EP 32: Paper Isn't Cheaper: The Hidden Costs of Paper Bidding

Jeff: 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.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better. And funner. "Funner" -- that is actually officially a word in the Webster's Dictionary now. After I scolded my children for years, telling them that "funner" is not an actual word. My daughter pulls dictionary.com up and shows me "funner." And I said, okay, that is absolutely ridiculous.

Diana: Is it not? So can we use "gooder" then?

Jeff: Gooder? Maybe.

Diana: Well, does she still say funner?

Jeff: She was defending herself in that case. I think it may have sunk into the back of her mind.

Diana: Love it.

Jeff: It's like that one -- and this is apparently a grammar episode -- "irregardless." Not a word.

Diana: Not a word.

Jeff: It's not a word. And my daughter is not convinced about that one either. But high schoolers are very smart. They know everything.

Diana: Brilliant people. We should call them now.

Jeff: Yes. Maybe they could come and give us some amazing advice on how to run better fundraisers. Because those high school kids, they know it all. TikTok for sure, and Snapchat, and bid sheets -- I think that's what we're going to talk about today.

Jeff: So it was hilarious because some of you know that I used to work for the phone company -- well, it was the Yellow Pages. I didn't work for the actual telephone company. And my kids don't know what that is. So they sent me a photo the other day. One of them is at college. And they send me a photo of a U.S. West Dex Yellow Pages hanging below a payphone. And of course, there's two issues with that. What the heck is a payphone? And two, why are there yellow pages hanging? Like, what is this thing? I go, "Yes, that was my old job."

Diana: That's amazing. So if we're going to talk about bid sheets, they're not even going to know what those are.

Jeff: Exactly. It's going to be the equivalent of the Yellow Pages. We haven't even introduced ourselves. Let's do that. First, we've got such a fun crowd here today to talk about bleeding-edge technology. So we've got Inga -- say hello.

Inga: Hello, I'm Inga Weiss.

Jeff: Oh, there you go, in your Eastern European accent.

Inga: Yes, it is all fake. I am originally from Nebraska.

Jeff: And that is a lie. Oh, and then we have -- crowd favorite, for sure.

Diana: Oh my gosh. I'm Diana DuPlanche and I'm from South Boston.

Jeff: Yes, that's right. That New York accent, it just pours out. That northeast Boston, New York accent, it's just pouring out of you right now.

Diana: Oh, Lord have mercy.

Jeff: Okay. It's great to be back. And Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. I don't typically have an accent, although some people think I do.

Diana: Well, a little bit of Colorado. Coloradoans have an accent.

Jeff: Well, they just don't pronounce certain words. They do not pronounce "mountains" correctly. They don't pronounce T's in their words. "Moun'ins." It's the weirdest thing.

Inga: Interesting.

Jeff: But anyway, we're not here talking about accents or the dictionary. We have an agenda, y'all. And we're going to talk about the hidden cost of paper bid sheets in an auction. And why not start with a list on paper?

Diana: All of our things about paper bid sheets. And Diana is definitely the most consistent one of coming in here with her pink pen and her list.

Jeff: Lots of pink pens.

Diana: And my list that we've discussed. We've walked around the office. We've talked to everybody. "What's your least favorite thing about paper bid sheets?" So we have a list, y'all, to go through.

Jeff: And I bring paper to these meetings because I don't want to be interrupted by my phone, but I can also check things off.

Diana: So I could do this on Google Keep. I could try that next time and just check things off. That's a little techie. I will commit to y'all to try that on the next podcast. I will create a Google Keep.

Jeff: It's going to be like the 21st century.

Diana: I know. And then once we're done talking about it, I will check it off.

Jeff: Very good. There you go.

Diana: I'm changing. I'm making changes, Jeff.

