working with the smaller ones because they fill in, you know,
they fill in the littler gaps that the big guys
don't bother with, right, you know, they're in here, they're
they're taking care of things really in the community, which
is why I think you got to turn back to
the community in this point and you've got to say
to the community. You know, you got to go to
(16:50):
your community and your supporters and say time's tough. You know,
we're scaling, We're in unprecedented times with regards to funding.
We're going to turn back to something that we you know,
left behind us a while ago. We're going to turn
back to a community fundraising event because we need you
guys to vote with your dollars, you know, vote with
(17:12):
your dollars to keep us in place here. And I
would say that there are a lot of redundant charities.
Most oftentimes they can justify their existence by covering micro communities,
you know, et cetera. But this is a time when
a lot of them are going to have to reassess
and see what's going on there and if they if
(17:35):
they have to move on at this point, well that's
the historical moment we're in. But you know, I would
like to offer them the bit of a lifeline ahead
of time, to say, hey, let's see if we can
go to the people who are most benefiting from your
existence and their community, and let's see if it's a
valuable to them. You know, it very well may be
(17:55):
that we need to pause our work for a little while,
but you know, let's not do that without giving everybody
a chance to support us one most time.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's my experience that no matter how small
the work is, it hurts when it disappears.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
It hurts when it disappears, always so. But you know,
there is a question, and it applies in the for
profit world at companies that are trying to decide on
what projects they want to underwrite and develop, what kind
of products they want to take to market, et cetera.
And it happens at charities too. You know, sooner or
later you're going to be doing something and the market
(18:32):
for your service becomes unattractive to provide, or it becomes
diminished in need, and these things happen, and there's times
where you have to reassess. I just don't want groups
to have to reassess because the federal government told them
they had to reassess. I'd like for them to keep
going as long as they possibly can.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Do.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
Not go gentle into this good night, Go back in
out into your community and do what you need to
do in order to stay stay afloat.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I agree with you one hundred percent there that it
shouldn't be the government, it should be the community at large.
Speaker 6 (19:13):
Yes, absolutely, this is us. This is this is what
grassroots movements are all about.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, So, so how does this, How does this actually work?
How do you get start to get the ball rolling
so they get the funds in?
Speaker 6 (19:30):
And yeah, it's a it's an interesting kind of thing
because this concept of the fundraising gala, the fundraising event,
the fundraising auction, whatever it is you want to call it,
is at heart a simple concept. At heart, you're going
to have several moments during the evening where you're going
to ask people for money. You're gonna have different mechanisms
(19:51):
for doing so. Maybe you're going to do a silent auction.
That's very common. What do you got to do to
get a silent auction? Well, you got to go out
and get donated items. But then you also have to
merchandise those items. You have to price those items, you
have to keep track of them, and you have to
provide a way for people to purchase them. In other words,
a fundingsing auction needs an IT infrastructure. It needs a
(20:13):
platform underneath it that is similar to the platforms that
are running your local department store. You know, we've got
inventory management, we've got payment processing, we've got all of
this kind of stuff. That's the product that I sell
to charities. It's not all that I do for them.
We also give them a tremendous amount of advice and
education on ways to successfully implement each of these tactics,
(20:37):
but that's kind of like free consulting we give along
the way. Mostly we're giving them the platform that they're
going to use to do their inventory management, do their
bidding management, do their payment processing, do their ticket sales,
do their guest management, so that on the night of
the event, you've got a three and a half to
four hour event that runs very smoothly. The organization is
(21:00):
set up and ready for people to show up, and
it processes them through the evening, presents the fundraising opportunities
in an elegant and fun way, gets people to participate,
and then collects payment on everything they do. It's an
episodic thing. It's a thing that happens on a night, right,
and so there's stuff to be planned. You got to
(21:23):
have a place to do this, You've got to have
the infrastructure underneath you. We tend to like to start
working with groups maybe three four months before their event.
There's a lot of work to do to get ready
for them, and then we'll be coaching them on how
to conduct the event in the time leading up to it,
and then we hold their hand through the event. These
(21:44):
types of events have evolved over the years. There's different formats,
there's new ideas inherent in them. You may remember a
few years back, we had a pandemic that did a
real number on our industry. We were talking about live events.
The pandemic did a real number on our industry. But
what we did was we developed a tool to allow
(22:05):
people to hold these types of events virtually, kind of
a specialized zoom where there was also bidding, you know,
and it was it was a lot of fun. But
you know, we do it. We do adapt as the
market continues to adapt h and the ideas continue to evolve.
As a fundraising tool, you know, we get to sit
(22:26):
on the sidelines and watch as people try all sorts
of experiments and do all sorts of amazing things, and
we get to see what works and what doesn't work,
and then we get to emulgate that out through the
rest of the industry. So you know, that's kind of
our end of things.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, in a nutshell, Yeah, it still sounds like it's
a lot of work up front, but and then fun
on the night of in in a lot of benefit
later on it is.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
And you know, not everybody is. Not every everybody is
a charitable volunteer. You know, not everybody is going to
be the person who volunteers hours to the charity that
they support, just like not everybody is going to be
able to donate money. But divide up your supporter base,
find the six or seven people that are willing to
(23:17):
donate some hours, and you can put one of these
things on with no training whatsoever. Really it's mostly just
throwing a party.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
So, if there's anybody that's in that situation right now
where you know, maybe the school you're just started, maybe
somebody you know went to the first PTA meeting of
the year and they volunteered to chair an auction and
now they don't know what to do next. Happens happens
a lot. You know, people like put up their hand
and they're feeling all good about it until they get
home and then it's like, oh no, what did I do?
(23:49):
And then they call me and then we get them,
we get them going.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah. So yeah, I've been to a few of those
situations where it's like, uh, you know, to be totally
honest with you, our role is usually where where the
team that shows up to record the night, to document
and then use that documentation for the next.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Year exactly now you're you're putting together you know, it's
it's really critical to have video at one of these
events if you absolutely can. And I'll tell you why.
There's a moment in the in these fundraising events, a
very effective moment of fundraising. It's called a special appeal.
