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We’ve been doing events even before Handbid was born in 2011. We’ve been involved in hundreds of them, so we’ve seen a thing or two! We all have stories about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve been there, schlepping in the extreme heat and checking in guests in the extreme cold. We know that event planners and managers wear many hats and have to be willing to do anything and everything to make an event successful. You’re the main problem solver of the day, and you have to be ready to jump into action whenever there's something that needs fixing, whether it's rolling silverware or serving food to hungry attendees (or both!).
Today on the Elevate Your Event Podcast, the Handbid team is sharing some of their best (and worst!) event moments, and they give 4 practical tactics you can start implementing today that will make your event a success.
1. Implement smooth processes
Every process associated with your event must be smooth: from your invitations to your guest list to the checkout process at the end of your event, make it easy for guests and volunteers so they can get to the fun stuff, like the bar and the evening’s entertainment. This is why we believe that event software is a must. You can easily check guests in, update their information, and even allow them to bid on auction items from a mobile device.
It’s important to note that whatever you do, use only one process. Don’t use an electronic check-in system AND update information on a spreadsheet. It’s too easy to make mistakes or miss important information.
Click “play” on the podcast above to hear about an event that had guests filling out cards to update their information. Spoiler: it did NOT go well.
2. Plan something fun to do at your event
Even if your number one goal is to raise money, you want your guests to walk away saying, “That was fun!” How will you make your event fun? Try having a wine tasting or wine pull, a hole-in-one contest, live music, or performance. You might even try having a “selfie room,” with different backdrops, Ring Lights and phone tripods so people can take selfies to their heart’s content!
3. Make meaningful connections with your donors
How are you communicating with your donors? If you want to make every event a success, your communication strategy is key. You want the people at your event (donors and potential donors) to feel confident and stress-free going into your event. Communicate information about your event in advance, like where they should park, or what auction items they can bid on.
During your event, make that meaningful connection with the people in the room by communicating the impact their donation is making. Show a video of what your mission is about, or bring in a speaker who has benefitted from your organization to share their story.
If you’ve already shown your event attendees a great time and made this meaningful connection, they will likely tell their friends and loved ones about how wonderful your cause is, and bring them to next year’s event.
4. Have Courage
This tactic may seem like it doesn’t fit in a conversation about event planning, but it really does take courage to pull off a successful event. Times and technology change quickly, which means that you and your organization have to change with it. Change is hard, and many people will resist it fiercely. We often hear about major donors and board members who hesitate to switch to mobile bidding or new technology, or event managers who are afraid that these groups will pull their support as a result of change.
We want to encourage you to work through change and resistance. Be brave and try new things! We have many success stories of people who tried mobile bidding for the first time and increased their fundraising by more than seven times. It’s possible, but it takes courage in the face of doubt!
We can say that we have personally experienced all of these tactics. They make the job of executing events easier, and are worth implementing even if you think that "you don't have the time or money." It doesn't matter if it's a 5-person team or a 10-person team; these tactics will be useful at any organization. We also hope you will find them useful in your endeavors and at your next event!
Learn how Handbid’s charity auction platform can work for your nonprofit!
EP 04: Four Practical Tactics That Will Make Every Event a Success
Kristen: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.
Kristen: Well, here on the Elevate Your Event Podcast, we are event experts, and we're here to bring you all the ins and outs of events. And in order to be event experts, you had to have seen a thing or two. We have some members of the Handbid team here today, and we're going to talk about some of our best and worst event moments. Welcome, Handbid team.
Jeff: Thank you, Kristen. Thank you for having us. Since we're here, should we introduce ourselves?
Kristen: Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff: So, Jeff Porter. I am the CEO and founder of Handbid, and I have been involved in charity fundraising since 2004, being on the charity side. I've attended the classic auctions way back when, especially when my kids were in preschool. So I've been around it for quite some time. And then we founded Handbid in 2011. That's when we ran our first event with our software. And since then, because it became part of what we did as our vocation, I have been to -- countless, I would say hundreds of fundraising events. It's a great life.
