Hockey Helps the Homeless: seventeen auctions a year, coast to coast

The organization

Hockey Helps the Homeless combines Canada's favourite winter sport with fundraising for people experiencing homelessness. It began in the mid-1990s as the idea of Gary Scullion, a Toronto business executive, volunteer and entrepreneur. Its first event, at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens in 1999, raised $8,000.

As of 2023, HHTH partners with 50 local homelessness support agencies across Canada and has more than 20,000 donors, 3,000 hockey players and 1,000 volunteers. Its tournaments bring together former NHL and Olympic players, women's hockey, local celebrities and community members. The agencies it funds provide housing, from emergency shelter to renovations and furnishing, and support such as meals, health and mental health care, education, outreach and life skills.

The events

HHTH hosts Pro-Am and Collegiate hockey tournaments across Canada, where players raise funds for homelessness agencies in their own community. Silent auctions have always been a popular and important part of these events. The items are mostly sport-themed, and each local committee chooses what it thinks will be popular in its own market.

That wasn't always possible. Lacey Tryon, Manager of Operations at HHTH, explains how the auctions used to work:

“Originally, we used a Toronto-based company in Ontario and a few other third-party companies to manage the items and the bidding process. However, we had no control over the chosen items, and they used the traditional pencil and paper bid sheet method.”

How they use MobilBid

As the auctions grew in importance, HHTH looked for a better platform and settled on MobilBid several years before this story was written. Today, seventeen HHTH auctions run each year in seven provinces.

• Local control of items. Committees add and update their own items and descriptions.
• Automatic outbid alerts. Bidders find out at once when they've been outbid and can bid again.
• Bidders beyond the rink. The auction can be shared with people who aren't at the tournament, or who leave before it closes.
• A record of every event. HHTH keeps the bidding data and guest contacts from each auction, and uses them to look back at how items performed, how many bids were placed and how prices compared with each item's stated value. Lacey Tryon calls this “amazing for archival reasons”.

“We love the automated message function so bidders can see instantly if they have been outbid and can respond immediately if they don't want to lose out on the item. Another important feature is the ability to share the auction with those not in attendance, or who may not be present during the close.”

Results

• A better return: “Silent auctions represent an important revenue item for our events, and we now see a much better return.”
• Less manual work: “The MobilBid platform eliminates a lot of manual labour.”
• Larger audiences: “Overall, the MobilBid platform has helped us make our silent auctions more efficient and gives us the ability to share them with larger audiences. It also plays an important role as part of our archiving, for any pertinent auditing purposes.”

In their words

“The most important aspect of dealing with MobilBid is working directly with Derek and Dale. From our first contact through presentation, first class training, fast, phenomenal customer service, and easy billing, MobilBid offers a professional business model to be envied. It's a blessing to work directly with the owner every day instead of a large support team.”

Running auctions in many places?

HHTH shows how one charity can run many local auctions, each with its own committee and items. MobilBid can keep several chapters' auctions under one account, where account administrators see every auction and its totals. Each auction is priced on its own: 5.5% of silent auction sales and 1.5% of donations and live items, with a $220 minimum and a $2,500 maximum, and no annual fee. See pricing or read more customer stories.