We added an online auction to our silent/live event for 2 years but had little luck with it. I work at an international day and boarding school and we hoped that this would get our international parents involved but it ended up being local parents that purchased the few items that were purchased. This year at our event we used Bidpal which is an electronic bidding system for the silent auction and it was awesome! It is costly but it was well worth the money and it drove bids much higher than in the past.

We did a combo last year. First we put some items up on an online auction and then we did a live event. We talked about the possibility of nixing the live part this year but decided that we would scale back instead. We are switching to a cheaper venue (it used to be in a hotel function room) and we are not doing sit down meals, just appetizers and a cash bar.We are hoping that the lesser price ticket will encourage more people to come. It's hard to give up this adult event. I can tell you that last year doing the combo we raised more money than previous years. It's a good way to get relatives who wouldn't go to an auction to contribute to the pot.

We're thinking of scrapping our live auction event and moving to an online auction as a fundraiser. Has anyone done this? Did you raise at least the same amount?