Today we released a new “Auction Gift” feature. This feature lets organizers capture more donations on auctions by allowing bidders to automatically donate at the end of the auction if they don’t win any of their bids. This feature works by adding a custom question to the Checkout that asks the bidder if they would like to support the Organization even if they do not win any of their Auction items at the end of the auction.
If the donor elects to add an Auction Gift while bidding, then one of two things happens once the Auction ends:
- If the bidder wins at least one of their Bids, they pay only their winning bid amount(s). The Auction Gift is not charged.
- If the bidder loses all their Bids, they are charged the amount they specified for their Auction Gift instead.
The bidder can decline to leave an Auction Gift and continue with only their bid as normal, and they will not be charged anything when the Auction ends, if they lose all their bids.
Auction Gifts are an optional feature that the Organizer can turn on in Campaign Setup. This feature will be enabled for new Auctions by default so that we can try to increase the amount raised on average for all auctions. Existing auctions will not have the feature enabled automatically when it releases, but they can manually enable it if they want.
The Organizer can also customize the wording displayed on the checkbox in Checkout.
This is useful for customers to add their unique donation appeal to the checkbox, such as explaining what impact donors can have for the cause, even by making a small donation if they don’t win items.
Auction Gifts are displayed in reports to make them easy to reconcile for Organizers. On the View Payments report, Auction Gifts are displayed as their own rows in the table with a “Pending” status before the auction ends. When the auction ends, charged Auction Gifts will update to “Paid” status while uncharged ones will update to “Voided.” The View Auction Bidders report will also include a new “Paid for Auction Gift” column to denote which bidders paid for an Auction Gift.
On the Donor side, Donors can edit their Auction Gift in My Account by going to the “Bids” tab, pressing the 3-dot menu, and selecting the “Auction Gift settings” button. When clicked, the “Auction Gift settings” button opens the “Auction Gift Settings” modal (refer to the image below). This modal allows the user to edit the amount of their Auction Gift, including the ability to opt out of leaving an Auction Gift.