Jeff: I love it. So I think most of our audience probably knows what a paper bid sheet is, but we should probably start by at least catching some folks up. Obviously, mobile bidding companies originated because there were issues -- or people felt there were issues -- with paper bid sheets. So you're probably not going to be surprised when we talk about a lot of the reasons why we don't like them. But what they are is a sheet of paper. When you have an auction at an event, you put a sheet of paper in front of each of the items that you're auctioning off. You'll typically start it with a starting bid, and then people will walk up and write down their paddle number -- usually some sort of three-digit or four-digit number that represents who they are and gives them a little bit of anonymity. What do you think?

Diana: Love it. Yes.

Jeff: So it doesn't have to always be that they know it's Inga bidding -- just that it's bidder 201 or 202 -- and then they'll put in their bid. And as the bids increase, they go down the sheet. At the end of the day, when you close the auction, you run around and pick up all the sheets. And you run to the back room and frantically figure out how to enter them into some sort of system that's going to generate invoices.

Inga: And there's other ways to do it. It doesn't have to be done that way. I've been to other places where they run around with a highlighter and highlight the winner and leave the sheet there. And then your job is to remember what you bid on and go collect your sheets that have you as the winner and take them up to the front. And then they get their adding machine out and tally it up.

Diana: Or it could be carbon copies.

Jeff: Oh, yes. I've seen those too. They just rip the top page off. And it's always so much fun when the copies don't press through, so you can't really read what's on the other ones.

Diana: This is right. One more -- I should add that to my list.

Jeff: You should. Okay. So I think that's a pretty good description. So when is the last time you were at an auction with paper bid sheets?

Diana: Oh, Lord have mercy. It's been a long time.

Jeff: I typically only go to events that we run.

Diana: No kidding.

Jeff: So I haven't been to one in a while. Actually, I take that back -- two years ago, we did an event. And they had one item that they decided they were going to auction off on paper. It was really bizarre that they decided to do this. Nobody knew that they were supposed to go up and bid on this thing. So it wasn't in Handbid. And they got barely any bids on it. So that was a little bit of a fail.

Diana: That's a shame.

Jeff: How about you? When's the last time?

Inga: This weekend.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Inga: I'm not going to say where I was. I hang out with interesting folks of a certain age.

Jeff: Those are the types of people that eat dinner at four o'clock.

Inga: My favorite kind. So I'm not going to say where I was, but yes, it was old school. Old school pen and paper.

Diana: That is what we call it. And when we talk to prospective clients who are calling us to ask questions, they say, "Oh, we go old school." And it hurts my heart. I had to pinch myself and not go to every single person that looked like they were in charge and ask them if they would like to use Handbid next year. And then I did. And they said, no.

Jeff: What's wrong with them? This is why you're not in sales.

Diana: I had to spell Handbid for them.

Jeff: So this came up several months ago. I was talking to one of our existing clients, and they had their event at a place that had really bad internet. And so the answer was either go back to paper or fix the internet. They asked if they could pick my brain. We got on a phone call and they said, "Well, what do you think if we go back to paper?" I said, in our experience, organizations tend to raise significantly less with paper. And they were like, "Okay, explain." So obviously my recommendation was, let's fix the internet.

Jeff: So let's walk through -- why do we think paper costs you money? And we have our list here.

Diana: Is there any disagreement? No.

Jeff: And I'll tell you, when we launched Handbid in May of 2011, Handbid made its debut at my fundraiser. Because why not test your brand new software on your friends, right?

Diana: And your biggest donors.

Jeff: So anyway, we doubled our auction revenue. Same items, same bidders -- just a different approach. And we'll talk about not just why you tend to make more money with mobile, but how you make more money with mobile. I think there's two things we've got to cover.

Diana: Okay. Item number one, ready? Higher bid increments.

Jeff: So what ends up happening with paper is people tend to increase the bid increment. Why would you do that? Well, because people don't want to get up out of their chair, walk out of the ballroom over to the silent auction area to up their bid by five bucks. And so people realize that when they're creating their auction. They say, "We're just going to make our bid increments $25." Well, your bid increment as a percentage of your starting bid can either encourage bidding or discourage it.

