Fundraising auctions, run your way

Auctions built for fundraising

An auction is one of the oldest and most joyful ways to raise money: a room, a story behind every lot, and the friendly competition of the final bids. Hubbub Auctions brings that experience online, as a whitelabel platform your supporters bid on under your own brand.

It is built for institutions that want to turn objects, experiences and access into funds, whether that is signage from a beloved old building, a dinner with an alumnus, or a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You run the auction; we provide the platform, the bidding engine and the payments.

Hubbub Auctions is built on the same multitenant stack that powers the rest of our products, so it inherits the security, branding and reliability our customers already trust.

One platform, two ways to run it

Live video salerooms

Run a real-time, one-lot-at-a-time auction with a live video stream and an auctioneer calling each lot. Bidders watch, follow the current lot and place their bids as it is called, just like a charity gala or a saleroom, online. A pre-auction catalogue lets bidders browse and set their maximum bids in advance, so those maxima are honoured the moment their lot comes up.

eBay-style timed auctions

Run a timed online auction where every lot is open for bidding over a window of days or weeks. Bidders browse the catalogue, place a bid or set a maximum, get outbid alerts and rebid in a click. Lots close on a staggered timer, and a bid in the final minutes extends that lot’s close time so nobody wins by sniping at the last second.

Both modes share the same catalogue, bidder registration, bidding engine and checkout, so your team learns one platform and your bidders get one consistent experience.

The bidding engine, done properly

The heart of the platform is a bidding engine designed to be correct and fair, because getting a winner wrong is the one thing an auction can never do.

• Proxy (maximum) bidding. A bidder sets the most they are willing to pay and the engine bids on their behalf, only as high as needed to stay in front, up to their maximum. Two maxima resolve to the lower one plus an increment, exactly as bidders expect.
• Sensible increments. A configurable increment table keeps the next minimum bid sensible at every price, from a few pounds up to the top lots.
• Reserves handled discreetly. A hidden reserve protects the seller. The catalogue shows when a reserve has not been met without ever revealing the amount.
• Race-safe and auditable. Bids are serialised per lot so two simultaneous bids cannot both win, and every bid is written to an immutable record, giving you a complete audit trail.

Made yours, end to end

Fully branded

Your auction site carries your institution’s logo, colours and fonts throughout, so bidders never feel they have left your world. Each customer runs on their own isolated tenant with their own branding and their own data.

Self-service for bidders

Supporters register themselves, get a paddle number, and browse a catalogue they can search, sort and filter. They can watch the lots they care about, see masked bid history on each lot, and receive outbid, closing-soon and winning notifications by email with a one-click link to rebid or raise their maximum.

Secure payments

Winning bids are settled through Stripe checkout. Buyer’s premium and postage are configured per auction, each winner has a clear total due, and receipts are sent on payment. Because payments run through your own account, funds reach you directly.

Tools for your team

Tenant staff manage the whole auction behind login: create auctions and lots, upload images, preview the catalogue, review bids and winners, and see per-auction and per-lot activity with a read-only bid history.

Standalone or inside your giving day

Hubbub Auctions works on its own as a fundraising event in its own right, and it also sits naturally alongside a Hubbub Giving Day, adding a bidding moment to the wider buzz of your campaign. Because it shares the Hubbub stack, it fits the rest of your digital fundraising rather than bolting on from the outside.

See it in action

Hubbub Auctions is running today, seeded with a real example: the Magdalen College Waynflete Building auction, where signage from the demolished 1961 to 2025 building was offered so alumni could own a piece of its history. We would love to show you how an auction could work for your institution.