In the Auction Items area, you can create items for auctions, an event store, and fund-a-need donation items. Fund-a-need items allow guests to make a donation during your auction event to directly impact those your nonprofit serves.
Contents:
Getting Started
To create items for the auction, click Items in your form-level control panel.
Clicking Items opens the Manage Items menu.
To add an item, click the Add a New Item button at the top of the Manage Items menu.
To start, enter a Name and choose a Category for your item. You can choose from the default categories of Auction Items, Store Items, or Fund-a-Need items. If you created any additional categories, you'll see those as options, as well. In the Donated By field, enter the name or company of whomever donated the item. You'll also want to enter a Description of the item.
Fundraising Content Assistant
If you need help coming up with a Name and Description for your item, you can use the AI-powered Fundraising Content Assistant!
Please note: The Fundraising Content Assistant is a great starting point and should get you about 75% of the way there, but you'll want to fine-tune the results to your item's needs before sending.
Clicking Get Started with Our Fundraising Content Assistant above the item information area will open the content assistant modal.
First, use the drop-down to select the item's Category. The default category options will appear here, as well as any custom categories you've created.
Then, add a short description of the item.
Pro tip: For best results, include two or three details you would like included in the description. The more specific you are, the better the description and fair market value estimate will be!
Once you've added your category and description, click the Generate Content button.
After a few seconds, the Fundraising Content Assistant will generate a name, description, and fair market value for the item based on the details you provided.
Read through the content, and if you like what you see, click the checkbox to acknowledge the disclaimer and then click Copy to Item Information.
If the item description isn't quite right, you can generate new content by clicking Try Again. You can generate new content using the same prompt description or change your short description to tell the content assistant to go in a totally new direction.
Once you click the Copy to Item Information button, your AI-generated item name, description, and fair market value will be copied into the item's details so you can edit them before saving.
Please note: You should thoroughly read through the item information and edit as necessary before adding it to your auction. Take careful note of the proposed fair market value to ensure its accuracy.
To learn more about how the Fundraising Content Assistant works, check out this article.
Additional Item Information
Below the Item Information fields is the Number field, which is used to assign a lot number to the item.
To the right of that is where Tags are assigned. Tags help donors find items they’re interested in.
Click in the Select tags field to choose an existing tag if you’ve already set it up in the Tags area.
Click Add New Tag to create a new tag.
Please note: The new tag won’t be saved until you save the item. If you exit or refresh the item creation screen before saving, you’ll need to recreate the tag.
To learn more about setting up your tags, check out this article.
Below the Number field is a toggle to switch the item from Inactive to Active. Your item will not be available for bidding until you make it active.
Next, you'll configure the Item Pricing fields for your item. We've broken this out into item categories to show the differences.
Auction Items
The first field in auction Item Pricing is the Fair Market Value. The Fair Market Value is what the item would retail for if sold on the open market. This field serves several important purposes.
First, it allows organizations to determine the tax-deductible amount for an item. On receipts, the tax-deductible amount is the purchase price minus the fair market value.
Next, the Fair Market Value will determine the recommended amounts you see for the Starting Bid and Bid Increment fields.
To learn more about recommended amounts for starting bids and bid increments, check out this article.
Finally, the amount you enter here will display to bidders as the value of the item.
Please note: If you enter a value in the Custom Item Value Text field, that custom value will display to bidders instead of the Fair Market Value.
Next, you'll see the Starting Bid field. The starting bid is the price bidding must start at for that item, but bidders can set a bid amount higher than the starting bid.
If you entered a Fair Market Value above, you'll see a Recommended starting bid just above this field. Simply click the Set at button to apply the recommended amount.
The Bidding Increment field is next. The bidding increment determines the amount each successive bid must grow by to be valid.
If you entered a Fair Market Value above, you'll see a Recommended bidding increment just above this field. Simply click the Set at button to apply the recommended amount.
If you've set your auction's bidding style to Traditional Bids, you'll also see a toggle to allow a Custom Bidding Increment for the item. Toggling this on will hide the Bidding Increment field and allow bidders to enter their own bid amounts.
Please note: The starting bid and bidding increment amounts must be whole dollar amounts, and the bidding increment must be between $1 and $10,000.
An optional field for auction items is the “Buy Now” Price. This field sets a price that bidders can pay instead of trying to win the item at auction. Instead, the item is bought outright when the bid reaches that amount.
Below that field is the Reserve Price. This is the minimum the auction item must sell for in order to be sold. If bids don’t reach the reserve amount, the item is not sold to the highest bidder.
Please note: Your reserve price isn't displayed to bidders. If you'd like to share the reserve price publicly, you'll need to include it in the item's description.
If obtaining the item cost money for your organization, you can input the cost in the Procurement Cost field. The Procurement Cost will be subtracted from the winning bid amount for the item so you can see the net amount raised from the item’s sale in reports.
