In this episode of The Best Dam Podcast, Jill is joined by Roger Devine, a partner at SchoolAuction.net. As a former PTA president who saw vital school programs go underfunded, Roger breaks down his 18-year mission to stop "burning out" volunteers. He explains how the SchoolAuction.net platform provides not just the software, but the 20 years of data-driven wisdom that grassroots nonprofits need to run efficient, successful, and even fun fundraising events.

Roger provides a masterclass in event-based fundraising. He also discusses why, in the uncertain economic climate of 2025, local events are "showing their superpower" as donors focus their giving "closer to the heart".

DISCUSSION

1. Stop Burning Out Volunteers: Roger explains that his mission began when he saw fundraisers relying on "rudimentary" tools, forcing them to "throw bodies at a problem". The goal of his platform is to respect volunteers by giving them efficient tools, bounding their time, and providing a structure they can work within.
   
   
2. It's Not Just for Schools: Despite the name, SchoolAuction.net is designed for all "grassroots nonprofits". Roger works with local Humane Societies, Young Life chapters, food banks, churches, and any community organization that needs to raise money but doesn't have the resources of a national charity.
   
   
3. The 20-Year"Human AI": Roger emphasizes that clients get more than software; they get his team's wisdom and data. With 20 years of data, he can tell a group "the top five things that work in a live auction for churches in 2024," acting as a human AI for fundraising strategy.
   
   
4. The"Signup Party"(Aha Moment): Roger shares a brilliant fundraising item called a "signup party". These are fixed-price items, like a teacher feature or a pig roast he hosted. This makes the event more equitable, allowing people who don't have the "fattest wallets" to participate.
   
   
5. A Cautionary"Tail": Roger tells a hilarious story of how the "Heads or Tails" game went horribly wrong. One "particularly lubed up" guest bought 100 chances to play, angering all the other guests who wanted a fair shot. When the auctioneer changed the rules mid-game, she "caused a scene".
   
   
6. Fundraising's "Superpower" in 2025: With federal grants under review and private foundations "scared," Roger explains that event-based fundraising is "showing its superpower". In uncertain times, giving gets "closer to the heart," and people are more likely to fund local causes.
   
   
7. Cultivating the"Baby Donor": Auctions obey a 90/10 rule (90% of money from 10% of the audience). But Roger explains you need the other 90% for two reasons: 1) to provide the applause and "ego gratification" for the big donors, and 2) to treat them as "baby donors" you can cultivate into future supporters.
   
   
8. From Publishing to... Artisanal Sardines?: Roger shares his journey from working in book publishing in New York to the tech world. He also reveals a fun fact: he has become a "complete sardine enthusiast".

LEARN MORE

To learn more about Roger Devine and his fundraising platform, visit SchoolAuction.net. and on these social sites:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SchoolAuction

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schoolauction

KEYWORDS

SchoolAuction.net, Fundraising, Virtual Fundraising, Donor Cultivation, Volunteer Management, The Best Dam Podcast, Boulder City Chamber of Commerce

#SchoolAuctionNet #Fundraising #VirtualFundraising #DonorCultivation #VolunteerManagement #TheBestDamPodcast #BoulderCityChamberofCommerce

Podcast Transcript

Jill: I'm so excited today to introduce everybody to Mr. Roger Devine. He's a wonderful partner in the school auction.net program, and I cannot wait to learn a little bit more about what school auction is. Welcome Roger. Thank you for joining me.

Roger: Hi, nice to be here, and thank you, Jill, for the opportunity.

Jill: So please, please, please tell me more about this. I feel like this is something that our community really could utilize and, maybe even, It's been a black hole for a while with this particular programming Share what it is that you do and why you love it.

Roger: Oh. so what we did, this is as much a mission as it is a business or a program.

It's, something we started about 18 years ago. I was a PTA president at the time and PTAs at lots of schools need to do fundraisers. We don't tend to adequately fund education in our country. And so parents have to supplement. and this is a common thing, this happens across the country and in the place where I live in Portland, Oregon, we were, kind of fans of doing, fundraising auction galas at our schools.

They are a common type of fundraiser to run in four schools throughout the country. But, When I went and looked at, when I was PTA president and I went looking around for how we might be able to raise more money for, at our fundraising event, for the PTA. I realized that the tools that were available were extremely rudimentary.

And this was not a huge problem in that you could always fill in with more volunteers. You can always just throw bodies at a problem, right? When you're doing a volunteer fundraiser and you can just burn everybody out that you can reach out to, right? Just find as many people as you can and just burn them the out.

The, the problem is that you burn people out and then they're not available for next year and they're not available for the year after that. So we set out to build a system that would help make the teams that put on these fundraising events much, much more efficient with their time.

