Joe Pence, Co-founder of Qtego, gave the presentation.  He shared how Qtego’s use of guests’ cellular phones for bidding at events has increased overall bidding and giving activity.

With Qtego Auction Technology’s instant updates, participants receive text or phone updates, making the bidding more fun and more frequent—running up the winning price! The bidder-specific messaging also alerts auction start and close times so that last-minute bids aren’t lost.

Qtego would like to thank the Ronald McDonald House Charities for including us in their magical night May 5th. Qtego provided the silent auction technology and Fund-A-Need by cellular phone.

What is the PCI security standards council?

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council is an institution set up by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International with the aim of enhancing payment account security. It aims to achieve this goal through the mandatory adoption of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) by all businesses that store, process and/or transmit credit/debit card data.

What is PCI DSS?

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This standard (commonly known as ‘PCI’) represents a common set of security due diligence practices that help ensure the safe handling of payment card data. Created by the five major card companies (American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa), this standard comprises 12 distinct requirements that are designed to:

• Build and maintain a secure network
• Protect (cardholder) data in transit or at rest
• Maintain a vulnerability management program
• Implement strong access control measures
• Regularly monitor and test your IT infrastructure
• Maintain an information security policy.

What are the benefits of implementing PCI DSS?

PCI DSS is a binding collection of rules that promote IT security processes. PCI DSS aims to reduce financial fraud through heightened network security capabilities of whoever processes payment card information. There are many benefits of PCI DSS compliance. The most fundamental ones for an organization are:

• Protection of customers’ personal data
• Increased customer confidence through a higher level of data security
• Increased protection against financial losses and remediation costs that arise from security breaches
• Maintain customer trust, and safeguard reputation
• Benchmark and assess the security mechanisms of systems that store, process and/or transmit payment cardholder data.

On behalf of our entire SLDM community, we cannot thank you enough for all that you and your Qtego team did for our event! We recently met with our accounting team, and are excited to announce to our parish that we raised $15,000 over our previous year on our silent auction! We achieved this with having 100 less items than last year! Our “GIVE” raised $41,500, which was also a $10,000 increase!  In the past, we have had around 40 to 60 items that went un-sold.  This year, we had nothing to take home with us!  Our work load decreased, but our profit increased!  Our accounting department has never had a more relaxing evening.  We were nervous about how our parishioners would adapt to this big change after doing “paper bidding” for 10 years, but it was wildly successful! We had over 75% bidding participation from our attendees. We have received nothing but positive feedback!

You and your team made this such a seamless transition for us, and we can’t thank you enough! You truly helped us “step it up” and take our event to the next level.  We can’t wait to see how we can all top it together again next year!

If there is ever anything WE can do for YOU…let us know!

Regards,

Christine Utzinger and Lisa Finn
Mardi de Montfort Advisors

“Having our Gala attendees use their own cell phones to bid on items via Qtego reduced our auction system costs by 50% from last year”.

AFCEA Bethesda

14th Annual Celebration Benefiting The
Children’s Inn at NIH
“A Night for the Children”

Saturday, April 14, 2012
6:30 PM – Midnight

Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner
1700 Tysons Boulevard · McLean, VA 22102

For the past 14 years, AFCEA Bethesda has proudly sponsored an annual gala supporting The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Together with organizations and individuals representing all areas of the federal IT community who have generously contributed their time and financial support, we have been able to donate over $4.1 million to the Children’s Inn at NIH.

The Children’s Inn at NIH is a residential “place like home” for sick children and their families. Children come from across the country and around the world to stay together with their families in The Inn’s healing environment while receiving groundbreaking medical treatments at NIH, the nation’s leading biomedical research center. While NIH takes care of the child’s medical needs, The Children’s Inn tends to the heart, soul and spirit.

The gala has grown to become one of the most important fundraising events of the year for The Children’s Inn. We invite your organization to participate and give back to the community. Your support will have a tremendous impact on the quality of life for children and their families. We welcome individuals and companies alike to become further involved through the AFCEA Bethesda Chapter.

General Dynamics Information Technology is graciously sponsoring Qtego’s Auction Technology for the event. Guest will be able to make their silent auction bids by texting or calling on their cellular phones.

This years silent auction will offer Qtego’s auction by cellular technology. Guests will be able to text or call their bids in from their own cell phones.

A Celebration for Roncalli

Saturday, April 28

Rebelation Riviera: “A Wonderful Rebel Resort” will be held Saturday, April 28, 2012 at Roncalli High School. As Rebelation approaches its 14th year, it has grown into a premier event that brings together our community of parents, benefactors, alumni and friends. This annual dinner, live auction, silent auction, raffle and student performances will raise over $100,000 for needs-based tuition assistance. Doors open: 5:00 PM • Silent auction: 5:00-8:30 PM Dinner: 7:00 PM • Live auction: 8:30 PM

Qtego was proud to provide it’s mobile phone bidding for their silent auction items.

