For many nonprofits, live auctions are among the most lucrative and engaging fundraising events they run. The event’s entertainment value combined with the chance to purchase one-of-a-kind items creates a positive attendee experience while bringing in significant revenue to fund your organization’s mission.
The key to a successful live auction is procuring prizes that interest supporters and have a strong potential for revenue generation. To help you get started, this guide will cover all you need to know about live auction items, including:
- The Best Live Auction Item Ideas
- How to Procure Live Auction Items
- Additional Resources on Live Auctions
As you consider which live auction items to procure and how to obtain them, always keep your nonprofit’s unique audience in mind—after all, you’ll only reach your fundraising goal if your supporters want to buy your items! That being said, let’s dive into our list of the best live auction items.
The Best Live Auction Item Ideas
To help you determine which items align with your audience’s preferences, we’ve divided our prize ideas into five categories. Theme your whole auction around one type of prize, or choose a few items from each category to appeal to more varied interests. Either way, your completed auction catalog should contain approximately 12-15 items to keep your event to a reasonable length.
Arts and Leisure Live Auction Items
Your supporters likely spend their free time in a wide variety of ways. Whether they enjoy sports, performing arts, or simply relaxing, the right exclusive items or unique activities can bring in big bids. For example, you could offer:
- Tickets to an upcoming Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup, or Olympic Games
- Opportunities to throw out the first pitch or do a coin toss at a professional or college game
- Signed memorabilia from a specific sports team (such as jerseys, balls, and baseball cards)
- Seats at a live taping of a popular talk show or game show
- Behind-the-scenes tours of film or TV sets
- Tickets to a movie premiere, including professional photos on the red carpet
- Front-row seats and backstage passes for a popular concert or Broadway show
- Signed instruments formerly owned by famous musicians
- Tickets to a major entertainment awards show like the Oscars or Grammys
- Mani-pedis, facials, professional massages, and other spa treatments
- Popular technology like smartphones, tablets, fitness trackers, and Bluetooth headphones
To find items your supporters want to win, consider sending out a survey about their preferences in sports and entertainment, especially what their dream experiences in those areas would be. It’s also useful to research what concerts, shows, and sporting events are coming up to ensure your offerings align with current trends.
Food and Beverage Live Auction Item Ideas
Like with arts and leisure, live auction items that involve food and beverages need to appeal to supporters’ varied tastes. Some of the top options include:
- Multi-course dinner at a high-end restaurant
- Behind-the-scenes tour of a brewery and beer sampler
- Vineyard tour, wine tasting experience, and bottles to take home
- Year’s supply of coffee from a local coffee shop
- Free catering for an event (personal or corporate)
- Winner’s choice of a meal prepared at their home by a celebrity chef or the winner of a cooking show
- Popular, high-quality kitchen appliances like mixers, blenders, or air fryers
- Professional cooking classes
- Having a menu item named after the winner at a local restaurant or bakery
- Opportunity to create a custom flavor at an ice cream shop
While some auction participants might be looking for physical items, many prefer to win either experiences or consumable items that don’t clutter up their homes. Offering live auction items themed around food and beverages covers the categories of experiences and consumables simultaneously!
Family-Friendly Live Auction Items
Chances are, some of your auction participants will be parents or grandparents looking for kid-friendly items. If they see one-of-a-kind activities for children and families in your auction catalog, they’ll be excited to bid. Cater to this segment of your nonprofit’s audience with items such as:
- Day-in-the-life experiences for different careers, like firefighters or pilots
- Opportunities to meet famous people from the surrounding communities, such as athletes or children’s book authors
- After-hours access at an arcade or family fun park
- Season tickets to nearby amusement parks or water parks
- Community pool passes for the entire summer
- Annual membership at a local children’s museum, aquarium, or zoo
- Private movie screening at a local theater (including concessions)
- Video game consoles, controllers, and games
- Popular, valuable toys such as LEGO sets or American Girl Dolls
- Birthday party packages, including games, a custom cake from a local bakery, and a visit from a performer dressed as an animated character
Family-friendly auction items are often just as popular with the kids who benefit from them as they are with the adults who bid on them. You’ll engage your current supporters who have children or grandchildren and introduce your organization and its mission to the youngest members of your community.
