Event fundraising, designed & delivered
The generosity is already in the room.
Most charity galas send a good part of it home again. We design the whole evening to release it, and we stand behind the number you bank.
For charities running galas, balls and dinners with a real target, and a board watching.
The only silent auction company that runs it all in-house, and gives you the platform free.
We do not hand your night to a consignment company, an outside auction firm, or a platform that takes a percentage of what you raise. We design the evening, source the lots, and run the auction and pledge ourselves, entirely in-house. And when you book Kevin as your auctioneer and host, the whole fundraising platform is free.
As far as we know, no other silent auction company does both. It is the practical half of the belief this business is built on: the generosity is already in the room, and everything we do exists to get it to the cause rather than take a cut on the way.
Not sure how to tell a good supplier from a bad one? Here are the tactics to watch for when hiring a silent auction company.
Strategy, then the microphone
One voice, from the welcome to the close.
The person who designed your evening is the person who runs it, so the plan survives contact with four hundred people, a late-running dinner and a bad PA.
What we believe
Nobody buys a table at a charity gala by accident. Every guest arrives with a figure in mind. The money is not created on the night. It walks in through the door.
The arithmetic
One guest, willing to give £500. Three routes.
An entire industry rests on the belief that a charity needs big, shiny, bought-in lots to get money out of a room. The arithmetic is where it comes apart. The generosity is the same each time. What reaches the charity is not.
Same guest. Same willingness. Same evening. The only thing that changes is how the money is taken. On a bought-in lot the charity keeps only what is bid above the reserve, which is very often nothing at all. So we design the night around donated lots, a tiered live pledge and fundraising games, run in-house, and the money stays where your guests intended it. The moment that wins that money in the room is the live pledge: people come to a fundraiser to make a difference, not to buy a shiny lot, so a well-run live pledge gives every guest a way to give.
Three minutes, near the end of the night
The moment everybody in the room can give.
Not just the ten people who won a lot. A tiered pledge reaches the whole room at once — and because it is a gift rather than a purchase, it carries Gift Aid.
The room, in three moments
Two hundred guests walk in.
Every one of them was moved by your cause before they sat down. Every one of them is carrying a figure they are prepared to give tonight.
The live auction
Ten lots. Ten winners.
Only one person can win each lot. A hundred and ninety guests reach the end of your auction having given nothing at all, not for want of willingness. There was simply nothing left for them to win.
The live pledge — immediately after
Now everyone gives.
A tiered pledge reaches guests with real disposable income and guests who can only manage a little, in the same three minutes. Nobody is priced out. Nobody is left out. And because it is a genuine gift, it carries Gift Aid.
One engagement, one accountable person
Designed months out. Delivered on the night.
A charity usually assembles its evening from five or six suppliers, and not one of them is answerable for what it raises. We design the whole night, so somebody finally is.
Fundraising strategy
The work starts months before the night. Your evening is designed backwards from what your charity actually does, what a pound of it buys, and what will move this particular room.
The strategy behind the night →
Live fundraising
The auction, the tiered live pledge and the games, run by the person who designed them. One voice carrying the room from the welcome to the close.
Auction, pledge & games →
The platform
Included in every engagement. Bidding, pledges, Gift Aid, card-on-file and regular giving, and your guests’ payments go straight into your own account, with no transaction fee added by us.
See the platform →The platform — included in every engagement
Built to capture gifts, not just process bids.
Most event software is built to sell things. Ours was built around a belief, so the mechanisms other platforms treat as extras are the ones it was designed around first: pledges, Gift Aid, card-on-file and regular giving.
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Your money never passes through us.
You plug in your own Stripe keys, so every payment lands directly in the charity’s account. We never hold your donors’ money, and we add no transaction fee of our own. Ever.
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It works when the venue wifi doesn’t.
An on-site event server and offline-resilient bidding keep the room giving when the signal drops. The horror story every fundraiser has, solved.
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Every event becomes its own app.
Guests add your event to their home screen — one tap and a thumbprint to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. No card typing in a dark room after three glasses of wine.
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The whole night lives in one place.
Ticketing with per-guest QR check-in, the table plan, silent and live bidding, raffles, pledges, Gift Aid capture and reporting, no stitching five systems together at midnight.
Money in the room
Cash handed over in a dark room is the easiest money to lose.
Bids, tickets and pledges are paid online, straight into your own Stripe account. The raffle, the wine wall and the guest who wants to settle at the desk are different: that money is handed over in person, and if it is cash it is counted twice, carried home in an envelope and banked on Tuesday. So the platform works with four card readers, and every one of them can use the phone already in your pocket as the terminal.
Phone as reader
WooPayments
The tightest fit. Every payment lands as a real order in the platform, so the desk and the website produce one total.
Phone as reader
Square
The widest choice of hardware, from a pocket reader to a full register, with stock synced both ways.
Phone as reader
Zettle by PayPal
For a charity that already banks through PayPal. Catalogue and stock synced to the Zettle app.
Phone as reader
SumUp
The lowest rate and the simplest reader for a raffle table. Reconciled by hand afterwards.
Real nights, real numbers
Briefed for £14,000.
The night raised £57,600.
The Jigsaw Trust — the pledge out-raised the auction.
Kevin was briefed to aim for £14,000 from the live auction. The auction alone raised £27,000, then a live pledge, run immediately afterwards while paddles were still in hands, brought in £30,600 more. Paintings by children from the Jigsaw School raised another £4,000.
There was not one bought-in consignment lot in the room.
That is not luck. That is the mix.
A UK health charity’s silent auction was run by an outside company. Ten pence in the pound reached the cause.
Same room, same wallets. A live pledge designed into the evening, given as gifts instead of spent as purchases, so the charity kept every penny.
“Without your input and amazing hosting we definitely wouldn’t have achieved the total. We absolutely smashed our £40k target.”
“He was engaging and helped us to raise over £20K for our cause through our live and silent auction. He introduced games throughout the night which our guests loved.”
Also: three times the previous year’s total for the Manchester Airport Group, under Concorde · over €1 million in a single evening for the Sheba Medical Center in Monte Carlo · a record night, and an invitation back, for Temwa.
and still on the mic
Founder & lead practitioner
The strategy leads. The auctioneering proves it.
Generosity Works was founded by Kevin Durham, who spent twenty years reading rooms, on stage and on television, before he ever wrote a fundraising plan.
He has raised over £10 million for charitable causes across the UK, Europe and the US, and he built the Generosity Works platform himself — every mechanism in it designed to capture generosity as a gift rather than a purchase.
Kevin Durham
No obligation, and never a percentage of what you raise
Let’s talk about your number.
Thirty minutes about your event, your room and your target, and an honest view of what the night could raise. Including, if it comes to it, an honest view that you don’t need us.
Or call 07596 851647 · hello@generosityworks.co.uk