Jeff: Think about it. If I have an item that's worth $400 -- easy math, people -- we're going to start it at $100. A lot of times in the past, I'd see a $25 bid increment. So now someone's looking at an item that's worth $400. They probably think it's in that ballpark range. You're asking them to bid $125 as the second bid. And I've seen worse. I remember one event where they were kind of trying to do the hybrid paper thing. They moved to Handbid, and they had an item worth about $500 -- started at $100 with a $100 bid increment. How do you expect people to bid on that? You're asking someone to go to $200.

Jeff: So when you lower the bid increment, people are more incentivized to bid. And then what happens after someone's bid two or three times and been outbid?

Diana: You don't stop.

Jeff: Until it's over. There's a psychological switch in your brain that flips. And how many times have we heard at the end of the night, "I wasn't planning to spend this much money, but I could not lose."

Diana: Well, you've got to get somebody into that mode. And to get someone into that mode, they have to bid and they have to be outbid. The only way you do that is to keep your bid increment low.

Jeff: So it's almost this double reason. It's the inconvenience of having someone get up from their table and go place another bid, plus by using mobile, you're able to lower those increments. You're increasing the engagement and the bidding activity. We like to track that as a company. Back in the day on paper, everybody tracked bids per item. We have that data, but we pay more attention to bids per active bidder, because that represents engagement. How much are your bidders bidding?

Jeff: We log in to an auction and look at the dashboard. We can immediately tell not only how good your items are, but how well you set your bid increments, because that number should be over 10. Almost every time we see it at three, we log in and find a whole bunch of items with no bids -- a $100 starting bid and probably a $50 bid increment. When we've helped clients lower that bid increment to $10, they typically start seeing a lot more bidding activity.

Diana: That's very cool. Anything else on that topic? High bid increments -- okay, next one on the list.

Jeff: Here's a big one. When you have paper bid sheets, you're limiting the window in which people can bid. It's only going to be during the moment they walk in the door, after they've checked in, because that's when they get their bidder number. You have to be physically standing in front of the sheet. And what if your event starts at six? So many of these events are about four hours long to begin with. What if you're late, like a lot of people are?

Diana: I'm not late, but most people are late. Just saying that out loud. For all you listeners at home, Diana DuPlanche is not late.

Jeff: Anyway, let's just say you show up at 6:30. You get checked in. You're going to go to the bar first.

Diana: I go to the bar first. Don't judge. Don't you dare judge me. I go to the bar first. It's been a long week.

Jeff: So you're going to stand in the bar line and then maybe you're going to start placing bids at 7 o'clock. And then when are they going to pull the bid sheets? 9 p.m. So you have two hours. What if there's 100 items? This idea of limiting that timeframe boggles my mind. If anything, that's the issue. You can't open the auction a week early.

Jeff: Now I know some of you are thinking, "Well, I'll open it a week early online and then just print up bid sheets when they get there." Look, there's two windows we're talking about. There's the total window of how long the auction is -- people can open it early, and people who leave early can continue to bid. And we can even talk about the one where a guy got wheeled out on a gurney in an ambulance and was still bidding on his way out the door. True story.

Diana: Oh, I love that.

Jeff: But there's another window. And that other window is the amount of time between when you bid and when you get outbid.

Diana: That's another good one.

Jeff: If I'm bidding and I get outbid in a mobile environment, boom, I'm instantly notified -- whether it's a text message or a push notification in the app. On paper, what do I typically do? I walk in, go to the bar, walk through the auction area, place some bids, and have to make a mental note of what I bid on. Then I might get into a conversation, chit-chat. I'll walk back before dinner, walk back through the auction area to check the bids I placed -- if I remember what I bid on. And then, oh, I got outbid on this, I'll place another bid and walk away. It could be 10, 15, 20 minutes before I notice. Then I counterbid. And then the opposite happens. Whoever is bidding against me may be off doing something different, completely disconnected from the auction, and now they don't remember. And once you get into that ballroom -- in some of those more classic galas where the auction area is outside -- it's even worse.