Give them tools that would allow them to do a lot more within a lot fewer hours. If you think about it, we wanna respect. The volunteers that are sticking their eggs out and doing things they don't have to do in order to make our communities better. And so let's give 'em better tools.

let's bring this out there. So we developed a whole platform for this that includes things like ticket sales and includes things like, a bidding platform where people can, Place bids online if they want to, or they can do paper bid sheets or they can do all sorts of things. We've expanded this out to help people with golf tournaments, et cetera.

Other types of fundraisers, thos, capital campaigns and the like. But for the most part, the reason that this is a different thing than many other things that kind of look like it is because of the target audience. You know what we are, I am less interested. In helping the American Red Cross or the American Cancer Society, I respect them.

What they do is amazing. We need them. However, there's a lot of people that are available to help those organizations.

The organizations that don't tend to get as much assistance tend to be the grassroots nonprofits, the ones on the ground in a specific community that are handling the needs of a particular community.

Obviously the one, the style of community nonprofit that we started out with were PTAs, that's a community nonprofit organization. Got a very small area that they're concerned with, a small group of people they're trying to enhance the lives of. but this translates out, there might be a local Humane society that's not part of one of the big national chains in your area, and they gotta keep the doors open too.

So this is what we take out and we, provide to, organizations that just need a little bit of help there.

Jill: So what you're saying is, if I were to implement these types of tools, that people would not be afraid to answer the phone when they see my number come up 'cause I won't burn out my volunteers.

Roger: Exactly. The idea is you're gonna be able to go out to a volunteer, you're gonna be able to give them a job that is bounded. You're asking them for a hundred hours of volunteer time, or you're asking them for 50 hours of volunteer time and you've got a specific thing that you need to ask them to do, and you're not asking them to do everything.

And furthermore, you're not asking them to organize everything,

Jill: Right

Roger: You've got the structure that they can work within, and so when they see your number pop up on their iPhone, they're like, oh, okay. I don't have, I don't have to run screaming.

Jill: Yes, it does happen. Share a little bit with me, first of all, before we get into how it actually works.

Roger:  Yeah.

Jill:  Gimme a little bit of the history. So you guys are,you're a partner in this and so you have other partners that, that, helped you begin this. And it's all online. You don't come into a community. It's all, you can do everything right there from that wonderful desk.

Roger: Absolutely. We absolutely can. We're gonna provide, at the end of the day, what we provide is software, a software platform for the organization to use to plan, manage, and run their events. Okay. That's what you pay for when you get in business with us. when you decide to use our software, that's what you get for the money you put out there, but you also get more because, Most people that are gonna put on a fundraising event, most people that are gonna volunteer to do one of these, especially for a grassroots organization in a local community, are not taking on a job to do this forever. They're taking on a job to do this year. I'm gonna do this bit, I'm here for this bit here.

So generally they know. Less about how to conduct an effective fundraiser than say I do. 'cause I've done a hundred of these,

Jill: Right

Roger: myself, and I've helped tens of thousands of organizations run them. I literally have done hundreds of events myself though.

Jill: But they know their community. And an event is always different in every community, right?

Roger: Absolutely. So they get to design their event, they get to design how it's going to be, it needs to resonate culturally with the group that's going to be attending, exactly. and I'm talking to my customers, I can say, I'll give you some generic ideas here, and I've got a lot of data too, as to what works and what doesn't work. But I'll tell my customers, I'll give you a generic overview here. You need to put the filter on that says, this is the community. These are the 150 to 300 people that I can get into a room to do this fundraiser with. Or these are the 500 people that are on my email list that I can bring to an online fundraiser.

And they get to decide. They know who those people are, so they get to design the event to resonate with those people. We just give 'em the tools to execute it.

Jill: That's awesome. And so you're the support to the investment and you know that investment pays off and that sounds like Oh, yeah. That you've been able to perform.

Roger: One of the things that I really believe is that even though I'm not charging for consulting, and we don't ever charge for any kind of consulting or support or whatever.

If I have something that I can contribute that will help an organization make more money, then when they reevaluate the tool at the end of the year and decide whether it was worth it or not.

Chances are likely that they're gonna say yes, because, we were not only able to give them a tool that they could use, but we were able to give them information that they were able to turn into, wisdom there and execute.

Jill: And that's the value, your wisdom, your behind the scenes knowledge, your, institutional, information that you've had for forever because of your experiences. We can't get that from ai. AI is not, it's,

Roger: yeah, it's really hard, and, yeah, because. These fundraising, auction, especially addressing the AI part of this here, fundraising auctions are not a large enough cultural phenomenon to have generated the volume of training data that Theis would need to ingest in order to be really good at it.

When you think about what AI is gonna be good at answering, it's gonna be good at answering the most common questions that get asked, because there's the most training data on those questions.

Fundraising auctions are a weird thing. We are often our little niche here. I think there's maybe 10,000 people in the United States that really pay attention to what fundraising auctions are doing on a regular basis.

Most of the rest of us, once the event is over. We're ready to move on to something else,

Jill: Yeah.

