Behind the scenes
Everything you’re looking at, you’d get too
The Lantern Gala isn’t a template or a sales mock-up. It’s a fully working WooCommerce site, tickets, games, a raffle, a pledge drive, and a live and silent auction, all wired up and taking real payments in test mode. When you book Kevin Durham as your charity auctioneer, a copy of this exact platform is yours, built around your event, completely free. Prefer to run it without an auctioneer? It is £995 a year.
What’s actually included
One platform, everything an event night needs
Ticket tiers
Early-bird pricing, VIP packages and capacity limits, with a live “X of Y sold” bar so guests can see a ticket selling out.
Silent, live & sealed-bid auctions
Three ways to sell a lot, run side by side from the same catalogue, each suited to a different kind of item.
Table planning
A drag-and-drop seating designer, arrange tables, seat guests from their ticket order, and let them find their own table by email on the night.
Live & hybrid streaming
Paste a YouTube, Vimeo or Zoom link and remote guests can watch the live sale happen while they bid.
A running fundraising total
The gala big-screen keeps a running total that climbs the instant any money comes in, and rotates through your lots, highest first, each showing its live current bid. Drop the same total onto any page you choose with a shortcode.
Live gala big-screen
A projector-ready screen that rotates through your lots and flashes up an animated “New Bid!” or “New Purchase!” card the instant money comes in, with a running total for the room. See it in action →
QR guest check-in
Every paid order gets a QR code, a quick scan with any phone camera checks a guest in at the door, no app needed.
Automatic payment on winning
Winners are charged automatically the moment a lot closes, no chasing anyone for payment afterwards.
Guests in their own language
A one-click switcher lets any visitor browse the whole site in one of 11 languages.
Team tasks & shared documents
A simple shared to-do list for the people helping run the night, plus a place to upload the run sheet, seating plan or sponsor pack.
A lot slideshow you control
One lot per slide on the big screen, holding on whatever is being sold until you move it on. Drive it from the projector keyboard, or from your phone at the back of the room.
New bids named on the big screen
The moment a bid lands, the big-screen flashes it up with the bidder’s first name, “New Bid! £800 — Ashley R.” Seeing someone else take the lead is exactly what makes the room bid again.
Free outbid alerts
A notification on the guest’s phone the moment somebody tops them, so a bidding war restarts itself. No per-message cost, ever, unlike the text-message alerts other platforms charge for.
Tablet mode
Leave a shared iPad or Android tablet on each table: full screen, no address bar, bigger buttons. Password-protected, so a guest can neither switch it on nor escape it.
One clear auction clock
Set when bidding opens and closes once, for every silent lot at the same time, with the time zone stated in plain words so nothing quietly closes an hour early.
A ticket each, not ten to the buyer
Every named guest gets their own e-ticket and QR code by email. A table of ten arrives as ten people the door can tick off, instead of one person holding everybody’s pass.
Guests fill in their own names
Send table buyers a private link and they add who is coming, with no password and no account. It saves as they go, so six names now and four next week is fine. Dietary needs and any question you like are collected on the same page.
Write to the right guests
Not a mail merge. Pick “the tables that still have not sent names” or “everyone who owes money” and the software already knows exactly who that is. Unsubscribes are honoured automatically, and every send is recorded with who sent it.
Fundraising pages for supporters
Somebody running a marathon for you starts their own page in a minute, with no account to create. Photos, updates, teams, and a way to record the cash they collected at work so their total is actually right.
An assistant that knows your event
Ask which lots have had no bids, or what still needs chasing, and get an answer from your real data rather than a guess. It runs on your own AI account, so you see the cost and can switch it off yourself. It reads only; it never changes anything.
Your guest list, in and out
Download the whole list as a spreadsheet, send it to the sponsor who is holding the names, and upload it back. It fills in seats that were paid for and refuses to invent people who were not.
Supporters into your CRM
One row per person with totals, seats, bids and Gift Aid status, in the shape import wizards expect. No pretending to integrate with a CRM we have never tested against.
A new event site in minutes
Tell it the event name, date and venue and it builds the pages an event needs, each with the right thing already on it. It never touches a page you have already written.
New
Watch the money climb on the big screen
Put a screen on the wall and the whole room can follow the action. The gala screen rotates through your lots and pops up every bid and purchase the moment it lands — with a live running total along the bottom. It’s the auction-night big screen the commercial platforms charge for, built in and free.
Who built it
Built by a working charity auctioneer, not a software company
This platform was created by Kevin Durham, a professional charity auctioneer who spends his evenings on stage at fundraising events, and it is built and maintained by our own development team. It is not a white-labelled product bought in from someone else and re-badged.
That is the reason it behaves the way it does. Every part of it exists because it was needed in a real room on a real night: the anti-snipe extension that stops a lot being stolen in the last five seconds, the card held on file so a winner never has to be chased for payment afterwards, a big screen legible from the back of a function suite, a way to run the whole thing from a phone while you are holding a microphone. Those are not lines from a specification document. They are answers to things Kevin has watched go wrong.
