Tyler Hamilton Foundation

"The cMarket online auction fundraising service was really easy to use - our volunteers shared responsibility for building the auction home page, creating the auction catalog, and promoting the auction. It was really rewarding to see the excitement generated by the online auction and watch the bidding reach a feverish pitch before the auction closed." - Deirdre Moynihan, Executive Director

Situation: The executive director encountered a scheduling conflict and was faced with the possibility that the event might not actually take place. Because the Tyler Hamilton Foundation is such a young organization, she hoped to find an auction-type event that would bring in revenue, but also allow the foundation to reach out beyond their local market for additional fundraising impact. And, with only volunteers to pitch in and help run the event, ease of use was critical - a labor-intensive event would be near impossible to pull off with such short notice.

Approach: Tyler Hamilton Foundation turned to cMarket to help with their fundraising conundrum. They used cMarket Place, cMarket's e-catalog development service, to round out their auction catalog with high-end travel packages. By using cMarket's robust email tool the foundation was able to directly market their online auction to more than 4,000 individuals via email, driving them to their auction home page for information about the foundation and to bid on their auction items. With the "Refer-a-Friend" feature they were able to grow their existing constituent base.

Results: The online auction more than doubled their initial revenue goal, receiving more than $44,000 in online bids! They found it was very easy to engage donors due to the gaming aspect of the online event - over 350 watches were placed on just 77 items. An added bonus was that the foundation was able to grow their potential donor pool by capturing new names and email addresses from the online auction.