Roger: But, we've got, we've got 20 years worth of not only, not only experience ourselves, the sort of soft stuff that builds the intuitions that helps you drive stuff like this.

Jill: Yeah.

Roger:  We've also got data. I've got a data like 20 years worth of auction data in it. So I can tell you say the top five things that work in a live auction for churches in 2024.

Jill: Wow. Yeah. So you're our ai.

Roger: We've got the data. We've got the data, and we're out here and we're really, we're ready to help.

Jill: I love that. So now I am in love with this concept. I want to work with you. Tell me first steps. We've now signed our contract. What are we doing?

Roger: Okay. After you, after you sign the contract and you're gonna be working with you, we're gonna set up credit card processing. You certainly wanna be able to take credit cards for payment at your event.

I'm gonna show you how to do all of the features regarding. Collecting, cataloging and merchandising, any items you might include in an auction. We're gonna lump that under item management. there's a variety of tools there and a variety of things you need to accomplish.

Jill: Okay.

Roger: And then there's a whole huge list of tools if you're doing a live event, if it's not purely online.

There's a whole huge list of tool or a bunch of tools for managing your guest flow at the experience.

My favorite analogy is that a fundraising auction is like a department store only. It's only open for six hours a year. And, people are coming in and there's a whole bunch of different things that they can do, and there's a bunch of people moving around on the floor and they're engaging in different ways, and they're making donations in different ways, and they're doing different things here.

And you've gotta manage all of those people. You've gotta get 'em in, you've gotta get 'em seated for dinner. You've gotta get them, appropriately lubed up for your live auction. And then you have to, and then you have to get them out of the event. You need to get them checked out and outta the event while the guests are still happy.

If you make your guests stand around too long, at the end of the evening, they get cranky. They're sweaty. They've been dancing for a couple of hours, they're a little bit drunk. they're ready for this night to be over and you're making them stand in a line so that you can make them write a check to give you money.

Not a great look. All of the tools regarding how we sell our guest a ticket, collect their information. maybe we need to collect a meal choice or something. Move them through, check-in, move them through the evening, sell them things, collect their money, give them receipts, send 'em home while they still got a smile on their face so that next year when we ask them to buy tickets to attend at the next year's event, it's a avail. They're willing to do

Jill: right

Roger: They're not unhappy. Not unhappy about how last year ended.

Jill: They had a great experience and that's all they remember is the great experience.

Roger: Exactly.

Jill: I love that. Okay, so very good. So the management of it all, and so now I'm realizing, this isn't just for schools, like you said before, it could be a capital campaign if it's done online, it could be a fundraiser for our hospital foundation.

There's a lot of different opportunities that this software program really can fit into and you help design that.

Roger: Yeah. I was one of the founding partners. Yeah. And I'm very proud of the work we've done. I would point out that there is a rather, there is an organization based in Colorado, not in Boulder, but in Colorado, that we work with a lot on a regular basis.

And that's Young Life. the Young Life chapters at various, high schools and things are not PTAs. But it's the same idea. it's they got their own sports clubs or their own interest clubs, for young life. It's about fellowship and communion and they get out there and they get together and do service projects and they raise money to do those things.

So they like doing fundraising auctions just a PTA would.

Jill: Very good. I love the idea that really, the community knows their community best. They'll know what prices are gonna work, they'll know absolutely auction items,

Roger: absolutely

Jill: to swing, but then you've got the data to say, just FYI at a church auction.

In the last year, we had these things were the highest raised, auction items. I love that. That's great. Okay, so now I've got a general sense of what school, auction.net is. I'm loving the concept. Help me be comfortable with beginning getting involved with your organization by teaching us a little bit more about you.

This is our favorite part of our podcast interviews. And can you give me an idea of an aha moment that you might have had sometime in your career as you have been working with this? I would imagine you have alleviated a lot of burden from individual organizations as they're doing these fundraisers.

Roger: Absolutely, we've alleviated a lot of burden there. I think that one of the aha moments that I had, concerned an auction that I chaired, I was in charge of running the event. It's an occupational hazard. And it was, I was doing it for my rotary club. Oh, and my Rotary Club does a, an annual fundraiser every year, and they had never included in their annual fundraisers an element that I had picked up from our customers.

A thing that you can do at your fundraising event, and these were, or a thing you can sell, and these were something we call signup parties, or easel parties, or pay to play parties. There are things where the item donor is donating. This, at some point in the future, they're gonna hold a party or they're gonna do something fun and you're gonna wanna be part of it.

So if you wanna be part of it, you go ahead and at the auction, sign up to go, and there's a fee per head and it's a fixed price thing.

Jill: That's cool.

Roger: Yeah, they're great. They're, things come out of schools. They tend to be called things like teacher features. 'cause a lot of times this is how teachers will contribute to a given auction.

