Organizing a local club and auction - tips, tricks, thoughts and prayers?

[clovenpine]

Tl;dr: I'm starting a local fish club in our area and we have our kickoff auction event coming up in two weeks. Advice and support is much appreciated!

About a year ago, a group of local hobbyists and I decided to form a local club for our area on the Space Coast of Florida. Fast-forward through some false starts, leadership changes, and disappointments, and here we are, gearing up for our kickoff event and first local auction on May 7, 2022.

Friends, I. Am. Terrified. I've never even attended a club auction, let alone run one. Luckily there are folks on our team who have done this before and we've gotten great support from another club, but I'm so worried it's going to be a disaster. What if nobody shows up? What if too many people show up and we're overwhelmed? What if no sellers show up, only buyers, and we have a bunch of people wanting to buy fish but nothing to sell? What if there's a hurricane?  What if a guest is so overwhelmed with disappointment and rage at the lack of fish they have a heart attack and require CPR? What if we run out of water bottles? What if a bunch of drunken yahoos show up and crash our party and start playing Cornhole with the fish bags???

We do have about 30 people so far who have registered; more buyers than sellers. I do have lots of products to include in the raffle. We've gotten support from local stores. The venue (a pavilion at a public park) is booked and confirmed. We've promoted the heck out of it both online and with hard-copy flyers. I feel like all the logistics/administrative tasks are in hand.

But... I'm in a panic! I'd love some advice, tips, potential disasters I haven't considered, or just words of reassurance and good wishes.

[Tihshho]

Take a second to breathe 🙂 The fact you've got this far is awesome!

Nothing ever goes plan A, so that's just the way of the world. The best thing you can do is prepare. If you expect to have X amount of people and plan on catering to them (food, drink, etc) then what you need to do is stock for X+additional 30-50% minimum. It sucks to have to invest more, but it's better the be over prepared than under prepared. So when it comes to snacks and drinks, go to town on the budget stuff at Walmart, Sams Club, etc etc. If your club setup a bank account as a non profit, you could also purchase these items tax free. 

In terms of 'Acts of God' they just cannot be prepared for 100%. Have an initial date setup and a venue setup with a backup reservation incase the first date falls through due to a massive reason to cancel. Nothing more you can do than that.

In terms of making sure you have the right amount of product for the auction it's going to be hard with 2 weeks. Ideally, you have members who have copious amounts of stuff they breed, grow, excess materials they are willing to put up for auction, etc. That is the core of the stuff for most club auctions. After that, you mix in sponsored products, put in raffles for sponsored giftcards, etc etc. As somone who has coordinated stuff like this in the past, you need to make sure you have the product before you setup the auction. If this is a public venue and not at someone's home, the other option would be to reach out to other clubs where they could participate in bringing in items for the auction. 

Key thing here that a lot of people overlook. Clubs are good and all, but they need funding. Be sure to charge entry to the event. Make sure people get stamped or wristbands, or better name tags! If you go with nametags or wrist bands make sure to have different ones setup for identifiers. One type for coordinators, one for auction staff, one for any talking guests, one for sponsors, one for club members, and one for anyone you have off the street. Sounds a little over the top and complicated at first, but does it make a difference when you get swarmed with questions from people outside of the club and you can say "look for a person with this identifier." Back to funding, make sure that the club has a set percent for what it takes from the auction. Clubs generally have a set percentage or dollar amount for what they take, make sure to put it in you bilaws so there are no arguements on this. Products, flora, fauna, etc that are donated to the club should be 100% profit to the club. Clubs need to be fun, but to be sustainable they need to be run like a business. If there is no income you basically have a handful of people supporting the club and the rest are people who are just taking advantage. 

[Guppysnail]

What if…. The folks that show up are so grateful someone started a club near them that they are patient, understanding, forgiving of mishaps and possibly helpful.  Sometimes people surprise you.  Even in this crazy day and age good folks still exist. 
 

BEST OF LUCK IM ROOTING FOR YOU!

Hope you share pictures of your event.  You care and that is usually what makes things great.

[clovenpine]

@Tihshho, these are great suggestions! Thanks so much, especially for the tip on using name tags/wristbands as identifiers. I also appreciate the suggestion on having a backup date and location - that will go a long way toward alleviating some of my dread.

@Guppysnail, thanks for the positive vibes! I really needed that today 😍

[Cory]

This is easy. You will fail. Every event does. Something can and will always go wrong. It could be big and a downer or something small, like how could I leave X on my kitchen counter? Someone run to the store and buy more. However with each event you'll be more confident in what needs to happen to make the event a success. Also as an event grows you'll learn what can grow into a problem. For instance how good are your auctioneers? How many items per minute will be they be able to auction off? If there are 500 items and it takes 1 minute per. That event is now over 4 hours of just auctioneering. I believe our club with experienced auctioneers can break 3 items per minute. When there are new people doing it, it's more like 2 per minute.

