Hunt Talk Auction! **$4,705** Raised By Hunt Talk Members For "Wildlife Deserve Better!"

[Ben Lamb]

There's a ton of skilled artists & craftsmen & women on here. A "Handmade HT raffle" featuring our very own would be awesome, and save me a ton of clay & effort.

 

[noharleyyet]

There's a ton of skilled artists & craftsmen & women on here. A "Handmade HT raffle" featuring our very own would be awesome, and save me a ton of clay & effort.

Speaking for the zero skillz contingent I'm all for it....

 

[VikingsGuy]

A few high level thoughts:

• As you stated, the primary goal is to raise money. For this purpose, I think starting bids might need to be closer to current value. When starting too low, it's easy to get in the mindset of "getting a deal" rather than raising money. I think @VikingsGuy? pointed this out when trying to remind us that it wasn't a garage sale, but for a purpose. Maybe this means every item has a reserve somewhere north of 50% of value?
• The 3 days of bidding was a reasonable amount of time. But there is no reason it has to be midnight to midnight. It'd be just as well served starting at 10pm EST on a Thursday and ending at 10pm EST on Sunday. More people would still be awake as bidding winds down and could drive some last minute bid wars.
• Items with personal touches are awesome. I vote that @Ben Lamb makes a whole HT collection to go up for the next. Maybe give each piece an insider nickname like, "Big Hank" or "The Chili Disaster."
• I didn't personally like the style of 5A, 5B, etc. and would have preferred simply 1, 2, 3, etc. I understand the grouping was by person donating, but that can be organized via spreadsheet separately. For whatever reason, I found it easy to remember the number I was tracking but kept forgetting the letter.
• Related to the above, I think you're best served by two spreadsheets, one for public posting and one for tracking. They can be tied together via formula though for simplicity's sake. The publicly posted spreadsheet can be really streamlined/simple and regularly posted. This also solves the bid winner/seller/confirmed donation problem as you can just add a few columns to track that information that wouldn't be posted publicly.
• It could be worth outlining an updated spreadsheet schedule just to people have clarity. Something like, "Hey the spreadsheet on page 1 will be updated every 3 hours, beginning at 10am and ending at 10pm. In between updates, it is your responsibility to track any other bids and make sure your bid is higher than the last."

I'd be happy to assist in the future if you're looking to delegate tasks which is probably ultimately going to be a biggest help. The excel sheet can be a living, shared spreadsheet via Google, OneDrive, Box, etc. That way you can get help tracking donations in the lead up, bids during, confirmed donations after, and connecting winners/donors finally. Break that task up into a few people and you have some extra eyes helping you out.

If we have moved to problem solving for the next event, we should rope @WBouldin into rigging up an automated google forms thing to take some of the manual tracking out of it.

 

[VikingsGuy]

Speaking for the zero skillz contingent I'm all for it....

Some of us are best left giving manufactured offerings.