They're wonderful because they're fixed price items. This is really important because unless you have fixed price items. If everything is biddable at your event, the people who have the most fun are the people with the fattest wallets. And we need to be a little bit more equitable about that.

We need to make sure that the guy who comes to the event with a hundred bucks can spend a hundred bucks.

Jill: Oh, I love that.

Roger: Even if he can't spend anymore. They're good for that. But then there was the, here's the aha moment. I donated a particular signup party to my rotary club for that year.

Not only sharing the auction, I'm also donating the items. It's like you get drawn into doing all of it, but I'm donated a pig roast. I have a lovely setup for roasting pigs in my backyard. little pigs and, I can accommodate a bunch of guests and it was a lot of fun. And we did this the first year for the Rotary Club and a bunch of Rotarians came by and we had a great time.

It was a lovely time. We did on July 4th. It was amazing. We all watched fireworks afterwards. It was great. The next year when we were planning our fundraiser, when we made the initial announcements, people came up to me right away and said, when can I buy tickets? I need to make sure I can sign up for the pig roast again.

And this was like, oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. the items can draw the attendance. In an annual basis here.

Jill: I love that.

Roger: We're really excited about the one time things, you can buy the trip to Bali or whatever, but these perennial items can provide a baseline of support every year. They may not be your biggest money makers, but if they're gonna bring people into the room. Wow. Now you make money off of them by having them there in the room for the other things you're doing.

Jill: That is awesome. I love that. And so obviously you, sorry that I'm hooked on this, but this is brand new and I'm loving this concept.

So then you determine, okay, I only have room for 30 people, so only allow 30 people at a hundred dollars to be able to sign up. So you so then you create fomo.

Roger: A little bit of fomo.

Jill: Yeah. Yeah. And so I am loving that. What a special concept. And then you as the donor, you provided the food and That.  

Roger: Oh yeah. yeah. Lots of fun. I'll give you another aha moment that I was at an event and everybody had the aha moment at the same time, and this was not a good aha moment. So I'll give you one of these, but it's funny.

Jill: Okay.

Roger: There's a game that can get played at fundraising events. This game is called Heads or Tails.

It's basically, it's a coin flip game. But you ask everybody who's going to play the game to purchase an opportunity to play the game. If you're gonna be in a raffle, you gotta buy a raffle ticket. If you're gonna play this game, you gotta buy. Buy an opportunity to play,

Jill: right

Roger: And generally this game is called Head of Tails.

You, you know what happens is if you can play, the Auctioner asks you to stand up, everybody stands up. Then he asks you to put your hand on your heads or your hand on your tail. Your own tail only, and then he flips a coin and everybody who's got their hands in the right place gets to stay in the game.

And everybody who doesn't gets to sit down and they're done unless they bought more than one chance to play the game, in which case they just move on to the next opportunity. Usually this is done by selling Mardi Gras beads as opportunities to play the game. So I'd sell you'd, I'd ask you how many times you wanna play.

You'd say three. I'd hand you over three strings of Mardi Gras beads. If you lost, you had your hands on your heads and it came tails you could take off one of your strings of beads and you could stay in the game.

Jill: That is cool. Yep. Tell me how this goes wrong.

Roger: How this goes wrong is when one person in your auction.

Reads the room and decides, oh, all I have to do is buy a hundred sets of beads.

Jill: And so they're just constantly winning and oh my God,

Roger: they're gonna outlast everybody else by buying. And the problem with this is not that you're selling a lot of beads, that's a little bit of money making. The problem is that all of the other guests who wanted to play the game on a fair basis, get ticked off.

They get angry. Which is not what you want them to be feeling while they're standing in the middle of your fundraising auction. So what happened in this particular case was, was disastrous. the, the auctioneers figured out what was going on and then in an, a move that I have not seen before or since he decided to stop the game and change the rules midstream.

So he told this woman she could only play three times and she was particularly lubed up and she, caused a scene.

Jill: Oh, no. Yeah, I, for some reason in my head, I started worrying that somebody put their hands on someone else's tail.

Roger: I'm sure that happens too, and people get slapped, but this was more about how the fundraising was conducted and how it went astray.

And, fundraising auctions really, when you first go to 'em, when you first, when you go to your first one, you think oh, this isn't that. Complicated a thing. This is a kind of a thing that I could do. I could throw a party like this, and the answer is absolutely you can. But it does behoove you to learn a little bit about how they work first.

Jill: So Yeah. Or think through to the bitter end of what the bad scenario could possibly be.

Roger: Absolutely. Understand the way these things generally go there, and that's why I say this is such a niche interest that AI is probably gonna be several years behind where it is when it tells us how to make a good cup of coffee.

Jill: Yeah. No, you're exactly right. I am loving those fun ideas and I can see that you are full of options that really can help us take our events to the next level because I do feel like

Roger: absolutely,

Jill: sometimes we get into a rut. And so I'm loving our visit. I'm so glad we got to talk about those two fun ideas. I would imagine that you must have a wonderful history. Tell us what your first job was.