The way you fail will be important. The goal is to fail in ways that it doesn't inconvenience the whole event. Also things like too many people showing up? Have a canned response of, next time pre register, we planned this event to be double what registered, that was 30. If drunks show up, most times people in the audience don't like that either and someone will be directing them to leave.

Prepare yourself for a long stressful day. You'll get few thank yous, but people will have a great time. There will be a handful of ungrateful people, whether it's they bought a bunk item or their items didn't sell for as much as they wanted. Find the fastest and easiest way to deal with these people so that you may focus on people who are having a great time.

The good news is, each one you do gets easier and you'll have more help. I'd say the one thing I've seen that does fail is a "it's my way or the highway attitude". A club is usually a collection of people from all walks of life. Think of it as you need to dig a giant pond. 1 Person wants to dig with a shovel. The next wants to turn it into mud and pump it out. The next guy wants to use his machinery to dig it out faster etc. It doesn't really matter so long as the hole gets dug. If a family wants to move items from the donation truck to the auction site 1 items at a time, let them do it. Even though you have a cart that is 10 times more efficient. You can move on to another task 😉

Good luck and report back with how it went. If anything it'll be nice to vent on what went right and wrong 😉 Don't forget to document what goes right so you can easily hand that off to someone next time. Work on the parts that didn't go so well.

Something always goes wrong with our events, the trick is to learn how to make the best of it 😉

[clovenpine]

@Cory, your response was oddly comforting 😂. Just making peace with the idea that something will go wrong helps me focus on planning how to manage vs prevent disaster. It's going to be a struggle to let go of my need to micromanage, but I'll try to hold on to some degree of perspective.

[Tihshho]

Just going to throw out another option. Setup payment methods for the club. Auctions in most cases are cash based, but you know people these days... Everything now is easier digital. Print signs that tell people "Payments for Auctions can be accepted via PayPal, Venmo, etc etc as long as the buyer covers the digital fees." This means that people who show up without cash thinking they can pay via a transfer are not left to either walking out or running off to find the closest available ATM with the lowest withdrawl fees. I remember back in the early days pre the Big Fish Deal in my area that one of the auctions was a hotel event and year after year they had to contract ATM companies to place additional ATM's through the hotel because well... This drew a crowd and some people were putting up species and the a good group of atendees had deep pockets. 

I doubt you guys will want to contract out an ATM company to show, so offering digital payments (again, key is to have the buyers cover fees) opens more doors. The issue is that anyone who shows up to auction things off is expecting to get money at the end of the day. If you do go this route, either let your club folk know, OR the club needs to get funds together and document it via the treasurer to find out who gets dispersals for pocket cash. Handling money is always problematic, so be sure to make it as easy as possible for your club and their limits.

[lefty o]

having not done it myself, this is just my thoughts. since you also have not done it, id watch some online video of fish club auctions to at least get an idea of what you like, or do not like in how they are run.

[Torrey]

On 4/25/2022 at 9:30 AM, clovenpine said:

Tl;dr: I'm starting a local fish club in our area and we have our kickoff auction event coming up in two weeks. Advice and support is much appreciated!

About a year ago, a group of local hobbyists and I decided to form a local club for our area on the Space Coast of Florida. Fast-forward through some false starts, leadership changes, and disappointments, and here we are, gearing up for our kickoff event and first local auction on May 7, 2022.

Friends, I. Am. Terrified. I've never even attended a club auction, let alone run one. Luckily there are folks on our team who have done this before and we've gotten great support from another club, but I'm so worried it's going to be a disaster. What if nobody shows up? What if too many people show up and we're overwhelmed? What if no sellers show up, only buyers, and we have a bunch of people wanting to buy fish but nothing to sell? What if there's a hurricane?  What if a guest is so overwhelmed with disappointment and rage at the lack of fish they have a heart attack and require CPR? What if we run out of water bottles? What if a bunch of drunken yahoos show up and crash our party and start playing Cornhole with the fish bags???

We do have about 30 people so far who have registered; more buyers than sellers. I do have lots of products to include in the raffle. We've gotten support from local stores. The venue (a pavilion at a public park) is booked and confirmed. We've promoted the heck out of it both online and with hard-copy flyers. I feel like all the logistics/administrative tasks are in hand.

But... I'm in a panic! I'd love some advice, tips, potential disasters I haven't considered, or just words of reassurance and good wishes.

Your brain is doing what it has been trained to do, and a panic is 100% understandable.

My experience has been people will (more likely than not) live up to my expectations. So my question would be:

What do you *want* to happen? Focus on the positive outcomes, and what you actually have control over to make the positive outcomes more likely. Then do those things.