Diana: So those are the two big windows we've got to talk about. The total length of the auction and the amount of time between bids. That's a really good point. It's something I need to start bringing up more in my conversations.

Jeff: Because it's valid. And I'm also thinking about how many people I talk to that say, "Oh, we do an auction during the cocktail hour." What does that mean? You're doing an auction for one hour? Why bother? A lot of work goes into auctions.

Inga: It's a labor of love.

Jeff: Okay. So the next huge factor that totally changes the playing field is when you can invite bidders outside your in-room experience to participate. Remote bidders. This is another game changer. And this has been much more accepted post-COVID.

Diana: Oh, big time. Do you remember those days when people would call up and be like, "Who's this Inga Weiss and why is she bidding in my auction?" I'm like, I don't know, she's winning some diamond ring for five grand. And they're like, "I don't know her. What if she's not real?" I'm like, well, she's got a credit card on file.

Jeff: People just felt a little uncomfortable with that. Two things used to happen back in the day. One was, "Okay, fine, I'm willing to let Grandma bid in the PTO auction because I know she's going to support us." But people also wanted everybody to come to their party.

Jeff: I remember one of the very first events we ever did, 12-plus years ago. We're on a phone call with this local school and they said, "Here's what we want. We want the highest bidder who's present to win the item." And I said, "Hold on, let me understand. If Inga wins, but Inga's not there, you want me to give it to Diana?" I said, "That's really just not how auctions work. If you want to start deleting bids and figuring that out, fine, but Inga's money is still good." And here's the irony -- Inga costs you a lot less because she didn't come and eat all your food.

Diana: That's right.

Jeff: That attitude has gone largely away. The whole "I only want to reward people who are there" -- they wanted exclusive items where you can't bid if you're not present. Our software allows you to do a lot of that. But either way, remote bidders expand your audience. What does that do?

Inga: Increases competition. That's a good thing. Tremendous revenue potential for the organization.

Jeff: Let's talk about one event we did years ago. This was a client out in Pennsylvania. Brand new executive director -- he calls me up, he's driving to his new job, and he's like, "I'm going to recommend we use Handbid, and I could get fired because they're kind of old school, but I think this is important." So they run their event on Handbid. They had a ukulele from Pearl Jam -- on the back of it, Eddie Vedder had handwritten the chorus to one of his songs and signed it.

Inga: Amazing.

Jeff: That ukulele went for over $50,000 -- to a guy in Australia.

Diana: That's right. I forgot he was in Australia.

Jeff: So how do you do that with a paper bid sheet and a bunch of people in a room who can't afford that ukulele? If you have those types of items, it's important to understand -- you're just not going to get that kind of audience reach in most cases with paper. It's a big game changer.

Jeff: Okay, so now we get to talk about drama. This is one of my favorite subjects. Let's talk about fighting and cheating.

Diana: Oh, my favorite topic. Are you kidding me?

Inga: Never. Fighting, cheating -- let's add stealing to that. And withholding pens.

Diana: Yes. Stealing pens, hiding pens, hiding bid sheets. I've seen it all.

Jeff: So what is the most egregious example you've ever seen of cheating? I have my top two or three. Even at my own event, I saw someone steal a bid sheet and bring it back at the end of the event. It was a parent we knew and I kind of rolled my eyes and said, whatever.

Jeff: The best story was this event back in the 2012 timeframe. Massive conference, 50,000 people there. They had a silent auction as part of it. They said, "We have the silent auction, but we do this ladies' luncheon. We're not going to use mobile bidding at the ladies' luncheon because it gets really rowdy. We're afraid they're going to fight if they're on their phones. So here's what we need you to do: come up there, help us run it, we're going to have paper bid sheets, and at the end, you're going to enter the winner in Handbid and put it on their invoice."