It also exists because of what he kept seeing elsewhere: platforms quietly taking a percentage of money donors meant for the cause, or nudging those same donors for a “tip” on top of a gift they had already made. This platform does neither, and never will.
What it costs
Book Kevin as your auctioneer and the platform is free
Not a trial, not a discount, and not free until you go over some limit. If Kevin is your auctioneer, the whole platform is built around your event and costs you nothing at all. If you would rather run it without him, it is £995 a year.
Free with your booking
Book Kevin and you pay nothing for the software. It is built around your event in your own branding, with your lots loaded and the features you ask for, and it stays live for a month after the night. One booking gets you a professional auctioneer on the microphone and the entire system that runs the evening.
Or take the software on its own
£995 a year for the same platform, set up for your event, if you already have an auctioneer or are running the night yourselves. Still no commission, no per-lot cut, and no fee that grows the better your evening goes.
Never a slice of what you raise
Whatever your event makes is yours. The only deduction is Stripe’s own card-processing fee, which every platform pays and which goes to Stripe rather than to us, straight from your own account. Your donors are never shown a tip prompt.
One campaign, a dozen towns
Run the same walk in Bath, Bristol and Cardiff. Each gets its own page, date, venue, route map and target — and they add up into one campaign figure, with nobody counted twice however they are filed.
Miles, not just money
A second progress bar beside the money one, which your fundraisers update themselves. Miles walked, lengths swum, books read, trees planted — whatever they are counting.
Pages that stay alive
Fundraisers post dated updates with headings, edit them, and hide one rather than lose it. The people most likely to give again are the ones who already did — but they need a reason to come back.
Four people, one lot
A table wants the £2,000 weekend and nobody wants £2,000 on their own card. Split it four ways and it sells for £2,000 instead of £600. Each payer gets their own receipt, so Gift Aid is claimed per person.
Raffles you can defend
One entry per ticket, so ten tickets really are ten chances. The draw records the entry list, the winning position and the time — and says so in red if anyone changes the entries afterwards. 50:50 draws too.
Write it Monday, send it Thursday
Schedule the whole run-up in one sitting. And write to the people who bid and lost — separately from the ones who beat them — because somebody who bid £400 and went home empty has already told you what they wanted to give.
Your client never sees WordPress
Give the charity an Event Organiser login and they land on their event, not a dashboard. No Posts, no Plugins, no Settings — not hidden behind a menu, genuinely closed off.
Own it, don’t rent it
Why a charity should own its fundraising platform
Most charities either pay a silent auction company for the night, or rent space on someone else’s bidding app. Either way, when the evening ends, you own nothing. The relationships with your bidders, the data on what worked, the platform itself, all of it disappears, and you start from zero for next year’s event.
A platform you own is fundamentally different. It’s built on ordinary WordPress and WooCommerce, so there’s no licence to renew and nothing to rent. Reuse it for next year’s gala, your Christmas raffle, or a fast emergency appeal. You’re not a tenant in someone else’s software; you’re the owner of your own.
The bit nobody tells you
What hiring a silent auction company actually costs you
Here’s how it usually plays out. Picture a guest, call him Dave, who’s arrived at your gala ready to give £2,000 over the course of the evening. He opens the silent auction catalogue and finds a villa week with a £2,000 reserve. Dave doesn’t know the villa actually cost the auction company closer to £995 to secure. He bids, wins, and feels good about it.
Except now Dave is done. He’s given his £2,000, just not to you. When the live auction and the pledge drive come round, the moments that usually raise the most money for your cause, Dave has nothing left to give. And the auction company keeps the gap between what the villa cost and what he paid for it. Multiply Dave by a room full of guests, and the money that should have reached your charity has quietly gone somewhere else instead.
Running your own auction in-house removes that layer entirely. You source the lots yourself, set honest reserves that reflect what things actually cost, and every pound above that cost reaches your charity, not a third party. It’s the single biggest reason this platform exists.
Frequently asked questions
Who actually built this platform?
Kevin Durham, a working charity auctioneer, together with our development team. It was built from the ground up for charity fundraising events rather than adapted from general e-commerce software, which is why it handles things like anti-snipe bidding, holding a card for a winner, and running a big screen in a function room.
What does it cost?
Nothing at all if you book Kevin Durham as your auctioneer. The platform is set up around your event, in your branding, as part of the booking, and stays live for a month afterwards. On its own it is £995 a year. Either way there is no commission on what you raise and no tip prompt shown to your donors. The only deduction is Stripe’s card-processing fee, paid straight from your own account.
Can I get changes made to it?
Yes. Tell us what you want in plain English, whether that is different wording, your own colours, an extra page or a feature you need for your event, and our development team builds it. You never need to touch code or hire an agency.
Why should my charity own its own fundraising platform?
Renting space on someone else’s auction platform means paying ongoing fees or commission, and losing the site the moment you stop paying. Owning the platform means the charity keeps 100% of what it raises and can reshape it freely, forever.
Ready for your own platform?
Book Kevin Durham as your charity auctioneer and this exact platform is built around your event, in your branding, with every lot loaded and any functionality you ask for. It is included at no cost and stays live for a month after the night.