Diana: Yeah, and I don't want to steal any thunder from Progressive Insurance, but we like to say in our office, right? We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two, right? There's no doubt about it.
Jeff: Progressive, don't sue us. Come be a sponsor of the podcast.
Diana: Oh, that's right. We love you, Progressive. You're not my insurance company, but I'm sure you're really good. We talk about you a lot.
Diana: Miss -- I'm Diana Du Planchet. Don't try to say that outside of New Orleans. Don't try to spell it either. It doesn't go well. I'm "Miss DuPlanter" everywhere else except the New Orleans area. So my experience with events -- it's been your quintessential PTA mom. Oh my God, I should be so embarrassed. But I'm not. I'm not embarrassed because we all have to contribute to our communities, and a school is a community. So I started off doing the auctions for my daughter's preschool, and then I moved over to start helping with the auction at my daughter's elementary school. And oh my, I was the one that moved them from paper to mobile bidding every time. And it was like pulling people over the finish line, one strong tug-of-war moment at a time.
Jeff: Give yourself some credit, because you did this in 2014.
Diana: Right. Yes, thank you very much. I like to say -- and if y'all have ever been a client of mine on a demo, I'm going to age myself here. Are you ready? Do you know Crystal Gayle, the country music artist?
Kristen: With the long hair.
Diana: Of course you know her. She sang a song -- "We were country when country wasn't cool." We were running apps when nobody wanted to talk about apps, right? And trust me when I tell you, it was a lot harder in 2013 to sell people on an app than it is today. And that was when I was just the PTA president. So there you go, that's my experience. And then I also go to Handbid events as an on-site expert, which is a lot of fun.
Kristen: I'm Kristen Wheeler. I do the marketing here at Handbid and I just facilitate and observe the shindig that is the Elevate Your Event podcast -- and provide the booze. And since no one brought me a glass, I get to drink out of the bottle.
Jeff: Why did we not get her a glass?
Diana: I wasn't really in charge of this. I only had three left over from my wedding.
Kristen: I am not complaining.
Jeff: Just a little.
Kristen: No, no, no. It's going to be a great toast. I'm really feeling it. Let's toast to events and get into our stories. Let's do it.
All: Cheers.
Jeff: So great. Since we don't drink at events, it's nice that we get to drink when we talk about events.
Kristen: It's nice while we're at work. It's talking about events. So can we talk about the first event that Elise ever did for Handbid?
Diana: Please.
Kristen: I don't know if I know this story.
Diana: Oh, this is funny.
Jeff: Oh, it's hilarious. So we're doing this event, and it's downtown Denver, and it is so packed in this place that we do check-in in a tent outside. And it's in February. And so in February, it can be a little cold. This day, it was really cold. So we show up there -- I think we normally show up about 90 minutes to two hours before. And I think in this case, we were there quite a bit early. So we were there at least two hours before the first check-in.
Diana: They don't want to turn on the heat, okay?
Jeff: Well, it's not just cold though. It's wet.
Diana: Oh, it's snowing hard. It is snowing.
Jeff: Heavy spring snow. So Elise didn't bring hat and gloves and that kind of stuff. So we're all sharing some stuff around, trying to get everybody warm. And so she's sitting there checking people in at a laptop. And I come over to say, "How's it going?" And she's like, "My fingers just won't bend anymore."
Diana: And Elise, you're tiny. And I feel like tiny people get cold. She's cold all the time. 24/7.
Jeff: Yeah. She is absolutely freezing. And finally, I was like, all right, I got to make the executive decision here. We're just going to go turn the heat on. Because they have this generator outside with a fuel tank. And so we were out there trying to figure out how to start this fuel tank to turn the heat on. And so they have a tube that comes into the tent with the hot air, right? And of course, it's blowing at the other end of the tent. So we have to move Elise during check-in from one end of the table to the other so she could be near the heat.
Diana: All of our check-in staff have full-on hat, gloves, earmuffs, you name it.
Elise: Listen, I didn't get the memo that we were going to be outside for check-in. I had appropriate clothing on for a walk from the car to go inside to an indoor space. A building.