@Guppysnail and Cory are both correct: How you navigate the "failures" will determine if it's a true failure, or if it's a learning opportunity that will help the club, improve future auctions, and offer you a growth opportunity.

Failures are opportunities that were almost missed, they allow us to develop "muscles" we didn't have yet.

How we choose to approach things (dread, optimism, inquisitive, adventurous) frames the narrative we write internally about what happened.

I hope the auction is a lot of fun, you stay hydrated, and greater than 90% of the people who show up recognize that humor is contagious and allow humor to smooth over any rough edges due to this being a first event!

[Andy's Fish Den]

I have been to multiple auctions and am planning one for a club that I on the board off for this fall, it will be our club's first one. From being in other clubs and helping out at auctions, some things I have seen and learned: have several people to be the auctioneers, they can switch out every hour or so, some clubs will even have two up front at same time, as soon as one is done, the other starts with next bag. We've always planned for at least 100 bags an hour to be auctioned off. There will always be more registered buyers than sellers. But if you think about it, an average seller will bring say 10-15 bags of fish to sell, but how many will the average buyer purchase? Hopefully one of the other clubs that is helping you out has let you borrow an auction program or you bought one to use, have a couple people entering the info when items sell. Towards the end of the auction, when people start wanting to leave, transition one of them over to checking out the buyers. As someone else stated, have ways set up for customers to pay virtually, PayPal, Venmo, Square, etc. Have signs made up with the info such as QR codes so people can pull it up easily.

Best of luck, I hope that everything goes smooth for you, take notes of what worked, what didn't for the next time. Feel free to share on here as well, I would love to learn anything that maybe could help me with my club's auction this fall.

[Tihshho]

When it comes to bagging fish for auction make sure you get the following:

Pair's - solo males, solo females, trios (1m:2f) and reverse trios (2m:1f) where applicable

Schooling - Groups of 5/6

Plants - Bunches, pots, slabs (for epiphytic stuff that is mounted)

Know your audience and read the crowd. If you're running slow on some species auctioning off and you know you have a bunch of them offer the crowd to bundle multiple lots together. Some people are after breeding groups, so if you they are running slow and only have one or two of the same bidding on the same thing offer them in groups. On species/items that are getting a lot of attention and bids, break them up. Don't run those back to back to back or you'll run out and be stuck with auctioning off the slower moving items and some people might walk away. After our first auction we ended up getting a ton of large and medium bins from the dollar store and put labels on them so when it came to rare livebearers we knew what bin to go to, plecos in another, etc etc. Don't put too many in a bin and if they are in breather bags make sure not to stack them as they need an air gap. Another thing, invest in a label printer. Put labels with the species name, common name, variety (this is key for some), gender ratio, and generation (f1, f1) if they are offspring from wildcaught or are label if wild caught. Having these labels means anyone can read them as long as the font is the right size. Relying on handwriting while auctioning is a place you'll run into delays when someone is trying to decode writing. 

As the groups attending got larger and larger, the club(s) started to setup a projector with a generic picture of the species, with the species name and latin name. This helped people who didn't hear/see the species when walking the tables prior and removed confusion. Can't tell you how many times someone heard a species name and missed a variety and bid on the wrong fish and had some buyers remorse. We had an out of state club member who specifically came to add to their pleco breeding projects and well, some of the L-numbers look the same to those who don't have a lot of experience. They ended up bidding on a few lots of one type that they thought was something else and having a large clear picture of them would have made a big difference. They didn't complain about it, but you never want to see someone have buyers remorse from a simple mistake. And I could be mistaken, but you mentioned something about accessibility within the hobby. Being able to show what's being offered for auction could help those with a language barrier or other limitations. 

 

[clovenpine]

Oh man, event planning is HARD! @Zenzo, if this is your life I don't envy you. Despite many roadblocks and unforeseen challenges, our fish club "launch" is this Saturday ("launch," get it? Because we're in Central Florida and named the Space Coast Aquarium Society??🚀)! Thanks to all for your great advice and kind words...y'all wish us luck!

Brief update: venue change, insurance woes, busybodies accusing us of animal abuse, unlicensed food trucks. But in the good news column, 23 new members, additional donations from local shops, and an honest-to-goodness celebrity guest! Ryan from Wild Fish Tanks will be joining us and has been incredibly generous and helpful. I'm so stoked to meet him (even if he's not wearing his Nature Boy Ric Flair garb). 😂

[AndreaW]

@clovenpine I don't know if this is too late in the game to be any help, but I'm super excited for you! I recently attended a club auction and signed up as a new member after a 15 year absence to our local fish club. The last auction I attended was 15 years ago and I remember it was run well then, and it was run well this time. They are very experienced (2 auctions a year for all these years) but there were still some hiccups and problems that arose, but they handled them the best they could.