It's a particular mechanism that gets employed in the middle
(24:33):
of in the middle of many fundraising gallas, and it's
usually worth about fifty percent of what they raise. So
it's an important moment. It's a moment that the organization's
management has been thinking about for months. This is an
important moment. It's gonna be about half the fundraising at
the event. You know, we got to get this right.
(24:53):
We got to get this right. We gotta get this right.
The generally, the executive directors of those organizations want to
make a they want to inspire everybody, and we tell
everybody like, oh, if at all possible, don't do that live.
Record it ahead of time so you can keep it
to ninety seconds and you don't bore all of your guests.
(25:14):
They're ready to give you money. You need to get
out of the way so they can do it. So
I love working with guys like you to just say, like, here,
do whatever you want to do. Just keep it to
ninety seconds, you know, and then we'll be fine. Yeah,
you know, and then we usually can work with that. Yes,
(25:34):
I'll tell you, you know, the minute and the minute.
If somebody gets up there and they start grambling for
ten minutes, it's like, I'm sorry, you've lost it. It's good,
it's over.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, you got a point about that ninety second window.
It's like you either you stay in it and use it,
use it as most effectively as possible, or you go
over it and it'say, people start falling off.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Yeah. So anyway, the wide world of fundraising events kind
of fun.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Huh yeah. So how about a couple of stories. What
are some of your favorite moments as you've done this
for twenty years.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
Well, my favorite moments always are the moments in the
event itself, and I'd love to go to events I
go to forty or fifty a year. The moment in
the event, usually right after the special appeal, when they
know they've raised a bunch of money and people are
still in the room. That's a moment of gargantuan happiness
(26:42):
and hope and joy. And you know, a moment that
you can be in where everybody is feeling optimistic and
hopeful and joyful about what they've just accomplished is a
great thing.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Now.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
I've also had some funny moments when things go sideways.
Here's a fun one. I told you that these are
all about different ways to make money. One of the
ways you could One of the elements you could incorporate
into an event are games. And there's a particular game
you can play with all of your guests. It's very popular.
It's called Heads or Tails. It's a very simple game.
(27:18):
You sell opportunities to play the game. You sell them
like you know, tickets or whatever. Usually they're going to
be doing Marty Graw beats. So one opportunity to play
the game is one set of Marty Graw beats, and
you pay like five bucks for it or ten bucks whatever,
and you can buy multiple I'll go put a pin
in that, and then what happens in order to play
the game, the auctioneer stands up on stage and flips
(27:39):
a coin, and ahead of time, you have to commit
before he flips a coin, you have to either put
your hand on your head or your hand on your tail.
Don't put your hand on anybody else's tail. That's not allowed.
And then he flips a coin and whoever's hands are
in the appropriate place gets to stay in the game. Now,
if you guess tails and it came up heads, and
you had bought, say three sets of beads, you could
(28:01):
just take off set of beads and you could keep playing.
You know, it's like Cats and nine Lives, right, you
lost one live, but you can keep playing. This can
get problematic. I went to an auction where they did
not restrict the sale of beads to guests, and one
woman figured out the game. All she needed to do
(28:24):
was buy one hundred sets of beads and then she
would just outlast everybody and she would get the prize.
And this is you know, this is something that everybody's
kind of laughing about, this crazy woman wearing a hundred
sets of beads until it started and everybody figured out
that she was there to just basically eat their lunch.
And during the middle of this playing this game, people
(28:46):
start rioting. People are like booing this woman, and you know,
demanding that something be done, and that was kind of
a mistake. So if you're going to play Heads of Tails,
you know, limit the number of beads you sell per
person limited to three.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
So there's there's funny moments like that that happen all
over the place every time. One of the great uh,
one of the great stories I love to tell. We're
down here in Portland, Oregon, as I told you before
we started recording, and there was a period of about
two years here where you could not go to a
school fundraising auction without finding that some local provisioner, some
(29:23):
local doctor had donated a vasectomy to the live auction,
the live auctions where you're selling it in real time
with an auctioneer, et cetera. And you know, yeah, well
like a vasectomy, like okay, hey, And it was really
funny is that women did like crazy and the men
just kind of cringe, and you know, see they would
they would hold up a can of frozen peas or
(29:45):
a bag of frozen peas and sell the vasectomy there.
That was always kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
That's pretty.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it's like and they say that we do crazy
stuff up here. In Canada. Wow, but that is a
very needed service, you.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
Know, yeah, thank you. We figure we're you know, we
figure we're doing a good job down here, and our
customers do tend to like us. And so you know,
if the people that you are engaged with here are
involved with anything like that, i'd love to talk to him.
You'll put my contact information down below, right.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, i'd like your heads or tail thing because we
have a pier what's called the fifty to fifty and
it's a great way to tag onto that fifty to fifty. Yeah, now,
fifty to fifty ravels.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Let's explain them, because there they are great. The idea
behind a fifty to fifty ravel is its spontaneous. You
bring a bag and you pass the bag around the
room and you say, folks, you know, we're gonna have
a raffle and we're gonna raffle off whatever's in the
bag here. So go into your wallet, tossing five bucks,
ten bucks, fifty bucks, whatever, you got, some raffle tickets,
you know, maybe a powerball ticket, whatever we got, toss
(31:06):
it in the bag and then we don't count. We
don't count at all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
We just seal up the bag.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
And we hold the bag up and we have a
live auction, and we auction off the bag, and when
we do, we toss everything that's in the bag, plus
half of what was raised in the auction to the bidder,
and the remaining amount goes to the charity there. It's
an amazing way to do. You can do it with
the bag. You can do it without the bag. I
(31:32):
like it with the bag, and a fifty to fifty
raffle can be great. You can spontaneously put them together.
This is partly great because raffle prizes. I don't know
if you've ever actually put together a raffle. Raffle prizes
are a pain in the neck.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
You know.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
It's very, very hard to get something that's got enough
universal appeal for everybody and still be really sexy. Right
he wants to do so here's another tip from my
personal auction history. When I think this was a middle
school auction when my kid was in I don't know,
I say seventh grade or something, and I'm chairing the
(32:12):
auction for the middle school that year, and I got
a bunch of gift cards donated from random local businesses.
And these are the random local businesses that always donate
a gift card, you know, there's always like some roadside
attraction or some you know, fun market or some whatever.