Jeff: A building.
Elise: I had a coat. I had some jeans. I had some shoes. It was a country-themed style. So I was dressed warm, but I wasn't dressed for an outdoor check-in.
Jeff: You weren't dressed for frostbite. That's what you're saying.
Elise: I can't move my fingers. Maybe that's why I don't have feeling in my fingers from time to time. It was all this first Handbid event.
Jeff: So then the next thing that happens actually happens to me. Same event.
Kristen: Same event? Oh my God.
Jeff: So there's so much snow on the roof, and then we turn the heat on. What do you think the snow on the roof did?
Diana: It melted.
Jeff: It melted, right? It dumps from on top of things. Well, we're inside a tent, but I open the door to go out and go into the venue. And as I open the door and walk out, this entire rain shower of water dumps on me.
Diana: Okay.
Jeff: So in my -- it's a country event. I had jeans on, I had a sports coat on, cowboy boots or whatever. I am completely drenched.
Diana: And it's 25 degrees outside. And so did you go to your client and say, "Look what we have endured on your behalf for your cause"?
Jeff: I walked inside and they're like, "What happened to you?"
Kristen: I think we all have an event story like that that involves weather -- schlepping something in the heat or schlepping something in the rain.
Jeff: Oh, we've seen a lot. There's definitely been weather issues before. We did an event again downtown and it was a massive blizzard, and I'm calling the client like, "What's your plan for tonight?" And they're like, "Moving on, right as scheduled. Most of the people live downtown so we're just going to do it." And I'm going to say nobody showed up. Probably 20% of the guests showed up because no one could park. There was so much snow on the streets that people were like, "I just gave up and went home." Those are bummers. You just don't plan for those. You can't plan for them, right?
Diana: I mean, my sister ran a golf tournament for 13 years, and every year she's stressing about the weather. I'm like, "Why are you stressing about the weather? You can't do anything about the weather."
Jeff: There was one not that long ago where there were tornado sirens. Everybody had to hunker down. And our staff person was texting us. And I said, well, it's a good thing -- thank goodness for mobile bidding, because you don't have to be in the room to bid. Right?
Diana: That's awesome.
Jeff: Well, that goes back to Diana's time around 2013, 2014, when we had these apps and we're doing mobile bidding. People were really afraid to move from paper to mobile, and then they're asking you everything, right? Everything down to, "What if the apocalypse happens at my event?"
Diana: Oh yeah, you used to get that question all the time. "Well, what if the power goes out?" That was my favorite one. "What if the power goes out?" I said, "Okay, well, you're probably not going to be able to see much, but you'll be able to bid unless your battery dies on your phone. So at least your auction will be running." She's like, "Ah, that's kind of a good point."
Jeff: Yeah, what's the alternative? Light candles -- and if they're up to code for the fire department, then you stay in the building with your candles. Or you say, "Okay everybody, here's a bottle of wine, go take this home. We're going to keep the auction open until tomorrow." There's just a lot of different ways. You can't plan for all of those things.
Jeff: And that's what we've learned. We try to coach our clients through this. Look, there are certain things that you can plan for, but there are certain things you can't. And for the instances where you can't, what we've found works is having somebody who can be your issue resolver. So if you're running an event, it's really hard to also be the person resolving every issue -- what's worked for us is being able to say, "Diana, I need you to go find some candles because the power went out."
Diana: This is a true story. It's a good thing they called the mobile bidding people to show up at this event, because without us there, people would not have been able to eat their dinner. Trash would have been piled up. And let me tell you what happened.
Diana: I guess there were about -- and also let me just say this as a disclaimer: if you are a client and you are hearing this story, we want to tell you that we love all of y'all. We do. We treasure these stories. We bring them to our office. We literally sit around and say, "How can we make this not happen again if it wasn't the best scenario?" And we'll call you, we'll give you advice. But we carry these stories with us and they're part of who we are.