Health and Wellness Auction Item Ideas
Healthy living is something anyone can benefit from, regardless of age or interests. Consider offering these items and experiences at your next auction to appeal to your health-minded donors:
- Gym, aquatic center, or golf club memberships
- Specialized fitness classes such as Zumba or Barre
- Supplies for popular racket sports (tennis, badminton, pickleball, etc.)
- Professional lessons for any sport
- Healthy eating cooking classes or workshops
- Mindfulness and meditation sessions
- Active adventures like hiking retreats or white-water rafting trips
- Personal training sessions
- High-end workout clothes and shoes
- Home gym equipment (treadmills, ellipticals, weights, etc.)
In addition to taking your audience into account, consider your nonprofit’s mission when choosing auction item themes. Healthcare organizations and other wellness-related charities would likely benefit from incorporating health-related items into their auctions since they’ll indirectly promote their missions of improving community health as they fundraise.
Travel-Related Live Auction Items
Travel-related items are best-sellers at nonprofit auctions for several reasons. Putting together a few vacation packages adds unique, big-ticket items to your auction, allowing you to bring in some of your live auction’s largest bids. Plus, travel appeals to a wide range of supporters.
Some of our favorite ideas for travel-themed live auction items include:
- Stays at luxury beach resorts with meals and activities included
- All-inclusive ocean or river cruises with multiple ports of call
- Flights and hotel stays for a domestic destination of the winner’s choice
- Holiday-season trip to New York City for VIP viewing of either the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square
- Trip to Washington D.C. with private tours of the U.S. Capitol, White House, national monuments, and Smithsonian museums
- Family vacation to Disney World or Disneyland, including park admission and on-property accommodations
- Sightseeing tour of a popular international tourist destination, like Paris, London, or Tokyo
- Ski chalet stay, mountain passes, and equipment rentals
- A bundle of high-quality luggage and other travel products like neck pillows, portable chargers, and TSA-approved toiletry containers
- “Road trip survival kit” with a trunk organizer, cooler, sunglasses, reusable water bottles, snacks, car games, car chargers, and several gas station gift cards
While these travel-related items are popular and lucrative, they’re often the most challenging type of auction item to procure. Fortunately, there are dedicated providers of fundraising auction travel packages you can partner with to make this easier (like Winspire!).
How to Procure Live Auction Items
Now that you have a better idea of the types of prizes to include in your nonprofit’s live auctions, let’s look at four top tips to procure them.
Get to Know Your Audience
As mentioned previously, it’s vital to understand your live auction’s target audience so you can procure items they’d be excited to win. Use the information in your nonprofit’s donor database to segment your supporters, or group them based on shared characteristics such as:
- Demographics: Age, location, education, family status, wealth
- Giving history: Average donation amount, giving frequency and recency, lifetime value
- Engagement history: Past event attendance, volunteer service, interactions with your organization’s marketing materials
Once you’ve created supporter segments based on this information, choose the groups you’d most like to engage through your live auction and consider what types of prizes might interest them. For example, an older audience of major donors would likely prefer box seats at an opera or symphony orchestra performance over front-row tickets to the concert tour of the summer, but your young volunteers might jump at the chance to win the latter.
If you have any questions about which items your target audience would prefer, send a survey to supporters in that segment so they can provide your event planning team with firsthand insights.
Form an Auction Item Committee
Auction item procurement is a complex process, so it’s best to get multiple people involved. Assemble a committee of staff members, board members, and volunteers, and plan an initial meeting (either in-person or via video conference) to collaboratively brainstorm your live auction item wishlist. Write down as many ideas as possible, then prioritize them based on how much you want them and how easy they’ll be to secure.
