It's 6:45 p.m. at the Riverside Grand Ballroom. Guests are arriving for the Riverside Children's Foundation Annual Gala, tickets already in hand on their phones. Chandeliers glow over tables dressed in white, a long row of silent-auction items lines the far wall, and on the stage a screen reads "Lot 12 — Tropical Escape — Current Bid $850." By the end of the night, the Foundation will raise more than it ever has — not because the room was bigger, but because every part of the evening was built to make giving easy.
Here is exactly how a night like this comes together, and how you can run the same one for your organization — start to finish, on a single platform.
Weeks before: sell tickets, then open the silent auction early
The Foundation sold tickets online in advance, each with a unique QR code that guests saved to their phone wallets. But the real head start came from the silent auction, which opened a full week before the doors did.
Because the auction lived right on the event page, supporters could browse the catalog from home — a spa weekend, a signed jersey, a case of wine, a vacation package — and start bidding from their phones days early. The mechanics are what keep people coming back:
- Register once, bid all week. A supporter saves a card a single time and gets a bidder profile. After that, every bid is one tap — no re-entering payment details.
- Proxy (max) bids. Set a maximum and the system bids on your behalf in set increments, so you stay in the lead without watching your phone.
- Outbid alerts. The moment someone tops you, you know — and you're one tap from jumping back in.
- A watchlist. Star the items you love and get nudged before they close.
By the time guests arrived, dozens of items already had competitive bids — and the energy was building before anyone sat down.
Event night: check-in and paddles, in seconds
At the door, volunteers checked guests in with a quick QR scan. Behind the scenes, the organizers had done something clever: with one click, they pre-registered every ticket buyer as a bidder and assigned each a paddle number. Guests who hadn't bid online were already in the system, paddle in hand, ready to raise it the moment the live auction began.
On stage: the live auction, run like a pro
After dinner, the auctioneer took the podium — and the room shifted into its highest gear. The marquee lots ran in order, one at a time, on a big screen everyone could see:
- An auctioneer console let staff bring up each lot, see the current high bid, and key in floor bids by paddle number as hands shot up around the room.
- Online and in-room bids competed together. A guest at table nine bid from her phone while the gentleman by the stage raised his paddle — both landed on the same big-screen tally in real time.
- "Fair warning," then "SOLD!" The auctioneer controlled the pace; a tap marked each lot sold and instantly charged the winner's saved card.
No clipboards. No "please see the table in the back to settle up." The gavel fell and the transaction was already done.
After the gavel: instant checkout and fulfillment
Winners — silent and live alike — got an itemized receipt on their phone and chose pickup or shipping right there. For the Foundation's nonprofit receipts, each item even noted its fair-market value so donors knew their deductible portion. The organizers watched it all from one dashboard: who won what, who'd paid, and what still needed to ship.
What this means for your cause
The Riverside gala wasn't magic — it was a few simple ideas working together:
- Sell tickets and open a silent auction early so giving starts before the event.
- Let people save a card once and bid with a single tap.
- Turn ticket buyers into ready bidders with paddle numbers in one click.
- Run your live lots in order with a big screen and floor-plus-phone bidding.
- Charge winners instantly and let them choose pickup or shipping.
And because organizers pay nothing — every processing fee is covered by the buyer at checkout — your cause keeps the proceeds.
Run your own auction night
You can set all of this up yourself, for free, in an afternoon. Create your event, attach an auction, add your silent items and live lots, and you're ready for a night like Riverside's.
Start free — create your event and auction →
Want the full feature rundown first? See online & live auctions and event fundraising.