Oftentimes you don't ever wind up selling these gift cards
(32:35):
for face value. They just don't go. They like there's
maybe one or two bitters on them, and they get
them for cheap. What I did with them is I
took all of these cards that were like thirty of them,
I stuffed them into a brown paper envelope. I called
it the Summer of Fun, and I made that my
Raffle Prize. It's kind of like a fifty to fifty raffle,
just a bunch of stuff dumped into the envelope and
(32:56):
nobody knows what it's worth. And I say, you could
win this. It's a ten dollars Raffle ticket. And then
all I needed I had put that in eight hundred
dollars worth of gift certificates. All I needed to do
was sell eighty Raffle tickets and I got full value
for all of those donated gift cards.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That were bad, you know, yeah, not too bad.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
It's a decent way to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So so the gift card salad.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Gift card salad, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
People they h oh, I was just at an event,
community event over the weekend, and you know, they collected
everybody's everybody's name, and they threw them all in the
bucket and they started pulling them out and started giving
away gift cards, and you be surprised at the amount
(33:49):
of competitiveness. Is like, oh, they got an Amazon one though,
oh they got this company to that company. And then
it's like there's some other like uh should we say
lesser stores and people, oh, well, more niche. You know,
even when my own wife won, she's like she was like, oh,
(34:10):
I didn't want that gift card. I want it. When
something it's like it's like, well, at least we got
a gift card, is my ass? Yeah, you know, I
can find a way to make that's an.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
Excellent That is an excellent way to deal with it.
There are a couple of other methods that are very similar.
I've seen one that works with an auctioneer. The auctioneer
will take the like five gift cards up onto the
stage at the podium and he'll do this, He'll put
his hand in front of his eyes and he'll say, folks,
the first I've got got a big get gift card
(34:44):
here for Applebee's for fifty dollars and the first bid
number I see when I open my eyes gets it
for fifty dollars, number three twelve. Hey, you just want
to give card, you know, That's another way to do it.
There are pickboards where you basically put everything into an
envelope and you just write the number on the outside.
(35:05):
Maybe you want to write the store on the outside,
but maybe you don't. Maybe you want to make it
like a you know, gave a chance, and these are
these are great ways to deal with some of the uh,
some of the gift cards that have more of a
niche appeal.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah. So basically what I'm hearing is is we have
to make the gala and the fundraising itself of some sort,
put some spin on it. It's fun and people just
want to join in.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
That's the whole rationale behind event based fundraising. Outside of events,
most of the time, what you're just what you're doing
when you're raising money. As you're asking people for money.
You know, I'm coming to you and I'm saying, would
you would you support our organization? Would you write me
a check for five thousand dollars? Would you put me
in your will, et cetera. And events aren't that. I mean,
(36:01):
there's some element of that, But events have got a
different thing here, which is that we're going to make
this fun. We're gonna make this the most fun you
can have while being asked for money. We want you
to relax. We want to commune with our supporters. Now. Obviously,
with something like a school or a church, you're already
communing with those people all the time anyway. But with
(36:23):
other sort of local charities, like say a humane society
or something, you know, people get to get together with
like minded individuals who all support a similar cause. They're
gonna have a good time doing it, and we're gonna
have a good time extracting money from their wallet. We're
gonna make it fun. We're gonna make it so they
don't even hear the vacuum cleaner just taking the money
(36:44):
out of their wallet.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
You know, exactly right. I like how you said extract, extract.
Speaker 6 (36:51):
Yeah, no, I'm a I am an unrepentant fundraiser, you know.
I'm all about let's ask for the money when we
need the money and we have a good case to make,
you know, let's ask for the money. So the reason
guests are there. I like to never sugarcoat it. I
do not like to tell my guests that they are
coming to an event or or you know, I don't
(37:12):
like to downplay the fundraising and say, we're coming to
a fundraising event. You know, this is going to be
your way to help support our school, our church, our
you know, community center. I love working with all of
the community centers that we work with. There's one down
in Seattle, the Ethiopian Community Center. It's absolutely the center
(37:33):
of the Ethiopian community there. It's a real serious resource
for that community. They've been they've been around for a
long time, and they've been a customer mine for fifteen years,
and I couldn't be happier about having them as a customer.
I just feel like this is good work we do, right,
but it is work that is that I think has
to be funded at the community level in addition to
(37:57):
whatever we can get elsewhere.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, So, because you're starting to run out.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Of time here, Oh sure, that's been fun.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
You know, I was gonna say it, it seems like
you're you're you're earning uh your angel wings, uh, one
charity at a time.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
I mean, I don't say that in public, but late
at night, I I sometimes pat myself on the back
a little bit. It's like, you know, I used to well,
you know, we all used to do things that we
didn't like doing. You know that that's part of the
working life. You get a job sometimes you don't like
I love my courage job, I love what I get
to do. I love my customers. So that's me and
(38:45):
nutshell kind of more.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I always try to toss in a one personal uh
curveball of of of a question, sure, did you work
in this charitable space? Is like what what would you
like to see? Though the absolute end result be for
these charities in the in their communities around them.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
So the charitable community is at a grassroots level, the
local communities. What I really hope for them is that
I hope that they continue to find a way to
keep their donors engaged, stay optimistic on it, and allow
(39:36):
them to give you the feedback you need from the
community as to how you're doing. You know. I want
these organizations to thrive. I want them to be successful
in their fundraising, whether they do it with events or not,
whether they use me to help them or not. I
(39:57):
want them to be successful. In their fundraising, and I
want them to continue to tackle the problems that don't
get the attention of the rest of the world. You know,
this is why I do what I do, because there's
somebody out there and I have never even heard. I
(40:17):
had never even heard of the disease too worse sclerosis
before I started working with a charity that's out there
trying to defeat it. It's a very rare disease. Thank
god they're out there. You know, it's not sexy enough
of a disease to attract the attention of the big
pharma companies. So you know, thank god they're out there,
and I want them to continue doing this kind of work.