Jeff: Of course, I'm thinking this is a terrible idea, but fine, let's do it. So we go up there, it's a ladies' luncheon, and these ladies get a little wild. They had some system where they weren't writing bids down. They had stickers -- a plate of stickers for each person. You'd walk in and they'd give you 30 or 40 stickers. Those were your bid tokens. You'd put the sticker down on the bid sheet next to the amount you wanted to bid.

Jeff: So we're entering in the winners, and here comes one of my staff, and he says, "I don't know who won this item." We look down and at the very bottom, on the highest bid, are two stickers sitting next to each other.

Inga: How clever.

Jeff: So I call the auction manager over. "How do you want us to handle this?" And she says, "Oh, this happens all the time." I'm thinking, well, it wouldn't with mobile bidding, but I'll keep that comment to myself. She says, "I'll bring them over and we're just going to Rochambeau for this."

Jeff: So these two women come out, and she says, "You both are the winners, so we're going to Rochambeau to see who actually gets it." And the first lady says, "Uh-uh, I want it. I put my sticker down first." And the other one says, "I put my sticker down first. You're a liar." And these two women start to fight -- verbally sparring, then pushing each other.

Diana: What?

Jeff: And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, mobile bidding -- there's a new sales tagline here about being safer at an event or something. They get the security guard to come over and break it up. And it was over some bearskin rug. I mean, you've got to be kidding me.

Jeff: But I go, "So you told me you didn't want to use mobile bidding because these women get rowdy and you thought they were going to fight. And guess what caused the fight? The paper bid sheet."

Diana: Paper bid sheets, honey. Oh my gosh. That is insanity.

Jeff: It isn't just cheating. That's a form of cheating, but it's also fighting. So what are other ways people cheat?

Inga: Well, I have an example. Like Jeff mentioned anonymity -- getting a paddle number and writing it on the bid sheet. I've seen a couple of times when gentlemen love to play pranks on their buddies at the event. They'd grab their buddy's paddle number and enter huge bids on every sheet for their buddy, who has no idea they're bidding in the auction. They just keep entering the paddle number and bidding for them.

Diana: Well, it's cheating. It's also not fair to the organization.

Jeff: It's a huge headache at the end of the day.

Diana: That is a big bummer.

Jeff: There was one organization we talked to that was doing auctions in their retail stores. What they discovered is someone would come in and bid on an item -- say they'd bid $50. Then they'd have their friend come in with fake information, register for the auction, and bid $300 as the second bid. So when people would walk in and look, they'd say, "Oh, I don't want to spend more than $300 on this item -- it's only worth $150 or $200." So no one would bid. Then when they'd close the auction, they couldn't get a hold of the $300 bidder because it was all fake information. So they'd give it to the next highest bidder, which was the original person.

Diana: That is officially shameful. And a huge loss for the organization.

Jeff: It's terrible, but it's not unheard of. And then there's the stealing of pens. I mean, I think we've seen this. I personally haven't seen it. You can steal a pen from another station, so it's kind of hard to get away with because there's 50 pens out there. But definitely stealing bid sheets, hiding them -- absolutely.

Jeff: And outside of the cheating side, there's the intimidation factor.

Inga: Yes. Intimidation.

Jeff: Have you ever seen a bid intimidator? They're scary. And they come in all sizes and shapes. And ages. And they're not anonymous. If the director of the school goes to place a bid on an item in front of you, everybody knows who's bidding. Even if she writes her number down as $199, are you really going to bid against your favorite teacher, or the director of the school, or the chairman of the board?

Jeff: You'll see people that will guard bid sheets. You'll see people that will just stand in front of them so you can't access them. We heard the funniest story. There's this old lady at a baseball game, and they had an auction with a signed bat. She stood right next to the bid sheet, and people would walk up and look at the bat, and she'd say, "I'm bidding on this bat for my grandson. It's for his birthday. You don't want to take my grandson's birthday present away, do you?"

