Features in this article may not be available in all plans. Contact us to learn more about upgrading.

In a nutshell, Funraise auctions enable you to run charity auctions where you can list various items, products, or experiences and your auction participants can bid on these items. Funraise Auctions are designed to provide an easy-to-use and intuitive auction building experience for a wide variety of auction strategies.

The Funraise auction experience occurs on a responsive webpage that is publicly available for participants to access on their desktop or mobile device.

Participants will be able to view each auction item. Participants can also view the bids for an item and will be able to stay updated with an item's current highest bid.

Bidders will be required to add a payment method to their account before submitting a bid. At the close of an auction, you will be able to charge the saved payment method with the winning bid amount for each item. (More on this below!)

An auction is connected to an Event and each Event can have one auction.

In the auction tab of your event, you can access your auction webpage Url and configure your auction's items.

When configuring an auction item, you can set the Starting Bid and the Fair Market Value.

Starting Bid is the lowest bid that will be accepted for an item.

Fair Market Value is the price an item would sell for in the open market, this is almost always an estimate. The Fair Market Value is important because when a donor does their taxes and deducts the an auction item payment as a donation, they will be able to deduct only the amount of the payment that is over the Fair Market Value.

You can set the dates that your auction will be open. This is the timeframe during which auction items can accept bids.

You can have your auction launch and end date match your Event dates or configure custom dates. We recommend opening an auction before your event to allow participants to sign up, add a payment method, and start placing bids before the event begins.

You can toggle on or off SMS notifications for your bidders. Bidders can receive an SMS notification when they are outbid — letting them know they should place a higher bid! And bidders can be notified when the are the top bidder, which is essentially a bid confirmation.

The ability to send SMS bid notifications is based on your plan. Funraise's Text Engagement feature is required to send SMS bid notifications.

At the conclusion of an auction, winning bids can be charged using the saved payment method provided by the bidder.

When an item is purchased with a bid:

When an Item is purchased with a bid, the bidder will receive a receipt for the payment. The receipt will include the Transaction Total and the Fair Market Value of the item.

Because each Bid payment creates a Transaction, you can resend a receipt if needed from the Transaction profile.

​

Participants will interact with your public auction webpage on their desktop or mobile device.

Participants can view a gallery of all the items available in the action. From the item listing page, participants can view the current highest bid and click into each item to learn more or make their own bid.

Auction item visibility is public, which means any participant can view auction items whether or not they have logged in.

If logged in, bidders can click My Bid Items to view the items they have bid on and quickly see if they are still the current leading bidder or if they have been outbid.

Participants can place bids directly on the auction site. Before placing a bid, participants will be required to create an account or log in to their account and add a payment method.

Participants will be required to create an account and add a payment method before placing a bid. Creating an account enables participants to securely add their payment method (Credit Card or ACH) and login to review their active bids.

When a participant creates an account with an email address that does not exist in your platform, a new Supporter will be created in the platform.

Donors Cover Fees is not available for Auction payments

Auction payments do not have the option for donors to cover fees. Auction payments will incur your base Platform Transaction Fee and applicable processing fees (usually 2.9%+30¢ with Funraise Payments).