They could punch in their bids on an iPod Touch through dinner, from a bathroom stall or even at the bar. And boy, did they ever.
Auction organizers Kathy Carbonari and Debbie Terlato couldn’t believe it. Thanks mostly to the gadgets, which many a husband took to like TV remotes, the Boys & Girls Club of Chicago’s silent auction proceeds more than doubled to $185,521 this year from last year’s $71,994.
And that excludes the $18,500 a couple “accidentally” bid — and the club forgave — for a weeklong stay at a Wyoming ranch. (The device requires you to OK a bid twice, so we’re wondering how that happened.)
Carbonari said she got the idea after attending a Loyola Academy fundraiser in 2009. The remote bidding was done on a clunkier device but nevertheless captivated donors.
“I watched guys, grown men at my table, playing with this thing,” Carbonari said. “They were getting such a kick out of it. It was like a video game. That’s when it first struck me that the Boys & Girls Club had to do this. … And then we found out (the new device) was an iPod, we thought, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s perfect.'”
The concept is from BidPal. The Indianapolis-based startup launched the service in the fall of 2008 and used two other devices before adopting the iPod Touch. BidPal entered the Chicago market in 2009, starting with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Red or White Ball, and now runs silent auctions in 10 cities, from New York to Los Angeles. Next year the company plans to offer the service nationally.
In Chicago, nonprofits from Ravinia to the Make-A-Wish Foundation have relied on the company to run auctions. Ravinia wouldn’t disclose auction revenues from its Festa event in April, but associate development director Bryan Alderman said they jumped 83 percent in one year with BidPal. Part of that, he said, was due to BidPal’s efficiency, which allowed the festival to offer more items.
Deborah Purcell, special events manager for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Illinois, says the service makes sense for events that draw more than 500 attendees. Fees, which cover on-site staff and equipment, make it impractical for smaller gatherings, she said. The service cost the Boys & Girls Club about $13,000.
Bill Sullivan, a group president at Illinois Tool Works, recommended the device to Purcell after he used it at a Les Turner ALS Foundation fundraiser.
“It made it a heck of a lot of fun,” he said. “The only thing is you lose the ability to know who you’re competing against. With the device, it’s just bam, bam, bam. I think (bidders’) photos should pop up on the screen, so you know who you’re bidding against.”
Silent auctions are a part of almost every charity event. Typically, they are held in the same room as a cocktail hour, but after the party moves to a ballroom, guests rarely return to check their bids. That means money is “left on the table,” Terlato explained. That’s where BidPal comes in.
“Now when you get outbid, the device starts flashing in your lap,” said Lori Davidson, Steppenwolf’s director of event management. “I’ve seen couples fighting back and forth over who gets control of the device. Or we had one instance where a husband and wife were bidding against each other for the same prize, and didn’t even know it.”
I witnessed a woman repeatedly order her husband to hand over the device during a dinner. He refused — likely because bidding for a weeklong stay at an Italian villa had exceeded $11,000.
The devices also allow people to be sneaky. Terlato herself was surprised to learn her husband, William Terlato, had bid on an item. She didn’t know until a club staff member called her days later, saying the tickets to the sporting events were in the mail.
Still, technology goes only so far.
“If you don’t have a guest list of people who have the ability to bid up, you’re not going to get anything,” says Marletta Darnall, a member of the woman’s board at the Boys & Girls Club, which runs the annual ball.
As for accidental bids, Make-A-Wish encounters that every year at its Wish Ball.
“That’s not a function of BidPal,” Purcell said. “That’s a function of too much liquor.”
Movers & Shakers
Howard Brandeisky, a 20-year veteran of Kraft Foods, was named vice president of global marketing at Elgin-based John B. Sanfilippo & Son, a distributor of nut-based snacks under the Fisher, Orchard Valley Harvest and Sunshine Country Brands.
Marc Miller was named vice president for external affairs at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Miller is president of the board of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
Hari Nair was named to the newly created position of chief operating officer of Tenneco, a Lake Forest-based manufacturer of automotive equipment.
Melissa Harris, who thinks a group of generous people should band together and cover that $18,500 — and get a vacation at a Wyoming ranch for it — can be reached at mmharris@tribune.com or 312-222-4582. Twitter@ChiConfidential.
