The platform
Charity software built to capture generosity as a gift.
Silent and live auctions, the live pledge, ticketing, Gift Aid and the table plan. The whole evening in one place, with no lots to sell you, no percentage of what you raise and no payment charges added on top. Free when Kevin hosts the night, and not sold on its own.
The best of both worlds
Everything a fundraising platform does. Nothing a lot supplier does.
Most charities choose between a bidding app that takes a tip or a percentage, and an auction company that arrives with a catalogue of lots and a reserve to clear. This is the third option: the platform, an ethical fundraising strategy built in-house with your team, and no lots to sell you.
| What you are judging | Generosity WorksPlatform and in-house strategy | A tip-funded platformEmma Live, Givergy and the like, on their published pages |
|---|---|---|
| Silent, live and sealed-bid auctionsMobile bidding, outbid alerts, anti-snipe, bids from the floor | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Live pledge and fund-a-needTiers on the big screen, Pay What You Can, the running total | ✓YesDesigned into the running order, not bolted on | ✓Yes |
| Ticketing, named guests, QR check-in, table plan | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Gala screen, leaderboard, live total | ✓Yes | ✓Yes |
| Gift Aid captured at the point of givingDeclaration, the HMRC split on auction lots, the claim file | ✓Yes | ~VariesCheck how the declaration is taken |
| Keeps taking bids when the venue wifi fails | ✓YesAn on-site event server and offline-resilient bidding | ×Not published |
| Auction lots supplied to you | ×NeverWe have none. Yours are donated, and 100% of what they raise is yours | ~Sometimes offeredConsignment lots carry a reserve that covers the supplier’s cost first |
| Fee on what you raise | ✓NoneNo tip, no percentage, no per-guest fee | ~A donor tip or a percentageOn their published pricing; the tip is asked of your guests at checkout |
| Payment charges added by the platform | ✓NoneYour own Stripe account, Stripe’s standard rate only | ~VariesAsk whose merchant account the money lands in |
| Cost of the platform when the auctioneer is booked | ✓FreeIncluded when Kevin Durham hosts the night. Book him at thecharityauctioneer.uk | ~Not applicableThe auctioneer is a separate supplier |
Benchmarked against the published feature lists and pricing pages of Emma Live and Givergy in October 2026. Their features and prices are theirs to change, so check their sites for the current position. The point is not that they are bad software. It is that the same functionality is available with no lots to sell you and nothing taken from what you raise.
It was built for an argument
Most fundraising software is built to process transactions. This was built around a belief: that the generosity is already in the room, and the job of the technology is to give people every possible way to act on it.
That is why the mechanisms most platforms treat as extras are the ones this was designed around first. The live pledge and fund-a-need. Gift Aid with proper declaration capture. Card-on-file. Regular giving by card and standing order. Matched giving. The donor wall.
Every one of them exists to capture money as a gift rather than as a purchase, because with Gift Aid a gift is worth 25% more to a charity, and an auction purchase, with narrow exceptions, cannot carry it at all.
See it working
The night, screen by screen
Every event is branded as its own: your charity, your lots, your tiers. These are from the demo event.
Your event, as its own app
Bidding from the seat
The pledge, one tap
The leaderboard, live
Your money never passes through us
This one is worth reading twice, because it is where a surprising amount of charity money quietly disappears.
You put your own Stripe keys into the platform. Your guests pay, and the money lands directly in your account, the charity’s own payment provider, under the charity’s own control. We never hold it, never route it, and never take a slice on the way past. You pay Stripe’s standard rate and nothing else. We add no payment charges of our own.
Many event platforms do it the other way round. Guest payments run through the platform’s own merchant account, and a fee gets added on top of what the payment provider already charges, or a tip is asked of your guests at checkout. On a six-figure evening, a couple of percent is real money, money your guests believed they were giving to the cause.
It is the same argument this whole business is built on. Every middleman between a donor’s intention and a charity’s bank account costs the charity something. This is one we removed.
Try your own number
What a platform fee would cost you.
Tip-funded platforms are marketed as free to the charity. The money still comes out of the room, either as a tip your guests are asked for at checkout or as a percentage of what they give. Move the slider to the figure your night is aiming for.
A tip is paid by your guests on top of their gift; a percentage is taken out of it. Either way it is money the room meant for your cause. We take neither, and we add no payment charges of our own. The only money we take is the fee for Kevin’s hire, agreed up front, and it does not move with the total.
On the night, when it matters
Three things it does that most platforms cannot
It works when the venue wifi does not
Every fundraiser has the same horror story: four hundred people, one overloaded router, and a silent auction that stops taking bids at exactly the wrong moment. The platform runs an on-site event server that does not need the venue’s internet at all, and bidding is built to survive a dropped signal rather than lose the bid.
Every event becomes its own app
Guests add your event to their phone’s home screen and it opens full-screen with your branding. It also unlocks Apple Pay and Google Pay: one tap and a fingerprint, instead of typing a card number in a dark room. Fewer abandoned payments. More money raised.
The whole night lives in one place
Ticketing with named guests and per-guest QR check-in. The drag-and-drop table plan, synced to those tickets, because a ticket is a seat. Bidding, raffles, pledges, the gala screen, guest messaging by email, SMS and WhatsApp, and reporting afterwards.
In detail
Six parts of the platform, properly explained
Everything the night needs, grouped the way an event actually works rather than the way a feature list does.
Pledges & Gift Aid
Tiered live pledges on the big screen, the HMRC Gift Aid split worked out automatically, regular giving by card or standing order, matched giving and the donor wall.
Pledges in detail →Auctions
Silent, live and sealed-bid from one catalogue, plus outbid alerts, anti-snipe, a clear auction clock, tablet mode and bidding with no account at all. Your lots, never ours.