Finally, you can set an Custom Item Value Text by clicking the toggle shown below. What you enter in this field displays to bidders in the item's details. Custom item values can be a numerical value or a subjective word or short phrase, such as "Priceless." If left blank, the item's Fair Market Value will be displayed instead. If that field is also blank, no item value will display.
Once the required fields are completed, save the item. You'll then be taken to an area where you can assign an image to the item. Choose to either upload an image or assign the image an icon.
Please note: Maximum file size for images is 10MB. Supported file types are .jpg, .jpeg, and .png. For best results, item images should be uploaded as .png files with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
There are some default icons available to you.
To the right of the icon area is the item’s QR code. These are automatically generated. They can be printed out and placed by physical auction items so your guests can bid by scanning them using Givi.
To see what your item will look like to bidders before you make the item or category active, click Preview Item.
To print a sheet containing the item information and QR code, click Print Item Sheet.
A new tab will open in the browser with a printable version of the item sheet.
To finalize the creation of the item, select Save Item.
The new item will now appear in the main Items listing.
Store Items
Selecting the Store Items category when creating an item removes the auction-specific fields. Instead, store item-specific fields are added.
The first store-specific field is the Show This Item In drop-down menu. Choose whether the item is only available for purchase exclusively from the registration form, exclusively during the auction, or if the item can be bought both during registration and during the event.
The Item Pricing fields also change.
The starting bid amount is replaced by the Price field. This is the purchase price of the item. Unlike auction item bids, store items don't need to be whole dollar amounts.
Next is the Max Per Attendee field. This field can be set to Unlimited or assigned a number. Attendees cannot purchase more of the item than the limit you set here.
The Available Quantity field is where you can enter the amount of that item in your inventory. This amount can also be set to Unlimited.
If obtaining the item cost money for your organization, you can input the cost in the Procurement Cost field. The Procurement Cost will be subtracted from the sale price for the item so you can see the net amount raised from the item’s sale in reports.
Next, you can set an Custom Item Value Text by clicking the toggle shown below. This field displays the value of the item when bidders view the item's details. Custom item values can be a numerical value or a subjective word or short phrase, such as "Priceless." If left blank, no value is displayed.
Finally, you can set a Fair Market Value for the item. Fair Market Value is used to calculate the tax-deductible amount for an item in receipts and is displayed in reports. This value is not displayed in the auction publicly.
Once the item pricing is set, select Save Item to move to the Item Images Menu. Select an image or icon like previously described, print the item sheet (if desired), and save the item to add the store item to the main Items listing.
Fund-a-Need Items
The Fund-a-Need Items category also has unique fields. The first is the Goal Type drop-down menu. The default setting is no goal, but because these items are treated like a donation, a Monetary Goal or Quanity Goal can be set.
The Monetary Goal is a dollar amount set to be raised through the purchase of fund-a-need items. When this item is selected, the Monetary Goal field appears. Set the dollar amount the you'd like to reach from this fund-a-need item.
The Quantity Goal type is a goal to sell a set number of fund-a-need items. When this option is selected the Quantity Goal field appears in Item Pricing. Set a number of fund-a-need purchases you'd like to reach.
Lastly, set the Contribution amount of the fund-a-need item. This is the amount bidders will pay to donate to your fund-a-need campaign. Note that the fund-a-need item contribution does not need to be a whole dollar amount.
Finally, if obtaining the item cost money for your organization, you can input the cost in the Procurement Cost field. The Procurement Cost will be subtracted from the contribution amount for the item so you can see the net amount raised from contributions in reports.
Click Save Item when you're finished. Like the other items, set an image or icon, print the item sheet, and save to add the item to the main Items listing.
Pro tip: To create private items that can only be viewed in the Virtual Terminal, you can create a Category and mark it private. You can read more about creating item categories here.
Manage Items Table
When you've added your items, they will appear in a table on the main Manage Items page.
In this table, you can toggle each item's status on and off, print item and bid sheets, and Clone, Edit, and Delete items.
Bid sheets display the bidder names, bidder numbers, and bidding amounts per each bid received on an item.
Please note: The winning bidder will always display as the first entry on the bid sheet. If there are no bids that have been placed on an item, the bid sheet will not have any information listed.
The printer icon will generate a printable item sheet and bid sheet for an individual item, or you can click the Print All button to generate item sheets and or bid sheets of all items.
After clicking Print All, you'll be able to select what you'd like to print: Item Sheets, Bid Sheets, or Both.
Clicking the clone icon will prompt a confirmation that you do want to clone the item.
After cloning, you’ll be automatically taken to the settings for the cloned item so you can make edits if you want. If you don’t make any edits, the cloned item will be exactly the same as the original, but the item number will be unique.
Finally, when editing existing items, you'll see an additional action button at the bottom of the Manage Item screen labeled Save & Next Item. Clicking this button will open the next item, by item number, in the list.
This is useful when you need to edit multiple items but you don't want to return to the main item list each time.
If you'd like to navigate to an item that isn't the next one in the list, you can use the drop-down menu at the top of the Manage Item page.