Diana: So we're at this event in this undisclosed place, but there were a lot of people there, like 700 people. And we were doing check-in, and it was a crazy time. And I was looking everywhere for Jeff. I was like, "Where did he go?" And so he shows up, and I was like, "Jeff, where have you been?" He was like, "Well, Diana, I was taking out the trash." And I said, "Well, I'm really sorry to hear that, because you missed the time when I had to take forks and knives over to tables 9 and 10. And while I was there, I learned that table 7 did not have any dessert spoons."
Jeff: Were you wearing black pants and a white button-up shirt?
Diana: No, not even close.
Jeff: I was up doing registration. And to her point, there's 700 people walking in the door, and they all tend to come in in a very tight timeframe. So it's busy in this room. And so we're kind of getting through it. And like a fire alarm pulls, right? This lady comes up to me and she's like, "I need your help." I'm thinking, Handbid issue or check-in issue. She's like, "They're just piling up trash in the back. There are no trash cans. And all of the kids that are busing tables don't know where to put the trash. You got to help me find trash cans." I'm like, okay, I've never really been asked that question before, but...
Diana: You look like a problem solver.
Jeff: Yeah, "You look like an able-bodied problem solver. Let's go make it happen." So I walk through the back. There's no trash cans in the back. So I go out on the loading dock. There's like 20 trash cans out there. Four dudes sitting on Home Depot buckets playing some dice game or card game or whatever. And she walks out with me and she sees them. She's like, "You get up and get those trash cans out there." So we're wheeling the trash cans out.
Diana: And then he went and handed out Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
Jeff: Everyone's wondering if I washed my hands. I forgot that part. I blocked it out of my brain, y'all. I did. I wasn't serving the Chick-fil-A sandwiches. I was helping get them sold. This is true -- they're served in the foil bags. Everybody relax. I did wash my hands. I'm a bit of a germ freak. But it was funny because, again, you walk around this event, you're trying to figure out, are things running smoothly or not? And not everything is related to the software system. And so we fix that on the spot.
Kristen: So lots of things can go wrong at events. What are some other things that have gone wrong for you guys that you laugh about now, or that maybe people can prevent from happening at their own event in the future?
Diana: Deciding that you're going to do pyro and not have a permit.
Jeff: Oh, yeah.
Diana: She's talking about my event, by the way. My own fundraiser.
Jeff: Explain. That's kind of a little knife in the side, wasn't it? Explain pyro.
Kristen: Are we talking fireworks?
Jeff: A fireworks show. I didn't know I needed a permit. I found out at 4 o'clock on Friday, and the event was Saturday afternoon.
Kristen: Did you get it?
Jeff: I got a not-very-fun phone call from the chief of police in Greenwood Village, Colorado. He wasn't super happy with me about it. But yes, I did pull it off.
Diana: Oh my gosh. Those last-minute things. One thing I've seen from time to time that just doesn't go well -- and we've got some good stories in our back pockets, y'all -- is things at the live auction. They become spontaneous because they're live. And you're in the moment. And you've had something to drink by that point. We hope.
Kristen: Things with an S at the end.
Diana: Well, we haven't, but our clients have, and the donors have. But also, you have to keep your game face the whole time. There's no pausing. You have to keep going.
Diana: We were at an event one time when -- I think it would be safe to say that the founder of this company, he was feeling a little bit like he wanted to be in the spotlight. And the live auction was taking place. And he was like, "I want a piece of this spotlight action." And so he had a lot to drink. And he walked up on the stage and he grabbed the microphone from the live auctioneer. And he used some colorful language to describe the item that he wanted to put up for auction. He created an auction item on the fly.
Jeff: On the fly. And we're trying to describe it as he's describing it. I'm like, "I can't use that word."
Diana: We were like, "What exactly is this item? I don't know what it is." So the poor live auctioneer was like, "And from our founder, a blah, blah, blah." And the founder knew that no one was going to bid on it. So he called out a person that he knew on the floor and made him bid on it. It was really uncomfortable. And we had to do some cleanup work around that. But it was the live auctioneer that I felt the sorriest for. He was like, "This was not in my script."