Diana: I love the idea of this grandma being an intimidator.

Jeff: She's a bid intimidator. It works because you feel bad. How are you going to outbid her? You just walk away. "Fine, lady. You win. Take it."

Inga: I've also seen at a couple events where the announcement goes out that the auction is over, and there's a person just walking around writing their bids after the auction is closed. They're getting there faster than the staff can come by and pick up the sheets.

Jeff: With the highlighters. That's another example of cheating. Thank you, Inga. Okay, what about just normal things -- like bad handwriting?

Diana: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: Talk about a nightmare. "Is that a 127 or a 129?" I can't tell. There's a lot of that.

Diana: So much of that. And then what do you do? You're guessing, and sometimes you get it wrong.

Jeff: Or my favorite was that same event where the ladies got in the fight. They had a different auction on the side with two or three items on paper. You've got paddle 112, then paddle 201, then paddle 3 -- and then it just said "Fred, 600 bucks." We're like, who the heck is Fred? We're looking in the bidder list. Can't find Fred. He just made his number up. Just, "I'll put my name down there."

Inga: Oh my God. It's so normal.

Jeff: And then one of the things I hear a lot when people call in -- they're like, "We're having trouble with paper bid sheets. People are just changing the bid increment." They arbitrarily decide what the bid increment is, even when it clearly states it at the top of the sheet. If the bid increment is $50, they just decide it's something else.

Diana: One dollar. I've seen that. Item at $100 and some guy bids $101.

Jeff: So annoying.

Diana: Did you give it to them?

Jeff: Heck no. Just out of principle. But people want to know -- they're scorned by this, and they ask, "Can the bidders change the bid increments in Handbid?" In most mobile bidding solutions, the answer is no, the bidders cannot change that. So you can really lock that down. That's a big deal.

Jeff: Then the other piece is what happens when the auction closes. Imagine you all have that moment in your mind. The MC makes the announcement. The auction's going to close. Workers are coming around picking up sheets. So now what happens, Inga?

Inga: Now they still have to collect the payments. Everybody's running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.

Jeff: That's right. They're entering bids into some software, some solution that they can figure out how to generate an invoice from. And everything is slow because it's manual.

Diana: Yes.

Jeff: So you've just raised less money in your auction, and now you're going to, I would say, diminish the guest experience. Their last memory of your event will be waiting around for 40 minutes while you get it all figured out. Even the best systems take some time.

Jeff: Here's the thing about the guest experience. Back in the day when we used bid sheets, people would line up the moment you closed your auction. You know why? They wanted to be the first one to pay. They had no idea what they won. They wanted to find out -- or whether they even won anything. And they're trying to figure out, "Am I a winner or not?" Because if I am, I want to get in this line and get my stuff. But if I'm not, this is going to be miserable. I don't want to wait in line for an hour to find out I didn't win.

Jeff: So what happens today? Crickets at checkout. The auction closes, and nothing happens. They're out dancing. They look at their phone. They know what they won. They're good. They've got a card on file. They'll pick up their items on the way out. We're just sitting there waiting for people to check out and they're all ready to go.

Jeff: People are mingling. They're standing around. They're spending time with the people they came with. They're enjoying themselves. They're not worried about waiting in line for an hour. They can pay their invoices on their phone. The last experience they have at your event will be a good one. If they got outbid and they're frustrated about that, that's a different story.

Jeff: But I remember back in the paper days, guys would line up at our event, and 30 minutes later, you'd say, "Oh, sorry -- you got outbid at the end. You didn't win anything." And they're looking at you like, "I just spent 30 minutes standing in line to find that out."

Diana: What a bummer.

Jeff: The worst-case scenario when you're bidding online is you had too much to drink and forgot. And you just left without your prize. And then what?

Inga: I've seen a lot of that -- people saying, "I'm not waiting in this line, they'll call me. I am out of here. I will get my item on Monday."

Jeff: And how miserable is that for an auction manager? Having to reload everything back in a truck and take it.

