Silent Auction Pro: what it costs, and what the 2% is charged on

Every figure below comes from its own pages, opened in October 2026, in the currency those pages show.

What does Silent Auction Pro actually do?

It runs the whole machinery of an auction evening, on paper or on a phone. Its feature list covers an online catalogue with mobile bidding, live and in-person auctions, outbid texts, bidder self-checkout, seating, ticketing, and a paddle raise with a thermometer and donor names rising up the screen as gifts land.

The paper side is better than most: printed bid sheets, display sheets and bid paddles are all in the box. Plenty of good fundraising nights still run on a clipboard.

What does Silent Auction Pro cost?

Four annual packages, each a fixed fee plus a percentage. The pricing page sets them out like this, in US dollars, as read in October 2026.

The annual fee covers as many non-concurrent events as you like in the year. The percentage is charged per event and invoiced afterwards. Smaller lines sit around it: $100 to import contacts, a $99 cancellation fee after 30 days, and a 3% surcharge for settling the invoice by card. Card processing through its Worldpay partnership is a flat 2.9%.

What is the 2.0% charged on?

Gross proceeds from the entire event, not just the auction. The pricing page lists them: “auctioned items, ticket sales, additional donations, fund-a-need donations, etc.”

Read that list again, because it is the whole story. The fund-a-need is in there. So is every extra donation, and so is the ticket money you collected months earlier.

This is the part I would push back on, and it has nothing to do with whether 2.0% is cheap. A percentage on hammer price at least charges for work the software did: it hosted the lot, took the bids, chased the outbid texts. A percentage on the fund-a-need charges for a moment the software mostly watched.

Two footnotes deserve a slow read. The percentage is “capped at $3,500.00 for any single event”, so the effective rate holds at 2.0% up to about $175,000 raised and then slides downwards. A village gala pays the full rate; a charity with a seven-figure room pays well under it. That is the opposite shape from the one most trustees would design.

Then this, from the same page: if bidding results are not entered, it “will assume that the proceeds from the auctioned items is equal to 60% of the value of the donated items”. A fee calculated on an estimate of a figure nobody measured. It is honestly disclosed, which is more than some manage. I would still want that clause read out loud before anyone signed.

Does Silent Auction Pro work for UK charities?

Nothing stops you using it, but almost nothing in it was built for you. Prices are in dollars, the services agreement talks about state and federal tax and says all fees are non-refundable, and the enquiry form offers US states, Canadian provinces and “Other”. Support hours run 9am Eastern to 7pm Pacific.

Gift Aid appears nowhere I looked. The most valuable mechanism a British charity has is simply not in the data model.

What follows from that:

• Gift Aid. HMRC lets you split an auction payment, treating the amount above the item’s value as a gift, but only if you tell bidders that value before each lot sells. If the platform cannot record the split, you are claiming it by spreadsheet.
• Card costs. A flat 2.9%, against Stripe’s published UK card rate of 1.5% plus 20p. Roughly double, on every transaction of the night.
• Raffles. Selling raffle tickets online before the evening does not fit an incidental lottery, which the Gambling Commission says needs physical tickets sold at the event itself.
• VAT. Buying services from outside the UK brings the reverse charge into play, and HMRC’s notice 741A says the value of those supplies counts towards registration even if you make no taxable supplies yourself. Worth a word with your finance trustee.

Since November 2025 the Fundraising Regulator’s code has also required any platform charging a fee to show donors how that fee is calculated and how much of their money it keeps. A share of every pledge leaving for a supplier is a trustee decision, not an invoice surprise.

What the fee base does to the money

Take a room that pledges £30,000 in the fund-a-need, purely as an illustration. At 2.0% of gross proceeds, £600 of it leaves for the software before the lots, the tickets and the donations are even counted.

Now think about what those minutes are. The money is not created on the night. It walks in through the door, and the generosity is already in the room. Ten lots in a room of two hundred means ten winners; the other hundred and ninety reach the end of the auction having given nothing, because there was nothing left to win. The pledge is the only part of the night that lets all of them give, and because it is a gift rather than a purchase, it carries Gift Aid.

So the percentage lands hardest on the part of the evening that needs the software least and carries Gift Aid most cleanly. That is why the base matters more than the rate.

What Silent Auction Pro gets right

Quite a lot, and it would be dishonest not to say so.

It publishes real numbers with the small print attached, which puts it ahead of the platforms hiding behind “contact sales”. It has refined the same product for over 20 years, and its own story page is candid about starting with a volunteer fixing a chaotic school auction. Every group gets a named event coach at no extra charge, and a human answers the phone, weekends included.

My argument is with the shape of the fee, not with the people who built it. A good product, sold on a pricing habit I think is wrong.

What should you ask before you sign?

Ask what the percentage is multiplied by, and get the answer in writing.

• Does the percentage apply to ticket income, donations and the fund-a-need, or only to lots?
• If we do not enter bidding results, which figure do you bill on?
• Will the invoice be in pounds or dollars, and who carries the exchange difference?
• What is the total, fixed fee plus percentage plus card fees, on a night raising £80,000?

Run that last sum on your own numbers before you compare anything. Most people run it after they have signed, and it is always bigger than the headline.

That arithmetic is why Generosity Works works the way it does. It is free when a charity books me as auctioneer and host, and my fee is the only money Generosity Works takes. The platform is not sold on its own; our pricing page explains why. One fee agreed up front, no percentage of what the room gives, and the charity’s own Stripe account takes the money. The hire side lives on the charity auctioneer.

If you are weighing up silent auction software, or working out how silent auctions fit your evening, start with the base and not the rate. And if you have a number to hit this year, book a discovery call and let’s talk about it.