Jeff: Every once in a while, it's somewhat amusing to see the live auctioneer have something go off script on them a little bit.
Diana: They don't like it.
Jeff: Totally. It happens to us all the time.
Diana: Oh yeah, that's true. Especially sometimes with live auctioneers who are like, "Okay, these are going to be my paddle raises. I'm going to do this level, this level, this level, this level." And then they add four levels right in the middle of it.
Jeff: Oh yeah, that's a great example.
Diana: Yeah, I'm like, oh, all right -- as we're scrambling to add those levels into the system. But also record them at the same time so we can accurately enter them.
Jeff: That's right. And how long is that going to take, Elise? I mean, we're waiting here for you to get all these entered.
Diana: Your fingers are frozen, though.
Elise: That's right. Well, if you stand there a little longer, sir, I'll be sure to get it done faster.
Diana: That is one of the worst things, is when they keep bothering you. And so one thing that's worked well for us -- if you have somebody on your team who's not there, they can handle the paddle raises from home. They can be sitting at home, glass of wine in hand, entering them, and no one's bothering them.
Jeff: That's right. That's a great idea. Because you're sitting there frantically trying to get these in. And it's not that it takes a while to get them in, but we check them all, right? We want them to be right. Accuracy. And so we're looking at multiple recording sheets, making sure that all the numbers are right and then making sure that the totals are right. So we know the right bidders.
Jeff: And sometimes approaches just don't work as well, and we've gotten to the point now where we just say no. Go find another mobile bidding company that will do it. We're not trying to be mean here, but it's going to be a disaster for you and your guests. We know it, we've seen it. You think that you've done this way for 20 years and it's worked -- it's not going to work. Or there's just a better way to do it, and you have to trust us on that.
Jeff: Sure enough, right when we got started, I was telling this story the other day -- we had a client and they said, "We don't even want to discuss it. We have our check-in process, we're going to use it. This is how it's going to work." And so what they did was they decided to split the line by last names, and they had a range of last names.
Diana: We don't love that approach, by the way.
Jeff: Not necessary. We don't think that actually helps at all. It actually makes it worse -- and if you want to know why, we'll discuss that on another podcast. But their names were in front of the table, so as people stood up in these lines, no one knew what line went with what name group because someone was standing in front of the sign. So that was the first problem.
Jeff: The next problem was they had a printed-out card for every incoming guest with their contact information on it. They wanted us to hand them that card, have the guest edit it, update their contact information. We can actually do this in our software, by the way. So I'm going to point that out. None of this makes sense.
Jeff: And then they had a person standing next to each check-in person from the charity or a volunteer, and they held the cards. And so when someone would come up and say, "I'm Kristen Wheeler," she'd find Kristen Wheeler and hand it to you. And you would do your thing. She dropped all the cards next to me. Lovely. So now they're no longer in alphabetical order.
Jeff: So then it was like thumbing through 150 cards, looking for your name. And it just got longer and longer. And that's when I'm sitting there saying to myself, "We should not have let them do this." And that goes back to even last year. I went to an event and it was the same thing. We got a phone call on a Wednesday -- "This is what we're going to do, this is how we do it." And she describes her process. And I said, "It's a bad process. You're going to create a disaster at check-in." And she's like, "We're not budging on this. This is how we want to do it." I should have said no, but we found out about this on Wednesday. Their event was Friday.
Jeff: And so I said, all right, I'm just telling you -- it's going to be a mess. It was a mess. And just to give you a little color on what was going on, they put a folder behind them for every paddle number. So your spouse is 801. You check in. He never came. You're just checking in both of you. And so you give me 800. I don't know where your other stuff is. It's in the other folio, right? Or it's just missing.
Jeff: And so things like that -- where we would say, just put in the guest list that they're a VIP, give me a stack of wristbands. And if they're a VIP, I'll give them one. That kind of stuff really just made check-in slow. And so for us, we look at that and say, why don't you let us show you how to do an efficient check-in and trust us on this.