Roger: My first job was, if we go way back, my first job was washing dishes at a summer camp. But my first interesting job was, after I graduated from college, I went to work in book publishing, which you might be able to figure out, in the background there. Yeah,

Jill: tell you have quite the library there.

Roger: Yeah. And that's, sadly, that's about, I don't know. 10% of it. I went to work in, New York for Viking Penguin, now the Penguin Group. It's been through many changes. and I worked at, I started out my career. I wanted to be an editor.

I wanted to be a book editor. I wanted to, edit the great American novel. And I got to a point where I did get far enough in that career where I did edit some books myself and get them out on the market and things that I was responsible for. And that was wonderful. Then, life takes its twists and turns, and I got seduced into the idea.

This is back in the early nineties. I got seduced into the idea that reading was gonna migrate from paper to screens. This is long before the Kindle. I went to work for a company that tried to do what Amazon eventually did with the Kimball. Kindle failed. But that led me into the tech world and the tech world is where I've stayed ever since.

I've been, enamored of that. And I, although I am not a coder, I'm not a programmer, I'm not an engineer. I know how to talk to them. I like talking to them. They're great people so I can hang out with them and we can do amazing things together. Which is, where we get right back around to the first question you asked there about our partnership there.

When I'm the PTA guy, I wind up, I wound up. Getting introduced to a couple of guys who were working for their wives who were the PTA presidents at their schools. And there were a couple of geeks in the basement and we hit it off like crazy. And we started a company and now we're, we're helping many organizations raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

I couldn't be happier about it.

Jill: Oh my gosh. It must be so rewarding. I can just imagine. And

Roger: it's good karmic repair. for everything else I've done in my life, I'm making up for it.

Jill: There you go. I just think it's fascinating that you stated that, your two partners were working for their wives because I think that, that support, that story happens all the time.

And what a great thing that came of their need.

Roger: Absolutely.

Jill: Yeah. I love that. And what's your doggies name? I see your puppy back there.

Roger: Yeah, that's, that's Omar. Omar. Good boy.

Jill: Oh,

Roger: and there's another one. There's another one in the other part of the house named Pepper.

Jill: Oh, very fun.

Roger: But he tends to hang out here with me during all of my, sales calls and demos. So most of my customer base has seen Omar before.

Jill: He enjoys the library. I can see that

Roger: he does.

Jill: Okay. So tell me something that maybe other people do not know about you. This is the funniest answer. I asked this question of every one of my guests, and this is the funniest answer I have ever heard. So I hope you remember what you wrote.

Roger: I don't prompt me.

Jill: Okay. so I'm going to prompt you. It has something to do with canned.

Roger: Canned,

Jill: Yes. You said you, have recently gone crazy diving.

Roger: Oh, yeah. Okay. That's what I would've, that's what I would've said anyway. It's like I, yeah, there's a shelf over there in the other corner of the, the, office there with, nine or 10 dozen, tins of canned fish. I've become a complete sardine enthusiast. I, I'd eaten sardines all my life, but I didn't realize you could go artisanal on them.

Roger: You could go all Sunset Magazine and like you could have high-end brands and without, I had no idea. But it's out there.

Jill: And so what drove you to even care? a sardines, a sardine, but I can't, Ima, did you like go to a specialty restaurant and all of a sudden have a great one and you're like, oh, this is way better than the canned I eat.

Roger: I am a foodie. I am an absolute foodie in most of my, my, life.

And no, didn't happen at a restaurant because I'm, I am a very, a very proud cook, myself. I'm a very ego, I'm very egotistical about my abilities in the kitchen, and, and I, spend a lot of time loving food. I just didn't realize that this wonderful, beautiful, cheap protein that's out there could do so much.

Jill: That is,

Roger: it could be prepared in so many ways.

Jill: That is hysterical. So I, thank you for that comical answer and, I'm glad to know that someone is interested in such a thing. I would not have thought so. So I've been educated.

Roger: There you go.

Jill: Thank you very much. Okay. So I would imagine. We're gonna get to be, we're gonna go from fun to something probably a little bit more,

Roger: sure.

Jill: Stressful for you. And a little bit more topical. So I know that here locally we have a local, food bank. It's called Emergency to Boulder City. That they are stressed, they are struggling, and that then of course puts pressure and stress on our community because they recently, were notified that they would not be receiving some of their federal funding.

Can you please share with us in 2025 the value of what it is that you are doing? Because I can imagine that you are seeing across the board some, some concern and some worry and a true need.

Roger: Oh, you're not wrong. First of all, we don't need to get political here, but it is an actual fact that, since the beginning of the year, this administration has placed a large number of, federal grants to nonprofit organizations under review and has revoked many of them. There has also been pressure on private foundations.

