Most committees stay on a platform they have outgrown for one reason: the person who set it up last year is gone, and nobody wants to be responsible for losing the donor list.
It is a fair worry and a manageable one. Here is the order to do it in.
1. Export before you cancel, not after
This is the only step with a deadline attached. Once a subscription lapses, access to historical data often goes with it. Before you cancel anything, export:
- Your bidder and donor list, with email addresses
- Past item catalogs, including descriptions and fair market values
- Winning bid history, which is what tells you what to price next year
- Any donor solicitation records showing which businesses gave what
Save it somewhere the committee owns, not a personal laptop. A shared drive folder named for the event year is enough.
2. Bring the item catalog first
Your item list is the most reusable asset you have. Roughly half of a typical school auction repeats year to year: the same restaurant gift certificates, the same principal-for-a-day experience, the same teacher-hosted events. Most platforms accept a CSV import, so a catalog you exported in step one usually comes across in a few minutes.
3. Bring the people list second
Past bidders are the single best predictor of future bidders. Import them as contacts so you can email your existing supporters about the new event rather than starting from your current mailing list.
One thing to get right: people who unsubscribed from your old tool are still unsubscribed as human beings. Do not use a platform switch as a reason to re-add them. Keep that list and honor it.
4. Run a test event before the real one
Set up a small event with three or four items, register as a bidder on your own phone, place a bid, and close it. Check that the winner email actually arrives and reads the way you want it to. Half an hour here catches almost everything that would otherwise surprise you on event night.
5. Switch in the off-season
The worst time to change tools is six weeks before your spring auction. The best is right after an event ends, while last year's data is fresh, the committee remembers what annoyed them, and there is no deadline.
What you do not need to move
Old bid-by-bid logs, expired promotional codes, and last year's page layout are not worth the effort. Take the people, the items, and the results. Leave the rest.
A realistic time estimate
For a typical PTO auction with 40 items and a few hundred contacts, this is an evening of work, most of it exporting and re-importing two CSVs. It is meaningfully less work than running one more year on a tool nobody likes.
MyGiveKit supports CSV import for both items and contacts, and you can run a full trial auction free while you evaluate, so the test event in step four costs nothing.