Diana: That is a different podcast, Jeff, altogether. Because I had to help a few times to load all the unclaimed items into auction managers' cars. I carried a case of wine to a pregnant lady's car. And she looked at me like, "Don't judge. Please don't judge me." I'm like, I'm not judging you -- I just think this is crazy.

Jeff: But no, I hear you. There's definitely a podcast on post-auction shutdown. I've driven our clients' rental trucks back to their offices with stuff.

Diana: Oh, yes. The rental truck days. And the best would be backing the rental truck up while avoiding the chandelier that's hanging from the live oak tree.

Jeff: Yes. That was one event for sure.

Diana: Okay. I love this.

Jeff: So the very last thing -- and I think this is a really important one -- we're in an advanced world. We're able to really take a look at our data. Well, what kind of data can you look at if you have paper bid sheets? Can you look at category performance?

Diana: Nope.

Jeff: Is there even a category? Maybe. How much data performance can you look at if it's not already cataloged for you?

Inga: And how accessible is it? That's the bigger issue.

Jeff: I remember at that event with the ladies who fought, we walk into the office and there are probably 50 or 60 binders on the shelf -- bid sheets and auction data from over the years. She had data. Good luck finding anything useful. If I asked, "What's the most popular item you've ever sold in your auction?" -- she can't tell me that. "What's the average number of bids you get per item?" Can't tell me that either. "Who's your most prolific bidder over the years?" None of that.

Jeff: To your point, looking at category performance -- we have a report that shows all the categories, what the starting bid was, the ending bid, how many bids were placed, what the fair market value was, how much money you made above or below fair market value as a percentage. You can look at that report and say, "Your guests love wine and spirits. Your guests love to travel. Your guests love kids' activities -- we need more of those items."

Jeff: And in the future, AI will help with more of that. But how are you going to train AI on your event data from paper bid sheets? Are you going to feed a machine paper bid sheets so it can tell you what your guests like? Because that paddle number on a paper bid sheet -- what is it tied to? Nothing. In our system, it's tied to your name, your email address. You can get a lot of data.

Jeff: Anyway, there's not much else to say there. And outside of data, the one other thing I think we should cover is this: there's a debate about what's more social and what's more antisocial.

Diana: Ah, this is a good subject, Jeff.

Jeff: Some people feel very strongly that people with their faces in their phones are more antisocial than those using bid sheets.

Diana: The experience becomes less personable.

Jeff: And I'm always confused by that debate, to be honest. If you have a system that notifies you in a very specific way, why do you need to have your face in your phone? You just have it on your person. You can feel your phone vibrate. You hear the notification sound Handbid makes. Even if you're not using the app and you just get a text message -- most people are going to want to check their phone to make sure everything's okay. That to me, I just don't get it. I don't know why organizations are worried about that.

Jeff: Because if the auction is opened in advance, I'm going to go online, read the items, favorite my items, start watching them, and have my bids placed before I get there.

Diana: But don't forget, I don't show up late to places. So that's how I roll. I know that's not how everybody rolls.

Jeff: I think if you go back to the day of paper bid sheets -- and I get it, some of you are still using them -- for us, when I was involved in auctions that used them, I can't think of anything more antisocial than leaving a conversation or leaving the dinner table to go back to an auction area and look at bids. I'd rather pull my phone out, quickly check my bids, fix it, put it away, and get back to my conversation.

Diana: Yeah, 100%.

Jeff: And to think that in today's day and age people aren't already on their phones -- it's ridiculous. If you think about your traditional auctioneers, they'd say, "You've got to close the silent auction before I start the live auction." Remember that?

Diana: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: This wasn't mobile bidding -- this was paper bids. They didn't want people leaving the ballroom to go check their bids, because the silent auction would be in a different area than the live event.

Jeff: Now we walk in and say, "Why would you close the silent auction? Leave that open because it keeps more people in the ballroom if you use mobile phones." There's an advantage -- you tend to make more money, and it keeps them in the room.