Private foundations you would think would be the next in line to step up and start filling in the gap. But private foundations are scared right now. They're scared about funding things that would come across as the wrong priorities.

They're scared about funding things that, might rebound on them in they're ba they're basically afraid at this point.

So they're not doing as much funding. They're not paying out as much as should be paid out. there have been, a variety of changes to the nonprofit, to the charitable contribution laws over the last decade that have also tended to. Narrow the spout, close the spout a little bit from some of the private foundations.

Certainly things like donor-advised funds, whereas they are a marvelous vehicle for donors, oftentimes are not such a marvelous vehicle for the charities who rely on the funds. When we come down to this. So given all of that's all the prologue, right? Given all of the, what I've just set up there, the, first 10 months of 2025 have been stressful for just about everybody involved in the, charitable nonprofit sector.

From my point of view, I've got a perspective on this, which is that we've been long, helping nonprofit organizations do a specific type of fundraising. Okay. Event-based fundraising and event-based fundraising, to put it mildly, is a redheaded stepchild amongst well-established non-school, non-church charities.

If you're the American, red Cross, whatever, you might hold events, but only to really recognize your donors, not necessarily to really raise the money that you need to continue. they're seen as too much work for too little return, and I get that. That makes a certain amount of sense when you've got a, when you've got a level of develop of fundraising talent within an organization that can accomplish things without putting on events. Events are a lot of work, so you throw those overboard,

Jill: Right

Roger: However, in a time like this, the events may be your most reliable source of fundraising, because if you think about it, events are gonna be drawing on your most committed. local supporters Sure. The ones who see the value of your organization, who sees what you do in the community, sees your impact.

Those people are much more likely to bring nuance to the discussion about what it is they want to fund, and they're much more likely to, fund things that are close at home during times of economic uncertainty. We're not, we're not in a recession right now, but what we know is that during recessions, the charitable fundraising never stops, but it gets closer to the heart,

Jill: right

Roger: It gets, I might not in a rough year donate as much to. a, a national program to the American Cancer Society, which I do donate to since I have cancer, but, whatever, it's in remission. The, I'd be less likely to make that donation than I would be to my kids' school.

Jill: Absolutely,

Roger: because I see the cracks on the playground. And I know that needs to be fixed and I can talk to the people who are going to be involved in the project and I can fund them. So during a time when there's so much stress upstream on funding sources. Any organizations that have thrown events overboard probably should reconsider.

Probably should consider whether or not there's room to bring them back, whether or not this is a tactic that will help fill in the gaps. The dirty little secret, of course, at the end of the day is that events are not going to be able to make up for the loss of enormous federal grants.

If you're getting several million dollars a year from the federal government, you're not gonna make that up at an auction.

Maybe it allows you to retain one staff member. Maybe it allows you to keep the doors open another, another six months. And so events at this point, I think, are showing their superpower in the fundraising world because we're still out there plugging along, raising money for things that need to be done.

And so far there hasn't been. Any reason for us to consider doing things any other way? So let's get out there and raise money and keep the food bank open. Please give them my number. I'd love to work with 'em. I work with a lot of food banks and a lot of communities here, they tend to be organizations that can run effective fundraising events.

'Cause they tend to be in a community where they can draw on a number of people to who, who know their work and care about it.

Jill: You are so right in your statement that during times like this, it does draw closer to the heart. I love that statement because it is what makes the, it's the heartbeat of the community or some of these, local nonprofits that are supportive of your local area.

And yes, you are right there. The cancer organizations, the heart associations, the diabetes associations, all very valuable because they're doing some big projects, working on some big solutions,

Roger: Things that only can be tackled at that level.

Jill: Exactly. But I'm very grateful that my world operates around the center of that heart of that community.

Thank you for that statement. That was great. I would imagine that you probably with that library behind you and with your background, you're probably reading, 15 books at a time. But, tell me what book you might be reading right now.

Roger: What am I reading right now that I want to tell you about? Okay, I'm gonna grab a book. Hang on.

Jill: Okay.

Roger: This is American Sky by Carolyn Dasher. It's a novel about, female pilots during World War ii. And it's an outstanding historical novel that I'm really loving here. And, so yeah, this would definitely be one. I had it in the display there, the display section of my background there. 'cause I like having people ask me about what I'm reading.

Jill: I think that's fascinating. I was gonna say, you went right to it, grabbed it, you knew exactly where it was. So that is amazing. And, that would be something I would have a lot of interest in. My, my mom, here in Boulder City. She was the youngest female solo pilot in the state of Nevada and still holds that record.

Flying and being a pilot, that means a lot to me. So I'm gonna pick that up.

Roger: American Sky, Carolyn Dasher is the author. Go. Go buy a book for her and buy a book for yourself.

Jill: Yep. I love it. Thank you very much. So I would imagine that in your great life you probably are still living lessons that your parents once taught you. Is there a lesson you'd like to share that you still use today?