Before the auction, they posted reminders on preparing live fish for auction (don't feed 24 hours before, separate ahead of time, wait to bag fish, water to air ratio of bagged fish, etc.). They were given a time to arrive, check-in and set up their items. They had papers for the people auctioning that they could list their item number (given at the door) and description. There were three colors of papers (pink, yellow & white), and each paper could list 5 items. Each person could have one pink and yellow paper (high/medium) priority, auctioned off in the first/second batch, and then as many white papers (all auctioned off after the pink/yellow. This allowed everyone to have 5 items auctioned off at first to potentially get highest views and bids on their items. It also spaced some things out where you had multiple of the same item. In years past, you could pay to move certain items to the front of the auction. I felt like allowing everyone a chance to have items up front was a better idea.

The club had tons of supplies on hand, bags, markers, rubber bands, tape, scissors, etc. for the sellers. It seemed like they had tons of spreadsheets recording buyers, items, etc. They had two people at the check-in desk, two people recording during the auction, and the auctioneer, as well as 3 people in the back moving items back and forth.

Before the auction, you could browse the tables and take notes of the items you were interested in. They were organized by the color.

Bidders were given a cardboard with a number on it and you raised it to bid. It was a calm, relaxed environment and people could call out questions or if the auctioneer didn't see a number raised, he would go back and restart the bidding where he left off. Having it calm and low-key was great and it felt like a friendly atmosphere.

You could set a minimum bid price if you wanted to. Otherwise the auctioneer would ask the audience the value or guess at the starting bid. He was pretty good and knew his stuff. If he knew the seller, he would ask a quick question about the item, and some members would pitch in if they had seen the item locally and about what price they were going for.

They did have a projector up and had a person googling the fish and plants as they came up so we could see pictures or get some info. That was really great, because some fish didn't have much interest until the picture went up and then became a hot item once people could see better.

As soon as the item was won, they recorded the item number, your bidding number, and wrote the bid amount on the item. A crew took the items to a brown grocery bag with your number on it in the back, so you could pay and collect it all in the end. They were able to figure out payment and process it during the auction for people who came for one item and was ready to go.

There was a mix up where someone bid and won a certain fish, but it accidentally was placed in the wrong bag and unfortunately he didn't get his fish he bid on. I know the club kept records on all the bidders and the items they brought, so hopefully they were able to put this guy in contact with the person to see if they had or would be getting any more of this specific fish.

We had 70-something bidders and hundreds of items up for auction. It lasted just over 4 hours and toward the end it had cleared out quite a bit, but I think everything except one or two items with a specified starting bid sold. They were Axolotl and unfortunately there wasn't as much interest in them.

One thing as a bidder I noticed: Items that had great descriptions, and even care info were deemed more valuable than things that were not labeled or simply labeled. Also, you could tell who took the time and effort to package their items and that was appreciated. I think at the club, they had bags and items available to buy to package your items as some people brought their fish/plants in buckets and prepared them for auction there.

Sample of packaging, labeling, item number and the pink/yellow/white (high/med/low priority) bid papers:

And the auctioneer with the projector ready to go, explaining how it works:

How they labeled the items after you won the bid, with your bidder number (#55) and the price you bid:

Hopefully this is helpful information and not too late. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. It was a very well-run auction but even then, it did have hiccups -- and they've been doing this over 15 years! I was still impressed with how well it all worked out.

Edited May 5, 2022 by AndreaW

[AndreaW]

@clovenpine ~ I'm wondering how it went?

[Tihshho]

On 5/25/2022 at 3:55 PM, AndreaW said:

@clovenpine ~ I'm wondering how it went?

+1 me too! Hope all worked out!

[clovenpine]

We hosted our second club event today! Everything is going so much better than I could have anticipated. We've finally found an affordable venue for monthly meetings so we can have a consistent location and schedule. 

Today's meeting featured a great presentation from a club member about their custom 800-g pond/tank build and a stunningly successful auction. We've already had two more members volunteer to speak! We're planning to have two shorter presentations at the meeting as opposed to one long one, and everyone seems to like that idea.

We're ridiculously fortunate to have Ryan from Wild Fish Tanks as a member and auctioneer. He's a fantastic entertainer and very knowledgeable, so he knows how to "sell" the fish up for bid to drive the prices up. We're still kind of finding our stride with knowing our "market." 1" BN plecos go for like $10 each, but gorgeous and/or rare adult cichlids go for <$5. We probably need to interact more with the cichlid/monster fish groups in the area to expand our market and offerings.

Still having some trouble with payments/calculations around the auction, but folks have been kind and patient while we iron out the kinks. Folks are just so excited to have a local club that they're willing to put up with our growing pains.