(40:40):
And so I want their communities to step up and
continue to support them full throatedly and put the wind
under their wings that they need to have in order
to do the important work they do. How's that for
an answer.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
That's a great answer. The best way is to get
a hold of you and work with you.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Yeah, my website is simply school Auction dot net. No,
it's not a dot com, it's a dot net and
it's singular. It's auction auctions and you can go there
and you can learn about our software. My email address
is Roger R O G E R at school Auction
dot net. People can reach out to me anytime they
want to happy to talk auctions and we can get
(41:24):
their organizations going raising money.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Awesome, Roger, thanks for joining us today. It's been uh,
it's been fun actually, and hopefully we've both to get
to raise a lot of money for our favorite charities.
Speaker 6 (41:39):
So exactly. Yeah, all right, thank you so much for
the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
All right, and thank you everybody for listening today. And
go to school auction dot net and meet with Roger.
If you're working with the charity.
Speaker 6 (41:57):
Thanks help us to recording. Stop to cool.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The bad.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
So I didn't know, so I wis you from action?
Speaker 4 (42:32):
So what.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
S this?
Speaker 3 (42:41):
He says?
Speaker 2 (42:44):
A reason.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
Backs you can't dress wait, so.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
See she got to stop.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
I know.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
The show has been produced by Depictions Media. Please contact
us at depictions dot Media for more information.
Thank you for listening to the picture of the radiant.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Rat.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
You readything to me?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Oh well, well.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Say, oh well.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Not a bad stop alone, I see.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
So splash, So.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Along is it?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
An Hey everybody, While you're gathering up that last cup
of coffee and get in your seats and getting comfortable,
ready to listen, let's listen to a little bit about
Roger Devine as he has led a life based on service, community, communication, education,
(01:58):
and entrepreneurship. As the co founder of school auction dot Net,
he has spent the last twenty years assisting and advising
local and national nonprofit organizations and charities on how to
grow their programs and ensure financial stability through fundraising events
(02:21):
such as gala's auctions, golf tournaments, and trivia nights. We
all love a Trivia Night. Through his time at school
auction dot Net, Roger has advocated for organizations to make
their events equitable, accessible to supporters outside of the traditional
(02:45):
top tier donors as a way of building a broader
base of supporters. This attitude was born from the company's
decision to focus on its marketing outreach to schools and
ptas from experiences during the two thousand and eight recession,
(03:07):
when many fundraising officers became weary of whether they fundraising
events could work in a time of economic uncertainty.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
The school auction on net starts when I am working
in the tech industry and I get laid off here
in Portland, and around the same time, I had accepted
the position that nobody else wanted to be the PTA
president at my kid's school. And I've had a long
career in the software industry and during this time where
(04:11):
I was helping out the PTA where I was PTA president,
we needed to put on a fundraising event, and as
a software guy, I started thinking about, Okay, is there
software that can help us with this? And the answer
was that yes, there is. But it really was the
business models of everybody that was presenting it were really
(04:34):
bad for schools. You know. They were fine for the
higher end charities. We're talking about United Way, you know,
American Cancer Society, Red Cross, those kinds of things. You know,
there's a lot of companies that are vying for their business.
There are a lot of companies that will design their
software to get that end of the market. There really
wasn't anybody focused down on the school's end of the market.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And.
Speaker 6 (04:59):
So we start one. I started one with three or
four other guys in town, and we were all kind
of looking around for something to do professionally, and we
had my business partners, their wives were staffing their upcoming
fundraising auction. I had to do. I was pta president
my kids' school. We got together and we built it
(05:19):
for us. That's what we did. We built it for ourselves.
And then afterwards it was like, well, you know, there's
other schools out there. Let's see we can sell these
to other schools, and so we have. We've made quite
a business for the last twenty years of selling fundraising
software to very grassroots oriented charities. I mentioned schools you
(05:44):
know down here in the States, and it's the same
up where you are in Canada. At a given school,
there will be a parent group that wants that's concerned
about how things are going at the school and may
want to improve things at the school, may want to
buy some computers for the lab or something like that.
They will get together and hold these fundraising events every year,
and we've made a We've had a lot of fun
(06:06):
working with all of them to do those kinds of
grassroots fundraising events. Yeah, a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, I personally I enjoy working with the grassroots organizations.
Is like it's it's you see the instant result, right.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
It's great karma. I get to tell everybody you know,
I may not be doing a lot of good directly,
but I am helping people do a tremendous amount of
good in this world and I expect to get into
heaven as a result.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
He man. Yeah, so it's so you you help them
to use the software to develop auctions or how does
that actually work?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Yeah, so there's a there's a format for fundraising events
that kind of Coaliest maybe forty years ago for the
idea of a fundraising gala. And at a fundraising gala,
I like to describe these things as they're just like
a department store, only they're only open for six hours
a year. It's a party. It happens at a ballroom.
(07:17):
And when guests come to this party, they do so
knowing that they're going to be expected to donate money.
They are going to be asked for money. And now
the question is how do we ask them for money
in ways that are fun, that are that are going
to inspire them, that are going to move them to
do so. And part of what coalesced in this idea
(07:40):
behind the fundraising gala is that you could put together
various types of fundraising ideas all in the same place.
So if you've attended any of these events in the past,
the most common thing to find at them as a
fundraising vehicle is a silent auction, a bunch of items
sitting out on a table, bunch of bid sheets sitting
out table. People bid asynchronously. The items are donated, so
(08:04):
everything that the guest pays word goes to support the organization.
There's live auctions, there's raffles, there's special appeals, there's a
variety of other things, and the fundraising gall is a
place where an organization will pick those types of elements
that they want to combine together into an evening that
will appeal to their donor base, so that everybody can
(08:26):
come together, have a good time, have some fun, reinforce
each other's willingness to be good citizens, reinforce each other's
commitment to philanthropy, and help raise money to support an organization.
They're fun when done well, they can be expensive to
(08:47):
put on, and so many professional fundraising organizations tend to
not like them for that reason. But that's only because
they're doing them at the American Cancer Society kind of level. There.
They're putting on the kind of galls as you might
see on a TV show. You know, we do see
those every once in a while. I think the current
season of Wednesday on Netflix has has Wednesday's mother chairing
(09:09):
the gala at nevermore. So if you want to watch that,
you'll you'll find the idea there. So these do appear
in public, in the public consciousness, but schools know how
to put them on in a really cost effective way.
