EARLY-BIRD REGISTRATION + BIDDING

Empowering supporters to register and participate in auctions sooner to boost profits and save time.

Fundraising professionals follow lots of industry standards, but when Qtego launched in 2009, some best practices that guide us today didn’t even exist. For example, before Qtego made it possible to register early and participate in auctions weeks before an in-person fundraising event took place, there were no guidelines around launching and running pre-event registrations and silent auctions.

Introduced in 2010, Early-Bird Registration + Bidding is yet another Qtego innovation that has shaped how the fundraising industry operates today. With Early-Bird Registration + Bidding, Qtego became the first provider to give organizations the power to register donors and launch auctions in advance of an event.

The idea for the technology came about after the Qtego team watched too many guests wait in long registration lines and too many organizations work so hard to register people and encourage them to be active participants in their auctions. There had to be a better way! And Early-Bird Registration + Bidding was born.

Patrick Hoesing

Regional Event Specialist

“You have a lot more people who love you than people you can pack in a room in one night. All of a sudden, people didn’t have to be in the room to bid,” recalls Patrick Hoesing, Qtego Regional Event Specialist. Instead, they could register early, and bid early and often. Once organizations understood how this empowered them, they began to reap the benefits.

Because supporters were participating in auctions for longer periods, the total number of bids per auction item shot up. They could purchase raffle tickets and instabuy items, donate and vote in pre-event contests. Early-Bird Registration + Bidding also boosted brand awareness because it put organizations’ brands, missions and sponsors in front of audiences more frequently.

On the operations side, Early-Bird Registration + Bidding saved organizations valuable time, reduced check-in congestion at events and cut way down on paperwork.

“Our goal is for our clients to be able to enjoy the event they’ve been planning for many months and let us run the show,” says Anne Claire Britton, Qtego’s National Manager of Event Supervisors. Early-Bird Registration + Bidding helps make this possible.