Once you have a wishlist, divide up sourcing responsibilities among your committee members, taking into consideration everyone’s skills and connections. For example, if one of your staff members has excellent negotiation abilities, you might put them in charge of contacting an amusement park about discounted season passes. Or, if one of your volunteers works at an electronics store, you could have them ask their boss about contributing a new smartphone to your auction.
Send each committee member out with a procurement packet that includes a copy of your wishlist, a contribution form, and a donation request letter template that they can customize for each individual or business they approach. Train them on best practices for soliciting contributions in person, over the phone, and via email; and ensure they’re prepared to pivot if someone turns down their initial request.
Leverage Corporate Sponsorships
The first place you should turn when looking for live auction items is your existing corporate sponsors. While individual donors and new sponsors may be willing to contribute prizes, leveraging relationships you’ve already established will save your organization time and resources.
Approach each sponsor with a request for a specific item that aligns with their business model, but have some backup ideas in mind in case they say no. For instance, if the electronics store owner in our earlier example didn’t want to donate a new smartphone but still seemed interested in supporting the auction, you could ask them to contribute a video game system or fitness tracker instead. Some businesses might prefer to support your auction financially rather than (or in addition to!) donating items, so have fiscal sponsorship options available as well.
Keep in mind that the most effective partnerships between nonprofits and businesses are mutually beneficial, so your organization should provide auction sponsors with free publicity in exchange for their support. Feature their logos on your event signage, in your marketing materials, and on the Acknowledgments page of your auction catalog to thank them for their contributions and foster a long-term relationship.
Understand Your Procurement Options
Another important thing to remember with live auction items is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to procurement. Depending on the types of items you want to feature, you can secure each prize using one of three methods:
- In-kind donations. The most straightforward and cost-effective way to procure an auction item is to have an individual donor or corporate sponsor give it to you directly. This method is best for securing physical items and gift certificates.
- Nonprofit discounts. Many performance venues, amusement parks, and other places that require admission fees offer reduced-price tickets to be used in nonprofit fundraisers. While these discounts aren’t always well advertised and sometimes require negotiation, it’s the best way to secure these exclusive items at a low cost.
- Consignment auction item providers. As mentioned above, vacation packages are often the most difficult auction items to procure. They’re rarely donated, and putting together all of the trip’s elements via nonprofit discounts takes a lot of time and effort. Purchasing these items on consignment is the most straightforward way to secure them—which you can do by partnering with a dedicated auction travel provider like Winspire.
How Winspire Works
Winspire curates bucket-list charity vacation packages that nonprofits across North America can use to boost revenue from fundraisers like live auctions, silent auctions, and raffles. Your organization can get started with Winspire in four easy steps:
- Browse Winspire’s vacation packages, or Experiences, and choose the ones that would appeal to your live auction’s target audience.
- Promote your chosen Experiences to your supporters—Winspire will provide photos of each vacation that you can use in your event marketing materials.
- Offer the vacation packages at your event risk-free, because you only pay for what you sell at your event.
- Provide a voucher to each winning bidder so they can work with Winspire to book their vacation—there is no additional work required for your organization!
When you sell Winspire’s Experiences at your live auction, every dollar you raise above the Nonprofit Cost (list price) goes directly to your organization. Since our founding in 2008, we’ve helped our clients raise more than $110 million for their missions!
Wrapping Up: Additional Resources on Live Auctions
The ideas in this guide are just a few of the many possibilities you could consider for your nonprofit’s live auction. Remember to communicate with supporters to understand their preferences, then take those into consideration as you finalize your catalog. Additionally, ensure quality and minimize risk by working with the right auction item providers—like Winspire!
For more information on fundraising auctions, check out these resources:
- The Ultimate List of 150+ Silent Auction Item Ideas. Many of our favorite silent auction prizes will also work for live auctions—explore even more ideas for your event!
- How to Organize a Fundraiser Auction in 10 Simple Steps. Item procurement is just one of the critical steps in planning a nonprofit auction—learn more in this guide.
- Donor Stewardship: How to Foster Lasting Relationships. Discover how to effectively thank and follow up with live auction participants to retain their support for your mission.