You don't have to do black tie, you don't have
to you know, hold it at the most fancy hotel
in town, et cetera. And they've turned this into a
(09:31):
really durable, reliable fundraising method for these grassroots fundraising organizations,
the kind that not can't necessarily afford to hire the
best fundraising talent and are going to be doing things
with volunteers, are going to be doing things with you know,
(09:53):
committed people in the organization that are you know, a
little further down the food chain, a little further down
the org chart. And they're amazing. And the reason that
I'm out talking about these again this year is well,
a I have a company, you know, I soil Software,
But also because I think events need to come back
in a little bit better or a little bit bigger way,
(10:14):
especially down here in the United States. This year, nonprofit
fundraising has been turned upside down. I'm sure there are
cross border effects here, but it all sort of starts
at the beginning, and our government has decided to put
under review and cancel a phenomenal amount of federal fundraising
(10:35):
grants that are given to a lot of these organizations.
If they're not going to get those, they need to
do something else to make up the gap. Private foundations
can only do so much, so you know, you got
to turn to other fundraising efforts there. So part of
what I'm doing is try and create some awareness around
our company, but also I want to create awareness around
(10:55):
the idea that you can step in and these things
can be cost effective successful fundraisers for organizations that may
not have anything else going on in the way of fundraising.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well, yeah, I was gonna say that that with the
with the way the terror for shall we say, uh
sure going on because we're speaking in twenty twenty five,
uh that the current United States president with him starting
(11:32):
this terwer wars and turning off fundraising and everything for
different things. And I was gonna say for some industries
that are across border industries, which some charities include that
that oh, now, what do we do for money?
Speaker 6 (11:51):
You know? And any organization that has relied on the
United States government for federal grants has been worried this year.
They've all been a little insecure about where their fundraising
is going to come from, you know, and it cascades down.
There are other there are other entities in the fundraising world.
(12:11):
There are private foundations, you know, run by philanthropic individuals.
They're under a lot of pressure right now because they're
being asked to pick up some of the slack here.
And then you go down the line with other other
things you're doing. You know, if you've got a development
department that can, like I say, if you can find
old people with fat wallets and get them to leave
(12:33):
you in their will, then do that. That's a good
thing to do. That works really well. But if you
don't have all of those old people with fat wallets,
you're going to need to rely on your grassroots supporters.
You're going to need to let the community come together
and tell you that you are important and that you
are needed in the community, and fundraising events are you know,
(12:55):
the way to get that commitment out of your supporter
by your local supporter base.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Because we're in two different cities and also across the
US border from each other. Also, I can tell you
the tale of two hospice organizations and one one foundation
has managed to find that person with the fat wallet
who left them the endowment and uh, and they have
(13:24):
what's called charitable trust. Ye don't ask me how to
set one up. Don't ask me. Oh, you know, I
got I just volunteer at the place, right And the
other one has not did not get that doesn't have
that endowment. And the one that doesn't have is really
struggling to with fundraising and budgets and uh and very
(13:48):
interesting board meetings over how to run the organization off
of off of a budget.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
You know. And well there's you know, there's a there's
a trenremendous amount of for profit and nonprofit organizations who
are navigating twenty twenty five with a lot more uncertainty
than they used to. Many of us find this in
our professional lives. That our professional lives, you know, we're
(14:18):
playing by different rules, there's different different things going on
out there. My my point today is that that does
not and it seems like you know, you're you're reinforcing
this here that does not exclude charities, That does not
exclude the organizations that we're relying on to fill in
gaps across the country, across our communities. You know, certain
(14:44):
gaps really only get filled by people who are doing
it out of you know, extra uh motivations, outside of money,
extra profitable, you know, outside of profit. And we need that,
we need that in our communities, and so we need
to try to keep as many of these little grassroots
organizations alive during this time period as we can. Unfortunately,
(15:10):
you know a lot of them are just muddling through.
Many nonprofit organizations are not terribly well funded. So you know,
we're trying to get the worry out here that we've
got effective tools for putting on effective fundraisers, getting them going,
getting your community involved, getting them to reinforce that you
at your organization is needed and should exist. There's a
(15:33):
lot of nonprofits, a lot of charities that are having
to confront the question of whether they are redundant or
whether they are unnecessary, and you know, it's at times
like this that you turn to your community for feedback.
You turn to your community and you say, you know
who's supporting us? You know, are we do? We do?
We have a thing here, And I think you want
(15:57):
more than just your volunteers hands in the air and
they're cheap. You want them to support you with whatever
they can in terms of money as well keep the
organization running.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, that's true. At least we do this. Do you
have a message for those charities that may think that
they're redundant to the very big charity, but but maybe
their work is more needed because that bigger charity doesn't
have the ground reach that the smaller one has.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
That's why the smaller ones exist. That's why we love
working with the smaller ones because they fill in, you know,
they fill in the littler gaps that the big guys
don't bother with, right, you know, they're in here, they're
they're taking care of things really in the community, which
is why I think you got to turn back to
the community in this point and you've got to say
to the community. You know, you got to go to
(16:50):
your community and your supporters and say time's tough. You know,
we're scaling, We're in unprecedented times with regards to funding.
We're going to turn back to something that we you know,
left behind us a while ago. We're going to turn
back to a community fundraising event because we need you
guys to vote with your dollars, you know, vote with
(17:12):
your dollars to keep us in place here. And I
would say that there are a lot of redundant charities.
Most oftentimes they can justify their existence by covering micro communities,
you know, et cetera. But this is a time when
a lot of them are going to have to reassess
and see what's going on there and if they if
(17:35):
they have to move on at this point, well that's
the historical moment we're in. But you know, I would
like to offer them the bit of a lifeline ahead
of time, to say, hey, let's see if we can
go to the people who are most benefiting from your
existence and their community, and let's see if it's a
valuable to them. You know, it very well may be
(17:55):
that we need to pause our work for a little while,
but you know, let's not do that without giving everybody
a chance to support us one most time.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's my experience that no matter how small
the work is, it hurts when it disappears.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
It hurts when it disappears, always so. But you know,
there is a question, and it applies in the for
profit world at companies that are trying to decide on
what projects they want to underwrite and develop, what kind
of products they want to take to market, et cetera.