Jeff: I know you did it that way for 20 years. I'm sure it worked great. We've been doing this for 11 years, but in that 11-year time period, I didn't run 11 events, right? We ran over 10,000 events or more. So we've seen it.
Diana: And that even came up recently where we told another client no.
Jeff: I was just going to say -- we recently had one, and the flip side of that is we told the client no. They pushed back. We escalated it, had more people involved and had really serious conversations and said, "It's not an option. You're going to have to find another company because we're not going to do this. It's going to look bad on you, it's going to be a poor experience for your guests, and it's ultimately going to come back on us." They agreed. Loved it. An amazing check-in. The guests were beyond thrilled. They're like, "This is the smoothest event I've ever had."
Jeff: In the end, it really didn't matter because there was a torrential downpour and the roof started leaking in both of the ballrooms -- back to weather.
Diana: Oh my gosh.
Jeff: And then Houston flooded, and none of it really mattered. But they raised a lot of money and had a wonderful check-in. Wow.
Diana: It can be good if you just trust us on certain things.
Jeff: We don't put our foot down a lot. But we are going back and looking at the events that we've done where we've compromised on something that we don't feel is a good idea, and it's just always come back to bite everybody involved. I mean, there was one event where we have table assignments in Handbid, so you can see what table you're at. It actually shows up in their app. They insisted on having a printed-out set of who was at what table. And we're flipping through paper because they put none of it in Handbid. You know how long that takes? To flip through all those papers, looking up your name and seeing where you're at. So anyway, it's that kind of stuff. In our experience, the software works best when you lean into the process we've built around it.
Kristen: So we've talked about fingers freezing, plunging toilets, taking out trash, rolling silverware, getting soaking wet -- just some very relatable things that have gone wrong at events that could happen to anybody. What about some of your best moments at events? Something that was heartwarming or something that went particularly well?
Jeff: Oh, I had -- we had a client once. And when she came over and saw the numbers of where she was at -- and they had just moved over to us -- she did like three back handsprings in the room.
Kristen: Nice. Okay, she's happy. That's good.
Jeff: But it's good to see your clients blown away. Even when we started, back in like 2011, 2012, I remember there was a school here in my neighborhood down in Castle Pines. And they had never used anything like this before. They were dipping their toe in the water and they knew us. And it was like, "Hey, some of our families in our neighborhood and our community have started this software company, let's give it a shot." And it was definitely an investment in us, right? We're like, wow, you guys are going to trust us to do this. That's awesome.
Jeff: We walk in on Friday night and they were like, "You don't understand. We've made more money all week in pre-bidding than we did last year."
Diana: Yes! That's so cool. Exactly what you want to hear.
Jeff: Some of our school clients are our most successful. And this is something we obviously coach our clients on. It's one of the things that I think is the counterintuitive change you make when you move to mobile bidding from paper bid sheets. When I'm on a paper bid sheet, I'm not going to set a $1 or $5 increment on an item because people aren't motivated enough to get up out of their chair, walk out of the ballroom, and up their bid by $5, right? And so you have to make those bid increments higher. And when you do that, you basically start creating bigger steps for people to take to stay in.
Jeff: And so we want to shrink those steps. We want people to think it's a no-brainer -- "Oh, it's another five bucks, I'll just do it," right? Because at some point, once they've bid enough, they're going to cross what we call "the threshold" -- from "how much money am I spending" to "I am not losing this."
Diana: Yeah. I'm winning.
Jeff: And so we'll look at an auction and they'll say, "I did okay," and they'll have five bids per item or something. We'll look in there and they've got $50 bid increments on a $100 item. And it's like, well, there's your problem. I could have gotten somebody from $105 to $110 to $115 to $120 all the way up. They would have spent more than $150. There's no doubt in my mind they would have. But they wouldn't have gone from $100 to $150 in one step, in one bid.