Roger: No, it's much more of a holistic thing. My mom did pass away a few years ago. She raised me, solo. my dad died when I was a young child, and my mom raised me to be kind.

Jill: Yep.

Roger: My mom and I didn't always agree on everything. and my mom was known for, A heavily political person.

Jill: Oh.

Roger: But she was one of the kindest, most gentlest people when talking to others that there ever was. And it, is truly the through line that connects everything that I've ever been interested in. I want to improve people's lives. I want people to live a better life.

Jill: I would imagine that from that you also realize that in, whether it's a political conversation, much like it sounded like she had many of, having that calm tone and having a civil discussion, you learn so much more from the other point of view as well as being able to share your point of view.

Because you're not yelling it, shouting it, and then you live it. And I think that, that's pretty amazing. She was probably a wonderful woman. I'm glad to, I'm glad that she raised such a great man. is there anything, thank you else about the, the auctions that you talk about. one thing we didn't really, we didn't touch on.

That I still have some interest in is the digital side of this. So we know events and another statement you said events are now showing their superpower with the, now, with the way that 2025 looks. Yes. Events are, they have a superpower, but I would imagine that you guys have developed, a niche also for an online version that could be very beneficial and it sounds like people could implement tomorrow. They don't have to do the

Roger: Oh, yeah.

Jill: The six month planning process.

Roger: Sure. The easiest way to get a fundraiser started right now, if you've got, say, one person to do it and three months to get it done. The easiest thing to do is an online auction, and they're relatively quick and easy to set up.

If you're not going to be selling tickets, if you're not gonna be inviting people into a room, if you're not going to have to feed them, this is a much easier event to put out or to put on. And it's very easy to set it up within about, I don't know, you you get the basic. Platform set up within a couple of hours, and then you're just adding items until you're ready to launch and then you go,really easy to do.

There is a variation on this type of event. There are many variations on this. The problem with doing something completely online, and asynchronous, like an online silent auction where it may take place over a week rather than an hour. The problem with that is that they have a ceiling on how much you're gonna raise.

They absolutely do. You're gonna, you can, you can raise a, 20, $25,000. and. And be happy about it. But you're not gonna raise $200,000 that way. If you wanna raise $200,000, you really need to get people into a room together so you can conduct what is called a special appeal.

Or a paddle raise or a fundee or a fund to cause things like that. Those are the moments when, big dollar fundraising, is really concentrated. So the hybrids are things like, let's get the bidding started ahead of time online and then finish it at the event. Or we had to do this a few years ago during the pandemic.

What if you could put on an event online? What if you could, what if it wasn't asynchronous? It wasn't gonna take a week, it was gonna be confined to an hour and everybody was acting in real time, interacting in real time with their home computer together. What if we all had a big zoom meeting but we bid on things?

And, so we developed that platform. We developed a very specialized version of Zoom. That accommodated real time bidding and payment processing and collecting and things like that. Those were technologically amazing. And they have a great use case for small nonprofits with national reach.

Jill: Oh,

Roger: I'll give you an example. There's a, there are many groups we work with that, Are dedicated to researching and eradicating rare diseases. One of them was the Tubus Sclerosis Alliance.

Wouldn't blame me if you've never heard of them. It's a very rare disease. They've got one office and one place where they coordinate their, programs to help stimulate research, et cetera.

They're based in one city, but they've, their supporter base and their, base of, stakeholders is nationwide.

Jill: Okay.

Roger: It's very diffused. There's not a lot of them in any one place. There's just a lot of them all over the place. Okay. And these virtual live auctions can bring together a stakeholder base like that, and it tends to raise money.

You can raise money doing these. I hesitate to say that they work because they're nowhere near as much fun for the guests. And I don't think that they necessarily work as well to cultivate donors, which is the whole thing that we haven't even talked about yet.

But, they don't work as well on, in, in that front end and in-person event does, but they can be effective money makers and God forbid we ever have another pandemic again and get stuck in our houses, we got the tools to keep going on something like that.

Jill: I love that. I'm glad to know that was an experience and don't you find it fascinating that a little bit of a silver lining came out of the pandemic and what people, we all had so much fear, but yet we are utilizing Zoom and, teams and meet and all of these different things now that.

Really weren't on my radar, and so very grateful that we have these tools that have come from this as well as your online version. you mentioned donor cultivation.  I think we should probably talk about that because that's

Roger: Yeah,

Jill: so important. And it's the lasting impact, right? That's the follow up and the thank you that needs to be done after, although the last confetti, confetti is picked up, we still need to create those relations and maintain those relations.

Roger: One of the beautiful things about a fundraising auction is that they really do obey the 80 20 rule. Actually, it's probably more like 90 10, where you're gonna raise 90% of your money from 10% of your audience.

Whenever, especially when you're, we're dealing with things like a special appeal and biddable live auction items, you know that you're gonna have a core group of usual suspects who have fat wallets in the room.