Jeff: I went and spoke at the Worldwide College of Auctioneering. That topic came up, and a number of auctioneers said, "We don't recommend closing the silent auction early anymore. We recommended that because everything was on paper and people were standing up and leaving while I'm trying to auction off items." I said, "I get that. I wouldn't want that either, but you don't have to deal with that anymore."

Jeff: So when you're thinking about the hidden costs of paper bidding, it's important to address some of the objections to mobile bidding that push people back to paper. The last one I'd mention is that you've got a demographic that just does not want to use their phone. There's a correlation with age, but not a strong one. As we've said before on this podcast, my dad is 81, and he's got more apps on his phone than I do. So there's a comfort-with-technology factor. But there are ways for those people to participate at an event without using their mobile phone. They can use an iPad, for example. But it's not an excuse to go to paper.

Diana: Absolutely not. The way I like to think about our iPad kiosk is kind of one step above paper. If a person doesn't want to use their phone at all -- put it in your handbag, set it on the table, don't touch it -- you can place a bid on the iPad with a volunteer staff member and then come back and say, "Hey, am I still winning?" Handbid's going to tell you on your phone, but if you don't want to look at it, don't look at it. It's a choice for how you want to interact with the people at that event.

Diana: And if there were paper bid sheets and there was an item I wanted, I would be obsessed. I wouldn't be able to have a conversation with anyone. I would be the lady standing in front of that sheet, intimidating everyone. So I think getting people away from paper bid sheets and into their devices, where they can just grab their phone, look -- "Oh, I'm still winning, great" -- tell me more about your story, Inga. That's what I like.

Diana: This is 2023. We need to rethink how we're doing the things we used to do after all these years of fundraising.

Inga: That's how it is.

Diana: And from what we've seen, mobile bidding consistently outperforms paper bid sheets in revenue, just because of the amount of time you're asking your donors and bidders to spend managing paper. You're asking them to walk around the room and check their bids all the time. And leave your speech, miss the tear-jerking video -- all of the above -- and possibly miss the paddle raise.

Jeff: Most people aren't going to want to leave their event and their conversation every 10 minutes to place another bid. Thus the revenue loss for the organization.

Jeff: Look, we've kind of beaten that horse. I would say paper is going to cost you more money. If you have comments about it, leave them with us. Disagree with us. Tell us why you believe what you believe. There are people out there who definitely disagree.

Jeff: I would say if you're a charity that's still doing paper bid sheets, take a strong look at it and say, "Maybe we should try this." And if you've had a bad experience with mobile bidding in the past, things have come a long way. We've been in this industry for 12 years. At this point, I haven't run into a single guest recently who has pushed back on giving their phone number, their email address, or their credit card. People are ready for this.

Diana: They really are. It's a totally different conversation now than it was in the 2011, 2012, 2013 timeframe. Because the donors who come to your event, they go to other events, y'all. In case I need to be the one to tell you -- I'm just going to break it down for you. Mr. Jones is going to five different galas this year. Are you going to be the only one with paper bid sheets? Mr. Jones knows how to do things. Give him credit.

Jeff: Well y'all, this has been kind of fun. I've enjoyed this. We should do this again.

Diana: Let's come back to our next episode with more words that aren't really words. Start out with that again.

Jeff: I love it. Like "irregardless." Like "a whole nother."

Diana: Irregardless of what you think, mobile bidding is way funner than paper bid sheets.

Jeff: And with that, we will close out this podcast episode. Thank you guys again for listening to us on the Elevate Your Event podcast. We wish you all the best of luck in your next fundraiser. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend. Leave us a five-star review. If you're not going to leave a five-star review, you don't need to leave us a review. Or you can tell us how amazing we are. But check us out on Apple and Spotify and all the other places where you might listen to your podcasts. All right, thanks guys. Until next time, we'll see you.

Diana: Bye.

Inga: Bye.