And it happens at charities too. You know, sooner or
later you're going to be doing something and the market
(18:32):
for your service becomes unattractive to provide, or it becomes
diminished in need, and these things happen, and there's times
where you have to reassess. I just don't want groups
to have to reassess because the federal government told them
they had to reassess. I'd like for them to keep
going as long as they possibly can.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Do.
Speaker 6 (18:54):
Not go gentle into this good night, Go back in
out into your community and do what you need to
do in order to stay stay afloat.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I agree with you one hundred percent there that it
shouldn't be the government, it should be the community at large.
Speaker 6 (19:13):
Yes, absolutely, this is us. This is this is what
grassroots movements are all about.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, So, so how does this, How does this actually work?
How do you get start to get the ball rolling
so they get the funds in?
Speaker 6 (19:30):
And yeah, it's a it's an interesting kind of thing
because this concept of the fundraising gala, the fundraising event,
the fundraising auction, whatever it is you want to call it,
is at heart a simple concept. At heart, you're going
to have several moments during the evening where you're going
to ask people for money. You're gonna have different mechanisms
(19:51):
for doing so. Maybe you're going to do a silent auction.
That's very common. What do you got to do to
get a silent auction? Well, you got to go out
and get donated items. But then you also have to
merchandise those items. You have to price those items, you
have to keep track of them, and you have to
provide a way for people to purchase them. In other words,
a fundingsing auction needs an IT infrastructure. It needs a
(20:13):
platform underneath it that is similar to the platforms that
are running your local department store. You know, we've got
inventory management, we've got payment processing, we've got all of
this kind of stuff. That's the product that I sell
to charities. It's not all that I do for them.
We also give them a tremendous amount of advice and
education on ways to successfully implement each of these tactics,
(20:37):
but that's kind of like free consulting we give along
the way. Mostly we're giving them the platform that they're
going to use to do their inventory management, do their
bidding management, do their payment processing, do their ticket sales,
do their guest management, so that on the night of
the event, you've got a three and a half to
four hour event that runs very smoothly. The organization is
(21:00):
set up and ready for people to show up, and
it processes them through the evening, presents the fundraising opportunities
in an elegant and fun way, gets people to participate,
and then collects payment on everything they do. It's an
episodic thing. It's a thing that happens on a night, right,
and so there's stuff to be planned. You got to
(21:23):
have a place to do this, You've got to have
the infrastructure underneath you. We tend to like to start
working with groups maybe three four months before their event.
There's a lot of work to do to get ready
for them, and then we'll be coaching them on how
to conduct the event in the time leading up to it,
and then we hold their hand through the event. These
(21:44):
types of events have evolved over the years. There's different formats,
there's new ideas inherent in them. You may remember a
few years back, we had a pandemic that did a
real number on our industry. We were talking about live events.
The pandemic did a real number on our industry. But
what we did was we developed a tool to allow
(22:05):
people to hold these types of events virtually, kind of
a specialized zoom where there was also bidding, you know,
and it was it was a lot of fun. But
you know, we do it. We do adapt as the
market continues to adapt h and the ideas continue to evolve.
As a fundraising tool, you know, we get to sit
(22:26):
on the sidelines and watch as people try all sorts
of experiments and do all sorts of amazing things, and
we get to see what works and what doesn't work,
and then we get to emulgate that out through the
rest of the industry. So you know, that's kind of
our end of things.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, in a nutshell, Yeah, it still sounds like it's
a lot of work up front, but and then fun
on the night of in in a lot of benefit
later on it is.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
And you know, not everybody is. Not every everybody is
a charitable volunteer. You know, not everybody is going to
be the person who volunteers hours to the charity that
they support, just like not everybody is going to be
able to donate money. But divide up your supporter base,
find the six or seven people that are willing to
(23:17):
donate some hours, and you can put one of these
things on with no training whatsoever. Really it's mostly just
throwing a party.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
So, if there's anybody that's in that situation right now
where you know, maybe the school you're just started, maybe
somebody you know went to the first PTA meeting of
the year and they volunteered to chair an auction and
now they don't know what to do next. Happens happens
a lot. You know, people like put up their hand
and they're feeling all good about it until they get
home and then it's like, oh no, what did I do?
(23:49):
And then they call me and then we get them,
we get them going.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah. So yeah, I've been to a few of those
situations where it's like, uh, you know, to be totally
honest with you, our role is usually where where the
team that shows up to record the night, to document
and then use that documentation for the next.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Year exactly now you're you're putting together you know, it's
it's really critical to have video at one of these
events if you absolutely can. And I'll tell you why.
There's a moment in the in these fundraising events, a
very effective moment of fundraising. It's called a special appeal.
It's a particular mechanism that gets employed in the middle
(24:33):
of in the middle of many fundraising gallas, and it's
usually worth about fifty percent of what they raise. So
it's an important moment. It's a moment that the organization's
management has been thinking about for months. This is an
important moment. It's gonna be about half the fundraising at
the event. You know, we got to get this right.
(24:53):
We got to get this right. We gotta get this right.
The generally, the executive directors of those organizations want to
make a they want to inspire everybody, and we tell
everybody like, oh, if at all possible, don't do that live.
Record it ahead of time so you can keep it
to ninety seconds and you don't bore all of your guests.
(25:14):
They're ready to give you money. You need to get
out of the way so they can do it. So
I love working with guys like you to just say, like, here,
do whatever you want to do. Just keep it to
ninety seconds, you know, and then we'll be fine. Yeah,
you know, and then we usually can work with that. Yes,
(25:34):
I'll tell you, you know, the minute and the minute.
If somebody gets up there and they start grambling for
ten minutes, it's like, I'm sorry, you've lost it. It's good,
it's over.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, you got a point about that ninety second window.
It's like you either you stay in it and use it,
use it as most effectively as possible, or you go
over it and it'say, people start falling off.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Yeah. So anyway, the wide world of fundraising events kind
of fun.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Huh yeah. So how about a couple of stories. What
are some of your favorite moments as you've done this
for twenty years.
