Zeffy URL: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/ypso-spring-2026-online-auction-fundraiser

Why it worked: Our annual online auction, “Spring into Music” was improved this year over last by starting it several weeks before our concert, and having it culminate at the concert during intermission. That timing gave us an opportunity to show off some of the big ticket items in person, and drum up audience response at the concert itself and get people excited, and we were able to give people in person warnings as well as the online reminders that they were outbid or that the auction was about to close. We made nearly $8000 this year (more than 1000 above last year’s effort) and all the work was able to be done in Zeffy by volunteers, freeing up our staff time for other needs.

Something to repeat: We realized this year that we could allow volunteers from our member families to have selected access, to this campaign only, in Zeffy, so once the bones of the campaign were set, our volunteers did all the rest of the work of gathering donations and uploading the items. The previous year we had limited access to staff or board members only which meant adding more work to the already full plates of those people. So the selective access is a great feature to take advantage of!