AFGI is Canada’s top live and silent auction fundraising experts. We have been in business for over 40 years and have provided our clients in Toronto and the GTA professional auction services at a silent auction or charity fundraiser at no cost, no risk and without hidden fees. If you are organizing a charity fundraiser for your non-profit please contact us so we can share how we help you raise money for your worthy cause.
Below we recently caught up with a client we helped a couple of years ago. Here’s what they had to say about working with AFGI.
Q: What kind of event were you holding?
A: Well my family had recently experience a brush with cancer with one of our family members. Fortunately the person went through treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto and after a few months of treatment the cancer went into remission. We were so grateful that we wanted to hold some sort of fundraiser to support cancer research and the Princess Margaret Hospital. So we decided to hold a dinner as a fundraiser.
Q: Why did you decide to hold a silent auction?
A: When we looked at our event we realized that we had a cocktail hour with no entertainment. We also thought there would be an opportunity to raise more funds beyond the price of the event ticket – so we started thinking about having a silent auction set up during the cocktail hour prior to the dinner.
Q: How did you find AFGI?
A: We started with a google search! And it was pretty apparent that AFGI had a long history of producing excellent silent auctions. So we contacted them and told them about our event…from the first phone call they were fantastic to work with and very helpful.
Q: Silent Auctions sounds like a lot of work…how did you find the experience?
A: That’s what we were worried about! There was no way my family had the time to call companies and ask for donations or organize all the pick up of items. To our great relief AFGI did all of that! Not only that but they also took the time to ask about who was attending the event and what we thought our guests would be interested in. We knew a lot of the people attending and knew they were interested in sports – so AFGI pulled together a great selection of items that included sports memorabilia.
Q: What did you learn from holding the silent auction?
A: A lot! I honestly don’t think our event would have been nearly successful had we not had a silent auction. At the beginning we thought a cocktail hour, followed by dinner and some speeches would be enough. But the silent auction added a whole other layer of entertainment and excitement to the event. We actually had to extend our cocktail hour to accommodate everyone who wanted to bid on items! I noticed it was a great way for people to meet and make small talk during the cocktail hour, not everyone knew each other but by the end of the event complete strangers were chatting away to each other. We also noticed that people that finished eating a little early got up and wandered around the silent auction items to take a second look. AFGI left all the items out until after the event and people were still making bids on the way out!
Q: How much did your charity make from the silent auction?
A: We made $2000.00 for the Princess Margaret Hospital.
Q: Would you use AFGI again?
A: Oh definitely! We only had to meet with them a couple of times to discuss what we wanted and then AFGI just did everything related to the silent auction. They set up everything, created all the bid sheets, stayed during the event to answer questions and then removed all the items at the end of the event. We would never have been able to pull of a silent auction of such high quality without AFGI