Speaker 6 (26:18):
Well, my favorite moments always are the moments in the
event itself, and I'd love to go to events I
go to forty or fifty a year. The moment in
the event, usually right after the special appeal, when they
know they've raised a bunch of money and people are
still in the room. That's a moment of gargantuan happiness
(26:42):
and hope and joy. And you know, a moment that
you can be in where everybody is feeling optimistic and
hopeful and joyful about what they've just accomplished is a
great thing.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Now.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
I've also had some funny moments when things go sideways.
Here's a fun one. I told you that these are
all about different ways to make money. One of the
ways you could One of the elements you could incorporate
into an event are games. And there's a particular game
you can play with all of your guests. It's very popular.
It's called Heads or Tails. It's a very simple game.
(27:18):
You sell opportunities to play the game. You sell them
like you know, tickets or whatever. Usually they're going to
be doing Marty Graw beats. So one opportunity to play
the game is one set of Marty Graw beats, and
you pay like five bucks for it or ten bucks whatever,
and you can buy multiple I'll go put a pin
in that, and then what happens in order to play
the game, the auctioneer stands up on stage and flips
(27:39):
a coin, and ahead of time, you have to commit
before he flips a coin, you have to either put
your hand on your head or your hand on your tail.
Don't put your hand on anybody else's tail. That's not allowed.
And then he flips a coin and whoever's hands are
in the appropriate place gets to stay in the game. Now,
if you guess tails and it came up heads, and
you had bought, say three sets of beads, you could
(28:01):
just take off set of beads and you could keep playing.
You know, it's like Cats and nine Lives, right, you
lost one live, but you can keep playing. This can
get problematic. I went to an auction where they did
not restrict the sale of beads to guests, and one
woman figured out the game. All she needed to do
(28:24):
was buy one hundred sets of beads and then she
would just outlast everybody and she would get the prize.
And this is you know, this is something that everybody's
kind of laughing about, this crazy woman wearing a hundred
sets of beads until it started and everybody figured out
that she was there to just basically eat their lunch.
And during the middle of this playing this game, people
(28:46):
start rioting. People are like booing this woman, and you know,
demanding that something be done, and that was kind of
a mistake. So if you're going to play Heads of Tails,
you know, limit the number of beads you sell per
person limited to three.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
So there's there's funny moments like that that happen all
over the place every time. One of the great uh,
one of the great stories I love to tell. We're
down here in Portland, Oregon, as I told you before
we started recording, and there was a period of about
two years here where you could not go to a
school fundraising auction without finding that some local provisioner, some
(29:23):
local doctor had donated a vasectomy to the live auction,
the live auctions where you're selling it in real time
with an auctioneer, et cetera. And you know, yeah, well
like a vasectomy, like okay, hey, And it was really
funny is that women did like crazy and the men
just kind of cringe, and you know, see they would
they would hold up a can of frozen peas or
(29:45):
a bag of frozen peas and sell the vasectomy there.
That was always kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
That's pretty.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, it's like and they say that we do crazy
stuff up here. In Canada. Wow, but that is a
very needed service, you.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
Know, yeah, thank you. We figure we're you know, we
figure we're doing a good job down here, and our
customers do tend to like us. And so you know,
if the people that you are engaged with here are
involved with anything like that, i'd love to talk to him.
You'll put my contact information down below, right.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Well, i'd like your heads or tail thing because we
have a pier what's called the fifty to fifty and
it's a great way to tag onto that fifty to fifty. Yeah, now,
fifty to fifty ravels.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Let's explain them, because there they are great. The idea
behind a fifty to fifty ravel is its spontaneous. You
bring a bag and you pass the bag around the
room and you say, folks, you know, we're gonna have
a raffle and we're gonna raffle off whatever's in the
bag here. So go into your wallet, tossing five bucks,
ten bucks, fifty bucks, whatever, you got, some raffle tickets,
you know, maybe a powerball ticket, whatever we got, toss
(31:06):
it in the bag and then we don't count. We
don't count at all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
We just seal up the bag.
Speaker 6 (31:11):
And we hold the bag up and we have a
live auction, and we auction off the bag, and when
we do, we toss everything that's in the bag, plus
half of what was raised in the auction to the bidder,
and the remaining amount goes to the charity there. It's
an amazing way to do. You can do it with
the bag. You can do it without the bag. I
(31:32):
like it with the bag, and a fifty to fifty
raffle can be great. You can spontaneously put them together.
This is partly great because raffle prizes. I don't know
if you've ever actually put together a raffle. Raffle prizes
are a pain in the neck.
Speaker 5 (31:50):
You know.
Speaker 6 (31:50):
It's very, very hard to get something that's got enough
universal appeal for everybody and still be really sexy. Right
he wants to do so here's another tip from my
personal auction history. When I think this was a middle
school auction when my kid was in I don't know,
I say seventh grade or something, and I'm chairing the
(32:12):
auction for the middle school that year, and I got
a bunch of gift cards donated from random local businesses.
And these are the random local businesses that always donate
a gift card, you know, there's always like some roadside
attraction or some you know, fun market or some whatever.
Oftentimes you don't ever wind up selling these gift cards
(32:35):
for face value. They just don't go. They like there's
maybe one or two bitters on them, and they get
them for cheap. What I did with them is I
took all of these cards that were like thirty of them,
I stuffed them into a brown paper envelope. I called
it the Summer of Fun, and I made that my
Raffle Prize. It's kind of like a fifty to fifty raffle,
just a bunch of stuff dumped into the envelope and
(32:56):
nobody knows what it's worth. And I say, you could
win this. It's a ten dollars Raffle ticket. And then
all I needed I had put that in eight hundred
dollars worth of gift certificates. All I needed to do
was sell eighty Raffle tickets and I got full value
for all of those donated gift cards.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That were bad, you know, yeah, not too bad.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
It's a decent way to do that.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So so the gift card salad.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
Gift card salad, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
People they h oh, I was just at an event,
community event over the weekend, and you know, they collected
everybody's everybody's name, and they threw them all in the
bucket and they started pulling them out and started giving
away gift cards, and you be surprised at the amount
(33:49):
of competitiveness. Is like, oh, they got an Amazon one though,
oh they got this company to that company. And then
it's like there's some other like uh should we say
lesser stores and people, oh, well, more niche. You know,
even when my own wife won, she's like she was like, oh,
(34:10):
I didn't want that gift card. I want it. When
something it's like it's like, well, at least we got
a gift card, is my ass? Yeah, you know, I
can find a way to make that's an.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
Excellent That is an excellent way to deal with it.
