StoryTelling: Data Retention & Transition is Critical

Our History

Starship Orion School is a K-5 elementary school, located in a suburb of Northern California. My name is Jackie and I was the chair of our school’s annual auction for 2016. This is our fundraising story.

Starship Orion has a dedicated team of volunteers that fundraise, and fundraise well. For 4 years they have auction fundraised with increased growth in both value and funds raised. The volunteers do change roles from year to year but the key to continued & ongoing growth is access historical data for future analysis.

Starship Orion a K-5 elementary school has lots of volunteers that have helped their auction over the past 4 years. Instead of handing over a paper folder and saying “good luck” Auctria has made each auction transition smooth and comprehensive.

Cloud Based is Mandatory

The cloud based or web based program has given our PTO the ability to literally store thousands of bits of information in very stable and always accessible location. Having disconnected team activity in the past was a nightmare! Some people were using Mac or Apple, and an even wider variation of Windows operating systems. This worry simply vanishes with a web based program. It is secure and accessible to all the admins across the street or across the city.

Multiple Administrator & Platform Access

For the last 4 years many volunteers have come and gone from helping with auction. By effortlessly handing over the administration access for Auctria to the next auction committee is ready to go. We are literally handing over all the past year’s data mine so there is no loss in transition. Instead of re-inventing the wheel Auctria let’s a new team pick up where the last team left off.

Using the Data

Having accurate data is CRUCIAL. Using the data helps make smart decisions. Retrospectively reviewing outcomes of different bidding options, starting prices, auction item procurement the planning is efficient.

Procurement is efficient. We know which businesses have donated and the past so we ask them to donate again. Example: Tuscan Dinner for 4 is a widely sought after auction item- let’s ask again for that item!

Past bidder data allow us to keep in touch with past supporters. The more bidders, the higher the bids!

Pricing is another imprecise science but with our OWN history we can create pricing and bidding strategy that will maximize bidding.

Save Sanity and Time

Being organized and providing clear direction to volunteers not only saves time but guarantees that their time is used wisely. Auction volunteers are willing to help, but how? If volunteers feel helpful they come back to help again. Auctria is so super simple.
Auction volunteers find it so easy to search up bidder, donor, item by name number or partial info.

Either a quick tutorial from a co-volunteer or self-teach from the detailed user guide with time and sanity are saved with the simplicity.

Moral of the Story

Information is Knowledge
Information and history is the knowledge that auction teams need to make critical decisions. Nothing is better than your own data to work smarter, faster and yield bigger results. Data is easy to share when it has a home.

Special thanks to Jackie S. from Starship Orion Elementary for kindly sharing their fundraising story. If you have a best-practice to help enlighten the Auctria family please email us at hello@auctria.com