Even as charities and non-profits rely increasingly on digital auctioning and fundraising tools, few platforms offer all the features organizations need, and almost none are Canadian-made.
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Even as charities and non-profits rely increasingly on digital auctioning and fundraising tools, few platforms offer all the features organizations need, and almost none are Canadian-made.
In response, Ottawa entrepreneur Ryan Short has developed an auction software platform called Aucti, which he said is designed to address issues that Canadian non-profits have experienced with other platforms.
“I’ve had the fortunate opportunity of attending a number of galas and fundraising events and everything in between,” Short told OBJ. “So I saw a real opportunity and a huge gap in the market related to fundraising tools.”
A user experience designer for more than 20 years, Short built the first version of the platform for a fundraising event at his daughter’s private school, which was looking for a more efficient alternative. Though the experiment was a success, Short said he didn’t immediately pursue the project.
“They were overall happy with the application and it exceeded any monetary amount they had raised previously. That was in the range of $300,000 in total raised for that evening,” he said. “But I looked at it at the time and said, you know, it’s not really my focus from a personal or professional life perspective. So it sort of went to the wayside.”
But a few months ago, Short said he decided to go all-in.
Now working with two other team members, he’s launched a fully functional demo of Aucti, and is looking for investors and charitable partners to test and bring the platform to market.
“Our biggest hope in the next 60 to 90 days is that we start partnering with charities, simply to say, does this work for your needs? What needs to change?” he said. “We’ve had some initial conversations with an angel investor. But it’s really early days, and everything to date has been bootstrapped.”
With digital auctioning tools becoming more prevalent at charitable and non-profit fundraising events, Short is optimistic that Aucti will provide a much-needed solution.
According to Short, charities currently use a variety of different platforms to support three main activities: allowing donors to continuously bid on silent auction items throughout the night; providing a digital platform to make monetary donations; and allowing attendees and non-attendees alike to participate in live auctions using their phones.
The three activities allow organizations to reach more donors, but Short said they’re rarely all offered on the same platform.
“I would go to an event and one tool would be used, then I’d go to another event and another tool would be used,” he said. “I started to speak with organizers about why they were flipping between different applications. And the answer was, ‘This one does this, and that one does that, and we’re not really happy with any of them.”
Aucti offers all three features through a tiered pricing structure. Short said the approach is intended to give charities access to auction tools for a specific number of events, while keeping in mind the financial limitations these organizations often encounter.
The process of bringing all the features together on one platform, he added, hasn’t been easy: “It’s definitely the silent beast.”
But Short said the introduction of AI into the UX space has changed the way he designs his products, and has been an asset both for coding Aucti and making the user experience smoother. For example, the platform uses real-time AI to keep pace with an in-person auctioneer while monitoring who’s donating from home.
“The process (of designing) is totally different from how it was 10 years ago,” he said. “AI existed from a futuristic perspective, but by no means from the perspective of being able to use it for applications or to bring something to market. It’s really allowed me, as a designer, to put on multiple hats. I can now work with an AI modelling tool to make something functional.”
The platform would be one of the only Canadian-made products of its kind.
According to Short, most auction software is built and hosted in the United States and other countries. While trade tensions and “buy Canadian” sentiment are driving some of the demand for a domestic product, Short said there are also practical challenges that come with an American platform.
“There are certain specific pieces as it relates to charitable organizations in Canada, where it’s specific tax receipts that need to be provided to donors, or even as simple as displaying Canadian dollars from a currency perspective,” he said.
“What we’ve said is, ‘Why isn’t there a Canadian player in the market to be providing to all these incredible Canadian charities and donors? Why are these organizations having to look outside of our own country?’”
While Short is continuing to consult on the side, he said working on Aucti is now his primary commitment. Though he describes the process as nerve-wracking, he said there’s a strong Canadian market of 86,000 registered charities to tap into.
And, Short added, he wants to give back.
“In my 20-year career, I’ve had the opportunity to build and design solutions for so many organizations across the world,” he said. “This is creating something for a great cause. I hate to see organizations and charities struggling because tools aren’t available for them. So if I can put on my strategy and design hat to create something usable in their space, then I’m excited to do that.”
