momoGood vs. BiddingForGood: Charity Auctions Compared

Why nonprofits compare these two platforms

BiddingForGood and momoGood both run online charity auctions, and both have long track records. They are built on different bets about where auction revenue comes from.

BiddingForGood bets on reach. It operates a public auction marketplace where anyone can browse live charity auctions by category, so your items can be seen by bidders who have never heard of your organization.

momoGood bets on the relationship. Events, text messaging, and workplace giving share one donor record, so the supporter who bids at your gala on Saturday can be thanked by text on Monday and invited into a recurring gift in November.

Neither bet is wrong. Which one fits depends on whether your constraint is the size of your supporter list or what you do with the supporters you already have.

Who is BiddingForGood?

BiddingForGood is an online charity auction platform operated by FrontStream, running since 2003. The company reports that more than 20,000 schools and charities have raised over $600 million through auctions on the platform.

Its defining feature is the BiddingForGood Community: a public, browsable marketplace of live charity auctions organized into categories such as dining, travel, tickets, electronics and designer goods. A nonprofit can keep its auction private, or open it to that community and accept bids from the general public. BiddingForGood states that nonprofits who open their auctions to the community raise 27% more on average. That figure is the company's own reported average rather than an independently audited number, so treat it as a directional claim.

The platform also supports peer-to-peer fundraising events and donor data management.

Who is momoGood?

momoGood brings event fundraising and donor messaging into one platform. The events side comes from Givergy, which has helped more than 3,000 charities raise over $1 billion through auctions, galas and mobile bidding across four continents. The messaging side comes from Tatango, which powers SMS fundraising and advocacy campaigns for nonprofits and political organizations.

The point of combining them is that the donor record does not stop at the end of the event. Bidders, ticket buyers, paddle raisers and text subscribers are the same people in the same system.

Feature comparison

Running an auction this year? See how momoGood silent auctions and mobile bidding work, or read our guide to pricing auction items.

The real difference: a marketplace or a relationship

Everything else in the table follows from this one distinction.

A public marketplace solves a specific problem: not enough bidders. If your organization has a small supporter list, a first-time auction, or items with broad appeal such as travel and dining, exposure to an existing pool of charity bidders can lift your total. That is a real advantage and momoGood does not offer an equivalent.

It also has a cost that is easy to miss. A bidder who arrives from a public marketplace came for the item, not for your mission. They are often anonymous to you, hard to attribute, and unlikely to become a recurring donor. You raised money and you did not add a supporter.

momoGood is built for the opposite constraint: you have supporters and you are not doing enough with them. Every bid, ticket and pledge attaches to a donor record that your messaging and workplace giving programs can act on. The gala is an acquisition moment for a relationship rather than a one-night revenue event.

What the marketplace changes about your item strategy

The two models reward different auction catalogs, which is the practical consequence for procurement.

A public marketplace rewards items a stranger would want. Browsers arrive by category, so travel packages, restaurant certificates, event tickets and consumer electronics compete well. Items whose value is local or personal, such as a principal-for-a-day, a reserved parking space, or a piece donated by a board member, mean nothing to someone outside your community and will sit without bids.

A supporter-only auction rewards exactly the opposite. Those local and personal items often outperform retail goods, because the people bidding care about the school, the hospital or the shelter attached to them. A signed jersey from the team your donors support can beat a generic gadget at twice the retail value.

So the platform choice is partly a question about your catalog. If your best items are procured consumer goods, marketplace exposure adds bidders. If your best items only make sense to your own community, that exposure adds very little, and you are paying a revenue share for reach you cannot use.

Platform economics

The two models are priced differently in kind, not just in amount. Marketplace platforms typically take a share of what is raised, which scales with your success and is charged per auction. momoGood is a subscription platform, so the cost is known in advance and the marginal revenue from a better event stays with the organization.

Which is cheaper depends entirely on volume. For one small auction a year, a revenue share is usually less expensive. For an organization running multiple events and a year-round messaging program, a subscription usually wins, and the gap widens with each event. Our auction pricing lays out how that works.

When to choose BiddingForGood

BiddingForGood is likely the better fit if your organization:

• Needs bidders more than it needs donor data. A small or new supporter list is the problem the community marketplace is designed to solve.
• Runs one online auction a year and does not want a year-round platform commitment.
• Has items with broad consumer appeal such as travel, dining, tickets or designer goods, which are what marketplace browsers search for.
• Already has messaging and CRM tools it is happy with, and needs auction software to fill one gap.
• Wants a long-established platform with more than twenty years of operating history.

When to choose momoGood

momoGood is the better fit if your organization:

• Runs galas and live events where the paddle raise, the room and the stage matter as much as online bidding.
• Wants the auction to feed a year-round program rather than end when the last lot closes.
• Is tired of exporting between systems to get event data into messaging or a CRM.
• Runs more than one event a year, where subscription economics start to beat a revenue share.
• Wants onsite support on event night rather than a help centre.
• Also runs, or wants to run, workplace giving and employer matching.

Making the switch

Moving auction platforms is usually less disruptive than teams expect, because the work is front-loaded into one migration rather than spread across an event.

• Export your data first. Bidder records, item catalogs and past auction results are the assets worth keeping. Pull them before any account changes.
• Migrate between events, not during one. The quiet period after your annual gala is the cheapest time to change anything.
• Rebuild the item catalog once. Categories, fair market values and starting bids usually transfer as a spreadsheet import.
• Decide what replaces marketplace reach. If you have been relying on public bidders, plan how you will reach an equivalent audience, whether through SMS to your existing list, peer-to-peer promotion, or a longer bidding window.

That last point is the one to think hardest about. If a meaningful share of your revenue has come from marketplace browsers rather than your own supporters, leaving that behind is a real trade and it should be a deliberate one.

What to ask before you decide

Five questions that surface the real difference faster than a feature list:

• What share of last year's auction revenue came from people already on our list? If it was almost all of it, marketplace reach is solving a problem you do not have. If a third came from strangers, that is a number you would be giving up.
• Can we identify and contact every bidder afterwards? Ask specifically what data you receive for a marketplace bidder as opposed to one of your own supporters. The answer usually differs.
• What happens to this data on the Monday after the event? Whether it lands in a system that can act on it, or a spreadsheet somebody has to import, is the difference between an event and a program.
• How many events will we run in the next twenty-four months? One favours a revenue share. Three or more usually favours a subscription.
• Who is in the room on event night? If the answer is a volunteer team running a paddle raise from a stage, weight onsite support and live auction tooling heavily. If it is a purely online auction, weight it at zero.

Write the answers down before either demo. They tend to settle the decision on their own.