Our Online Charity Auction Service
eFlea provides an on-line charity silent auction hosting service which operates in the traditional silent auction sense. Auctions hosted on eFlea are intended to be fun for the bidder, while still maximizing the funds raised for the cause.
We Support Several Types Of On-Line Charity Auctions
On-line Only
The online only auction is most popular of our service offerings, and is the easiest for you to administer.
Auctions of this type allow for bidding to take place on-line only.
Transition To Live
Transitioning auctions are used as a pre-bidding platform for your in-person auction.
The highest online bids become the first bid on the items at your live (in-person) event.
Bidding on the on-line portion must close prior to the start of your in-person live auction event.
Overlapping
This option allows you to run an on-line auction in parallel with an in-person auction.
The On-line and in-person auctions must have different auction items. Off-line and on-line bidding on the same item(s) is not supported.
However, you may showcase your live event items on-line (bidding disabled).
Some general notes about our service offerings:
- With all auction types, users must register a user account, or use their existing account if they have one, in order to place bids online.
- For auctions that transition to a live event, our PayPal™ integration and automated winning bidder notifications are not available. You must contact each of your winners individually.
- For transitioning auctions, we recommend that online bidding close at least a couple of hours prior to the start of your live event. This will allow you time to transition to your live auction (i.e. printing silent auction item bidding sheets, download your data in MS Excel format, etc).
- Square/SquareUp™ is available for all auction types. eFlea provides an option to upload your auction items into your Square Account's inventory.
- We do not offer Buy It Now, Fixed Price, Blind/Sealed Bid, or Dutch style auction item listings. The number of bids cannot be limited per item (i.e. no First Bid Placed Wins). eFlea reserves the right to edit or remove items that attempt these listing styles.
- Hidden Reserve Prices are not allowed. If you must have a guaranteed minimum bid for an item, set the minimum starting bid to this value.
- Off-line/in-person bidding of items in parallel with the on-line auction is not supported. Auctions can be set to transition to a live in-person auction (the on-line portion must not overlap the live auction time-wise, unless all bidding is performed on-line).
- For additional information, please check our Frequently Asked Questions and Documentation pages.
Eligibility - Who Can Use eFlea
eFlea's Charity Auction Hosting Service is available free of charge for non-profits, charities and fund raisers that are of a not-for-personal-profit nature.
Examples Of Causes That We Host Auctions For
- We do not offer our services for auctions that are for personal/corporate gain or profit (unless the corporation is of a non-profit nature). If you are unsure if your cause is eligible, please contact us.
- For auctions supporting a sick person or person(s) in need, the auction must be administered by a third party and not the person(s) needing assistance.
- Auction hosting is currently supported for groups based in Canada, The United States, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa only, although participants can be from any part of the world.
Auction Setup Request
We only need a little bit of information to set up your online auction site:
Required Information
| The title of your auction Maximum 120 characters |
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| Tell us (and your participants) about your fundraiser/charity and what the proceeds going towards This will appear on your auction's home page, and as the summary when the auction is shared. (This can be edited once your auction is set up) |
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| Where your auction is based out of City, State/Province, and Country |
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| The type of auction you are hosting On-line only, Transitioning, or Overlapping. See above for details on the different types of auctions. For Transitioning or Overlapping Auctions, please include information on when and where your live event is happening. |
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| Your Time-zone so we can set the local time of the auction i.e. Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, etc |
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Start date and time for bidding to open (Auction Start) End date and time for bidding to close (Auction End) Duration of as little as 24 hours up to one month (31 days) long. Typical auctions run from 5 to 14 days. Note that ASAP and Today are not a valid date. We do not start nor end auctions at midnight, and auction times must be: on the hour, quarter after, half past, or quarter to the hour. The start date and end date cannot be on the same day. |
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| Primary contact email address i.e. Where bidders can contact you regarding the auction (only one contact email please) |
Optional Information
| The currency used by your auction (USD, CAD, GBP, AUD, NZD, EUR or ZAR) Defaults to the currency of your country |
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| A list of payment types you will be accepting i.e. Cash, Check, PayPal, etc, and who payments should be made out to |
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Your PayPal account email address or Merchant ID to direct your PayPal payments to, if you are accepting payments via PayPal. A PayPal account is required for this
feature PayPal integration is not available for auctions that transition to a live event or for Auctions using the South African Rand currency. You should have access to this PayPal account so that you can receive payment notifications. |
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| A logo or image for your auction Accepted formats: JPG, PNG or GIF, minimum 200x200px. Image files should be smaller than 1Mbyte. Please attach the image to your request email, rather then embedding it (as embedded images cannot be extracted) |
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| Your organization or charity's Facebook page address — for social integration Facebook Pages only. Facebook Groups, events, and personal pages are not supported. Example: http://www.facebook.com/YourPageName or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Your-Page-Name/123456578 |
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| Your organization or charity's Twitter Handle — for social integration i.e. @EFleaAuctions |
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| Your organization or charity's website address i.e. http://www.example.com/ |
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| E-mail address associated with your existing eFlea user account If you do not have an account you can register an account once once we send you your auction URL |
Send the above required (and any optional) information to our primary auction request email so that we can review your request and then create your base auction site for you.
Once we have your your auction site created, you can then start to add your auction items (and the item images) at any time. Auctions can be set up up to six months in advance of the auction bidding open date. New items can be added to your auction up to 4 hours prior to the close of the auction bidding. Remember to leave yourself some time before your auction opens to upload your auction items.
Private auctions (non-published URL) are also available (please ask). Because private auctions do not appear on our auction directory listing, you will need to let your target audience know about your auction by forwarding your custom web address to them. Social sharing features are still available, but any shared links may be visible to the general public. Search engines may still show your auction in their search results.
Next Steps
What You Need To Do Once We Have Created Your Auction For You
As the person(s) linked to the auction as an administrator, you are responsible for:
- Gathering up items to be auctioned off (if you haven't already done so)
- Adding the items to the auction, including item title, item description, minimum starting bid, and a picture of the item (a picture is not required, and can be added at a later date)
- Updating the auction Welcome information and Winning Bidder Payment information sections found on your auction's home page
- Promoting your auction to your targeted audience. Various social networking share buttons are available to help promote your auction. You can also email your target audience a link to your auction's URL
- Collecting payments from winning bidders via your preferred payment collection method. A verified Paypal account is recommended if you would like to accept credit cards, although PayPal is not required to use our service
Let's Get Started!
To request an auction, Contact us and provide the above required information. We will review your request and contact you shortly thereafter with instructions for your next steps.
If you have more questions, check out our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section