All proceeds from this event will grant the wishes of children in Central Ohio.

So don’t let a weak cell phone signal prevent you from using mobile text bidding for your next fundraiser. Let Qtego boost your cellular signal so you can boost your Silent Auction revenues!

Join Qtego who will be providing the silent auctions by cellular phone to raise money for the China Mission Team on Saturday, March 17th. Ben Davis Christian Church will be providing a Italian Dinner to benefit the children of China at Shepherd’s Field Children’s Village. You
will have a chance to bid on hundreds of items from several sports teams, and local restaurants using your cell phone

You can start your bidding in advance of the event by viewing the items on Qtego on-line Auction web site Click here to view the Catalog,

The preview gala to the Indiana Flower and Patio Show, will be the 16th annual Marsh Supermarkets’ Noble Evening in the Garden gala presented by The National Bank of Indianapolis will feature house favorites from Indy’s top restaurants, live entertainment, an extensive silent auction and more in beautiful garden settings at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.

So plan to join us on:
Friday, March 9
7 – 11 pm
Indiana State Fairgrounds
Must be at least 21 to attend

We are proud to announce that Governor Mitch Daniels, First Lady Cheri Daniels, Mayor Greg Ballard and Winnie Ballard will serve as this year’s Honorary Co-Chairs.

Vote for your favorite restaurant in this year’s event for the People’s Choice Award. You decide. It’s free and simple. Contest ends March 2, and the winner will be recognized at A Noble Evening in the Garden!

New this year, Noble will feature Qtego Auction Technology so guests can bid on their favorite auction items using their own mobile phone from any location.  Catch a sneak peek at Noble’s catalog of auction items starting March 2 so be sure to check back then to start bidding early!

Ask a St. Simon the Apostle parishioner what they see when you mention “Fat Tuesday” and you might get a different answer.

“A band playing and our gymnasium full of local restaurants serving up food and drinks to over 500 Geist locals,” is the picture Angela Duggan sees in her mind.

For the past six years, Duggan has been orchestrating the Taste of St. Simon, renamed this year to “Bites for Bytes,” to benefit the Geist parochial school’s technology department. With the help of parent volunteers and faculty, Duggan goes door-to-door asking every restaurateur who will listen to participate in the annual event. Nearly 20 local restaurants are already on board for this year’s event which be held on Tuesday, March 8 from 6:00-9:30 p.m. at St. Simon the Apostle School.

“We have some new restaurants this year like Scotty’s Lakehouse and Good Fellas, but our event has been built around long-time supporters like Bella Vita, the Grill, Casler’s and Chef Suzanne,” said Duggan.

This year St. Simon has invited Qtego to provide the Silent Auction Technology so their guests can bid on the auction items by using their own cellular phones.

Tom will be the night’s Emcee and will be encouraging guests to raise their paddles as he asked them to make pledges for the school. By using Qtego’s new Give program the donors will be able to see their names displayed on the big media screen by the stage with the running totals for the night. The new feature makes for a fun and exciting way to raise more funds. Guest will be encouraged to continue to give after the “ask” is done on stage by texting their donations from their phones.

We were excited to join them for their 8th annual event to help them raise $125,000 for scholarships and programs for students with learning disabilities!

Qtego was able to premier a brand-new feature for the Fund-A-Need. Working in conjunction with the Tanna Guthrie, the night’s live benefit auctioneer, guest were able to raise their paddles as she asked them to make pledges for the school. The donors were able to see their names displayed on the big media screen with the running totals for the night. The new feature made for an exciting way to raise more funds. Guest were encouraged to continue to give after Tanna was done on stage by texting their donations from their phones.

Horizon Academy included the below reminder message before the event.

**DON’T FORGET TO BRING A CHARGED CELL PHONE
TO PARTICIPATE IN QTEGO TECHNOLOGY TEXT BIDDING.**
You only need a phone with text capability (it doesn’t have to be a Smartphone).
If you’re not a “texter”– No worries! We’ll have volunteers with iPads to help you bid!

Thanks Horizon for including us in on all the fun!

Once items donated to a silent auction have been organized into categories and sorted, it’s time to start pricing. Pricing is really a matter finding the tipping point between starting high enough to maximize value and starting low enough to interest the most possible bidders. It’s important to remember that most silent auction items will generally come fairly close to their value anyway, because attendees want to support an organization. Lower starting bids will likely generate more overall activity for the auction.

Bidders will bid on more items to begin with if the amounts they are bidding are not individually of enormous consequence (not to mention if they believe they won’t actually end up with the item). An attitude of, “Well, either I’ll get it cheap, or I’ll bid it up for the charity” is not uncommon. However, there is only a limited amount of time for auction bidding and attendees are also chatting, networking and sometimes drinking – there needs to be only a reasonable amount of bids in order to get the item up to (or close to) value.