There are a couple of other methods that are very similar.
I've seen one that works with an auctioneer. The auctioneer
will take the like five gift cards up onto the
stage at the podium and he'll do this, He'll put
his hand in front of his eyes and he'll say, folks,
the first I've got got a big get gift card
(34:44):
here for Applebee's for fifty dollars and the first bid
number I see when I open my eyes gets it
for fifty dollars, number three twelve. Hey, you just want
to give card, you know, That's another way to do it.
There are pickboards where you basically put everything into an
envelope and you just write the number on the outside.
(35:05):
Maybe you want to write the store on the outside,
but maybe you don't. Maybe you want to make it
like a you know, gave a chance, and these are
these are great ways to deal with some of the uh,
some of the gift cards that have more of a
niche appeal.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah. So basically what I'm hearing is is we have
to make the gala and the fundraising itself of some sort,
put some spin on it. It's fun and people just
want to join in.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
That's the whole rationale behind event based fundraising. Outside of events,
most of the time, what you're just what you're doing
when you're raising money. As you're asking people for money.
You know, I'm coming to you and I'm saying, would
you would you support our organization? Would you write me
a check for five thousand dollars? Would you put me
in your will, et cetera. And events aren't that. I mean,
(36:01):
there's some element of that, But events have got a
different thing here, which is that we're going to make
this fun. We're gonna make this the most fun you
can have while being asked for money. We want you
to relax. We want to commune with our supporters. Now. Obviously,
with something like a school or a church, you're already
communing with those people all the time anyway. But with
(36:23):
other sort of local charities, like say a humane society
or something, you know, people get to get together with
like minded individuals who all support a similar cause. They're
gonna have a good time doing it, and we're gonna
have a good time extracting money from their wallet. We're
gonna make it fun. We're gonna make it so they
don't even hear the vacuum cleaner just taking the money
(36:44):
out of their wallet.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
You know, exactly right. I like how you said extract, extract.
Speaker 6 (36:51):
Yeah, no, I'm a I am an unrepentant fundraiser, you know.
I'm all about let's ask for the money when we
need the money and we have a good case to make,
you know, let's ask for the money. So the reason
guests are there. I like to never sugarcoat it. I
do not like to tell my guests that they are
coming to an event or or you know, I don't
(37:12):
like to downplay the fundraising and say, we're coming to
a fundraising event. You know, this is going to be
your way to help support our school, our church, our
you know, community center. I love working with all of
the community centers that we work with. There's one down
in Seattle, the Ethiopian Community Center. It's absolutely the center
(37:33):
of the Ethiopian community there. It's a real serious resource
for that community. They've been they've been around for a
long time, and they've been a customer mine for fifteen years,
and I couldn't be happier about having them as a customer.
I just feel like this is good work we do, right,
but it is work that is that I think has
to be funded at the community level in addition to
(37:57):
whatever we can get elsewhere.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, So, because you're starting to run out.
Speaker 6 (38:06):
Of time here, Oh sure, that's been fun.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
You know, I was gonna say it, it seems like
you're you're you're earning uh your angel wings, uh, one
charity at a time.
Speaker 6 (38:20):
I mean, I don't say that in public, but late
at night, I I sometimes pat myself on the back
a little bit. It's like, you know, I used to well,
you know, we all used to do things that we
didn't like doing. You know that that's part of the
working life. You get a job sometimes you don't like
I love my courage job, I love what I get
to do. I love my customers. So that's me and
(38:45):
nutshell kind of more.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I always try to toss in a one personal uh
curveball of of of a question, sure, did you work
in this charitable space? Is like what what would you
like to see? Though the absolute end result be for
these charities in the in their communities around them.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
So the charitable community is at a grassroots level, the
local communities. What I really hope for them is that
I hope that they continue to find a way to
keep their donors engaged, stay optimistic on it, and allow
(39:36):
them to give you the feedback you need from the
community as to how you're doing. You know. I want
these organizations to thrive. I want them to be successful
in their fundraising, whether they do it with events or not,
whether they use me to help them or not. I
(39:57):
want them to be successful. In their fundraising, and I
want them to continue to tackle the problems that don't
get the attention of the rest of the world. You know,
this is why I do what I do, because there's
somebody out there and I have never even heard. I
(40:17):
had never even heard of the disease too worse sclerosis
before I started working with a charity that's out there
trying to defeat it. It's a very rare disease. Thank
god they're out there. You know, it's not sexy enough
of a disease to attract the attention of the big
pharma companies. So you know, thank god they're out there,
and I want them to continue doing this kind of work.
(40:40):
And so I want their communities to step up and
continue to support them full throatedly and put the wind
under their wings that they need to have in order
to do the important work they do. How's that for
an answer.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
That's a great answer. The best way is to get
a hold of you and work with you.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Yeah, my website is simply school Auction dot net. No,
it's not a dot com, it's a dot net and
it's singular. It's auction auctions and you can go there
and you can learn about our software. My email address
is Roger R O G E R at school Auction
dot net. People can reach out to me anytime they
want to happy to talk auctions and we can get
(41:24):
their organizations going raising money.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Awesome, Roger, thanks for joining us today. It's been uh,
it's been fun actually, and hopefully we've both to get
to raise a lot of money for our favorite charities.
Speaker 6 (41:39):
So exactly. Yeah, all right, thank you so much for
the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
All right, and thank you everybody for listening today. And
go to school auction dot net and meet with Roger.
If you're working with the charity.
Speaker 6 (41:57):
Thanks help us to recording. Stop to cool.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The bad.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
So I didn't know, so I wis you from action?
Speaker 4 (42:32):
So what.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
S this?
Speaker 3 (42:41):
He says?
Speaker 2 (42:44):
A reason.
Speaker 7 (42:53):
Backs you can't dress wait, so.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
See she got to stop.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
I know.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
The show has been produced by Depictions Media. Please contact
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