A Must for School Fundraising

We are going to start using our SAPro software in our other school fundraisers, not just our auction. It is a great way to organize and keep all of our sponsor and donor information organized. I can also not speak highly enough of the customer support! They are quick to answer calls and get you answers to your questions.

Pros

We've used Silent Auction Pro for at least three events in the last several years as a Mobile Pro client. It is pretty intuitive and keeps our donations well organized, as well as allowing us to communicate effectively with bidders and donors. The ability for anyone to bid online opens our fundraising to the community, not just our school families, helping us raise much more money than we could achieve with paper bidding.

Cons

We would love to see an app in the future, rather that just a mobile site for bidding.

Round 2; Regrouping

I loved the software. We had used BidPal/OneCause prior but the cost model was unbearable for us this year. With Silent Auction Pro we pay after the first event; nothing upfront. Capped fee% and low fixed cost are benefits. Credit card processing (we used WorldPay) fees are lower (and no monthly fee), making the total cost lower. Software is feature-rich. This can be a double-edged sword as features can add complexity. Help is always available and phone support was awesome. Overall, the features are worth it. Ability to 'stage' or start a new event while keeping a recently finished event active for a bit would be a welcomed improvement.

Pros

Features, Performance and Support were all Excellent.

Cons

Registration and PW requirements for bidding . No import (from spreadsheet) capability. Understandable, but would have been nice. They do offer to import for you at extra cost. They must have had bad experiences... It turned out to be less an issue than I thought. They were very upfront about it and it was not a surprise.

Awesome Customer Service

Pros

This was our fourth year using Silent Auction Pro. Like so many nonprofits in 2020, we were faced with really two questions: how can we successfully fundraise using mostly social media and how can we put together an event that seemed so foreign at the time, so quickly. While the changes made to the software were helpful and kept us competitive with other organizations, it was Silent Auction's customer service that was the secret sauce. From explaining all the new features to problem-solving, to follow-up reminders, we were able to host a successful fundraising event this year.

Cons

Some things are a little bit clumsy and not as user-friendly as I would like them to be. It would be helpful to be able to change the program colors to be a bit more like our brand. Reports could be more specific or to be able to customize them more.

Silent Auction Pro - basic auction software

Pros

Silent Auction Pro has features like image uploading and item organizing that make it useful for auctions.

Cons

Silent Auction Pro uses an unreliable payment processor, they do not give an opt out for saving credit card info, and there is no bulk upload for items.

WDCC Fashion & Frolic Fundraiser

Excellent - A++++++++++++++++++++++++ Mobile Online Bidding and Custom Email / Text Distribution for marketing SAVED our annual fundraiser which was 100% virtual in 2020.

Pros

Software is user friendly and website easy to navigate. Continue to annually learn and become more familiar with functionality of features since 2013. The websites offers variety of features: previous donation report, contact history, donation inventory and tracking, auction item bundle function, mobile online bidding, email merge, and custom email / texts distribution. Support (Help) staff is very knowledgeable and accommodates at anytime.

Cons

Would like to see individual email / text contacts available for email distribution, besides category labels. Would like to be able to obtain only 2-3 years previous donation history. History older than 3 years not necessary, report too long and cumbersome.