Auctions in detail →Ticketing & check-in
Tiers with live sold counters, a named e-ticket for every guest rather than ten to the buyer, guests filling in their own names, QR check-in and the table plan.
Ticketing in detail →The gala screen
A projector-ready screen rotating your lots, flashing an animated New Bid card the instant money lands, with a running total the whole room can chase.
The big screen →Payments
Your own Stripe keys, so money lands in your account with nothing added by us. Card on file, automatic charging on winning, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and card readers for the desk that use your phone as the terminal.
How payments work →Running your event
Message the right guests rather than everyone, raffles you can defend, team tasks, peer-to-peer pages, CRM export and an assistant that knows your event.
The rest of it →Own it, don’t rent it
Why a charity should own its fundraising platform
Most charities either pay a silent auction company for the night, or rent space on somebody else’s bidding app. Either way, when the evening ends, you own nothing.
The relationships with your bidders, the data on what worked, the platform itself: all of it disappears, and you start from zero for next year’s event.
A platform you own is fundamentally different. Reuse it for next year’s gala, your Christmas raffle, or a fast emergency appeal. You are not a tenant in someone else’s software.
And your client never sees WordPress: give the charity an Event Organiser login and they land on their event, not a dashboard. No Posts, no Plugins, no Settings. Genuinely closed off, not just hidden behind a menu.
Built for real rooms
Four things that only exist because a night needed them
Four people, one lot
A table wants the £2,000 weekend and nobody wants £2,000 on their own card. Split it four ways and it sells for £2,000 instead of £600. Each payer gets their own receipt, so Gift Aid is claimed per person.
One campaign, a dozen towns
Run the same walk in Bath, Bristol and Cardiff. Each gets its own page, date, venue and target, and they add up into one campaign figure, with nobody counted twice.
Miles, not just money
A second progress bar beside the money one, updated by your fundraisers themselves. Miles walked, lengths swum, books read, trees planted, whatever they are counting.
Guests in their own language
A globe menu switches the whole site into one of eleven languages instantly. Nothing for you to translate or maintain. You keep writing in plain English.
Before you choose anything
Buying charity auction software
What it should actually do
The short, awkward list of things that matter on the night, written by someone who has stood in the room while it was being used.
Read →Silent auction software
Outbid alerts, bidding from the table, closing properly and taking the money before people leave. What it’s worth against paper.
Read →The money questions
Whose account your donors’ money lands in, who owns the supporter data, and how Gift Aid is handled.
Read →The buyer’s checklist
Twenty questions to put to every supplier, including us. Bring your own verdict. We won’t rank our competitors for you.
Get the checklist →Comparisons and guides
More on choosing a platform
How the platform compares with Emma Live, Givergy and GalaBid, what the free auction sites really cost, raffles, card readers and setting up an auction website.
- Online raffle tickets: the licensing line UK charities cross by accident
- Text donate in the UK: how SMS giving works at a charity event
- Silent auction closing time: when to close, and how
- Work for Good: what a charity pays, and what it buys
- BiddingOwl: how its 5% fee works for a UK charity
- Silent Auction Pro: what it costs, and what the 2% is charged on
- Snowball Fundraising: fewer clicks, and the limit they cannot move
- Funraise: a 0% platform fee, and where the cost went instead
- Qgiv is now Bloomerang Fundraising: what an event platform becomes inside a CRM
- Bloomerang: donor retention software, and the four hours it never sees
- Blackbaud: the system of record, and the night it was never built for
- Classy fundraising software is now GoFundMe Pro: what enterprise costs a one-night charity
- Airauctioneer: the platform that charges you by the lot
- Charity Auctions Today: the price, and the catalogue underneath it
- Accelevents: an event platform that fundraises second
- Auctria pricing: the revenue band that decides what you pay
- BetterWorld auction software: who pays for the free plan
- What ClickBid costs, and what a British gala still has to solve
- Greater Giving for a UK charity: what it does, and what it costs
- Handbid: what it does, what it costs, and how it fits a UK charity
- Peer to peer fundraising for a charity gala: platforms, costs and how it feeds the night
- QR code donations at charity events: platforms, costs and what to put on the screen
- 50/50 raffle at a charity event: how it works, the UK rules and the software
- Best fundraising platform UK: which one suits a charity event
- JustGiving alternatives for charities running fundraising events
- Tap to donate at charity events: contactless giving options compared
- Free online charity auction sites UK: what 'free' really costs the charity
- Electronic raffle software for charity events: UK platforms compared
- Card Readers for Charity Events
- An Emma Live alternative for UK charities
- Virtual Auction Software for Live Streamed and Online Auctions
- Event Management Software for Dinners, Awards Nights and Galas
- Live Auction Software for Charity Events
- How to Set Up a Charity Auction Website
- A GalaBid Alternative for UK Charities
- A Givergy Alternative for UK Charities
- How to Run a Silent Auction In-House
Book Kevin and the platform is free
Not a trial, not a discount, and not free until you cross some limit. If Kevin is your auctioneer and host, the whole platform is built around your event and costs you nothing at all: your branding, your lots loaded, the features you ask for. The only money we take is his fee.
There is no software-only price. The platform comes with Kevin’s hire, and his fee is the only money we take: no licence, no commission, no per-guest fee, no donor tip, and no payment charge added on top of Stripe’s own.
Or start with the whole evening
The platform is the instrument. The strategy is the music.
Book a discovery call and we design the night the platform gets played on.
Book a discovery call→Or hire Kevin directly as your auctioneer and host at thecharityauctioneer.uk. Book him, and the platform is free.