Jeff: And that reminds me -- we did this event in Oklahoma City and this lady came up to me. She definitely had had a few drinks. She was hilarious. She was like, "I want to show you something." And I'm thinking she's going to say there's a problem with her app or whatever. So she pulls up her app and she says, "Watch this." She goes, "I'm going to bid on this. Watch what happens." So she bids. And then like two seconds later, she's outbid, right? It pops up with a pink screen -- "Losing," right? And she's like, "It just keeps doing it. Watch." She hits it again.
Diana: She's teaching you about your app.
Jeff: "Somebody's outbidding me." And she's like, "I want you to look up who this person is because I'm not losing this item." And I said, "Well, I'm not sure that's a good idea for me to tell you who this person is." And she said, "Well, I'm just not going to lose."
Jeff: And so I look at it. And it's a piece of art painted by some kid. And she's like -- you know what's the funny part? She goes, "I don't even want this thing. I just don't want to lose." She's up to $4,000 on this little piece of painted art. And I was like, that's what we're talking about, right? That's what you want to see happen. And you can't get that if you don't think about how to keep your bidders connected back to the auction. Paper doesn't do that, right?
Jeff: So that was the challenge at my event and why we started Handbid -- because people float, right? They float around. I go through the auction area, I bid on stuff. I go to the bar, go talk to my friends.
Jeff: On paper you average seven bids an item, and on mobile you get more -- say 10. But I can control the bids per item; I just set the bid increment to whatever I want. What I care about is the bids per bidder -- how connected and engaged people really are in the auction itself. Because that'll tell me -- when we pull up an event and we pull up their dashboard, I'm like, "Oh, this is a good event." So I think we're biased, but correctly biased, given our experience -- mobile bidding really does drive better engagement.
Kristen: What is one other thing that you guys think -- let's go around the table in closing. One thing that an event needs to be successful. Elise?
Elise: Wine.
All: Cheers.
Elise: Actually, I do have something. Your check-in and registration process is so critical to the overall experience. It sets the tone for the event. And what we've seen make the biggest difference is having one way to check people in. Obviously, we're biased -- Handbid is clearly the best way, in my opinion, to have your guest list, to organize your guest list, which is who is supposed to be coming. But what we've seen go sideways every time is running something in Handbid alongside a separate spreadsheet, because they will never match. Somebody is always updating the spreadsheet, but it never gets put into Handbid.
Diana: A smooth check-in process -- I think that's it. It's their first introduction to your event. That's when they walk in the door. And it sets the tone, just like you said.
Diana: I like the idea of giving people something to do. Sure, you can go to the bar. Sure, you can talk to your friends. But I think there's something about when you leave an event, you always want to say, "That was fun." Well, why was it fun? Because there was a hole-in-one contest, because there was a wine tasting, or there was some other component. Something interactive that was engaging the donor.
Diana: And I think that speaks to how the organization communicates with their donors. How do they continue to pull in more donors? If I'm a sponsor and I've invited 10 of my family members, how does that organization make a connection with my family members as the sponsor? And then those people will hopefully become future donors. That's the idea. So I just want to throw confetti in the air -- that's the kind of visual that I would like for someone to feel when they leave an event.
Jeff: I'm going to go kind of a psychological route and say, I think you need courage. So many of our clients are so afraid that something's going to go wrong. I can tell you, something is going to go wrong. So flexibility -- but to have the courage to work through that. I would say some of our biggest Handbid heroes are the ones who can work through the complaining board member that hates technology, the guest that is completely upset that their table wasn't exactly prepared the way they want -- whatever it is. Those types of things happen, and you just have to work through them. You can't be terrified of making the changes that you want to make.
Jeff: And so we always try to encourage our clients to be courageous in that sense -- all the way from not just the software you pick, but making certain other types of changes to your event. And I think that if people would embrace that to a certain level, they'd blow themselves away with what they're able to do at their event.
Kristen: Well, thank you guys. This was so much fun. Cheers, everyone.
Diana: Yes, thank you, Kristen, for such a great idea. I've enjoyed it.
Kristen: Thanks for having the bottle. Twice, may I add -- and have not had one drink. So we're going to sign off so that maybe I can just have a little sip. Thanks everyone for joining us today, and we will see you next week.