And they're gonna be at a certain point in their lives. Have to be in order to accumulated the fat wallet. And these are donors that you value and and you've got, and these are donors that are your primary and your core donors. Who's the other 90%? Who are the other people out in the audience?

You have to have an audience because for two reasons really. One, you need applause.

Jill: That's right.

Roger: You absolutely need to pause. For those fat cats that are swinging around their fat wallets, they're doing it because they need the ego gratification,

Jill: right

Roger: So let's give it to 'em. We wanna sell tickets to a bunch of people who are gonna come and cheer 'em on. The second thing is that you can get smaller donations from those people. You can excite them about your mission in your organization, and you can consider them, baby donors that you're gonna, you're gonna enter into your pipeline, enter into your funnel, and you're going to bring them along.

You're gonna introduce them to other fundraising programs that you do, but you're always going to, keep in mind that these are people that came to you from a party. And, for the first couple of years, the party's probably gonna continue to be important to them. So bring them along at your party.

Use it as a way to cultivate, bring 'em along year after year. Eventually they'll buy a seat at the VIP table, or they'll buy a table themselves and bring their friends along to applaud for them. And there you go. You're cultivating donors, you're bringing them along all the way.

Jill: I love that. And, recognizing them for whatever it is that they, I know many of the guests that get invited to some of our larger galas here. They are very grateful that they've been invited because they do believe in the cause and they do wanna be a part of it, but they also wanna be educated on a little bit more of the need and how it was used last year.

And for the most part, in those galas, they talk about those kinds of things too, right? So that donor cultivation is happening in multilevel at those events.

Roger: Absolutely. And those kinds of success stories, are a critical element of the communication plan or, the entertainment plan at your event.

Your auctioneer is gonna need to know all of those things, et cetera. They help drive fundraising this year as well. And, let's not downplay another element here. The people that, care enough to be your big donors, you know the ones that are at the tops of your pipeline, the ones who are sitting at the VIP table.

It is important to them to keep an eye on you. Absolutely. And what you're doing with their money. It is important for them to. serve a role as, cult of ours of your younger guests or your guests who are not as involved in the organization yet. There's a role for them to play to help bring those along.

And then they're also going to want to be visually identified with a cause that they care deeply about. All of us do, right? We all want the world to know that we care about certain problems enough to put our own effort into them. Because, that's a way of persuading other people to care about the things that we care about.

Jill: Yeah, you're right. I, you don't always think about that, but you are right. We do wanna be identified with positive things that are what we truly believe in,

Roger: and so we can provide visibility to these big donors who are really committed by celebrating them at the gala, celebrating their stewardship there at the same time that we're getting them.

At the same time, we're framing this as this is the pathway we want all of you in the room to walk down. We want all of you to be sitting in this seat someday

Jill: And with some of the other programming that you help us plan, it still allows that baby donor to participate and

Roger: absolutely

Jill: come along. And be mentored by that. The fat wallet.

Roger: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jill: I guess we probably shouldn't be assigning labels, but technically,

Roger: We're fundraiser or I'm a fundraiser here. I tend to be a little cold ey about it sometimes. Sorry about that.

Jill: No, you shouldn't be. Sorry. I find it, the best way to identify.

'Cause I know exactly absolute sure what you're talking about and I know exactly who those people are. They're resonating in my mind. There's a reason they got the invite and there's a reason why we're trying to bring this next generation into the light of what it looks like.

Roger: Absolutely.

Jill: To be part of something bigger and better than themselves. To, much like your rotary program, to make sure that they, see the cause, that they understand the purpose and they give service and provide that service as they age into that same place at some point in time.

Roger: Absolutely. That's the goal.

Jill: I have so enjoyed our conversation and getting to know you better, Roger, and understanding school auction.net. Is there anything else you would like us to know a little bit more?

Roger: We've talked about a wide range of things here today. I don't know that I ha I know anything else. I think I've run out of all of the wisdom that I have.

Jill: Okay, great.

Roger: No, But the, at the end of the day, I think one of the key aha moments that you had during this, this moment is one that I'd like to undermine, which is that, yeah, we call it school auction.net, but it's not just for schools, it's for churches and other faith communities. It's for community centers, it's for food banks, it's for anybody that is working to build their community preserve their. Their, their Their, preserve their operations, in the community and do good. So let's go out there and do good together.

Jill: I love it. I want to do good. And thank you so much for this time and we'll make sure that all this information and links are included in the show notes. So if people have more questions, wanna get ahold of you, they'll have that option.

And, again, thank you very much. Thank you Omar, for making an appearance and, We sure appreciate you and your great mind. Thank you for doing so good,

Roger: Jill, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the work that you're doing here to help get ideas like this out to the people who need them.

Jill: You bet. Happy to do it. Have a great day.

Roger: Talk to you later. Bye-bye.