Every paddle in the air.
Every table's view of it.
You are the development director, or the volunteer chair who said yes in March, and tonight is the evening that pays for a good part of the year. The silent auction tables line the foyer with bid sheets and pens, the auctioneer has a script and a spotter in every section, the fund-a-need moment is timed to the mission video, and the honoree has a speech you have not heard yet. The hired photographer covers the stage. The paddles going up at table fourteen, the bidding war over the weekend cabin, and the volunteers running check-out at midnight are on guests' phones, and that is where they stay. One QR code on every table card and auction display brings them into one private gallery your team reviews before donors, honorees and sponsors see it.
One-time. No account needed to buy — about a minute.
The moments guests actually photograph at charity auctions
Why charity auctions work better on Picsui
Written for the person hosting this one, and checked against what the product actually does.
Sponsor recognition you can count, on partner events
Sponsors underwrite the evening and they ask what they got for it. If your event planner or agency runs the gala through the Picsui Partner Program, the gallery, the guest upload page and the name form carry a 'Sponsored by' link under the logo, the sponsor's name shows under the logo on the live slideshow, and every tap on that link is counted for this event, with link-preview bots left out. A plain Event Pass does not include sponsor links or white label.
The room on the screens between lots
Put the live slideshow on the screens beside the stage during cocktail hour and dinner. New uploads appear as they arrive, so the table that just won the trip sees itself on the wall shortly afterwards, and the guests who were holding back pick up their phones. Hand the screens back to the AV team when the auctioneer needs them for the lot photos and the mission video.
Donors see the gallery you approved
A gala room holds major donors who give quietly, honorees with their families at the table, and a bar that gets livelier after the live auction. Turn on host review and every guest upload waits in your queue until someone on the development team approves it. The gallery you send to the board, the honoree and the donor list is the one you checked, reachable only through your link.
No app. No account. One scan.
Guests point their camera at a QR code and are uploading in seconds. Nobody installs anything, nobody creates a login, and the grandparents can do it as easily as the teenagers.
Live photo wall on any screen
Open the slideshow on a TV, projector or laptop and new uploads appear as they arrive. Grid and collage layouts, transition presets, and a phone remote to control it from across the room.
Seating chart guests can look up
Build tables, assign seats, and let guests find their own place from the invite link instead of hunting for a name on an easel.
Door check-in from your phone
See who has arrived, who is still expected, and how many are in each party — without a clipboard at the entrance.
Private by default, never indexed
The gallery is only reachable by the link or code you share. Guest pages are blocked from search engines and named AI crawlers, and you can close the gallery whenever you choose.
Full-resolution downloads
Download any photo, or the whole event as one archive, at original quality. What guests uploaded is what you keep — no compression, no watermark on paid events.
How it works
Set up in a minute. Collect for the whole event.
Create the gala, import the guest list, assign tables in the seating chart, and turn on host review before the link goes anywhere.
Print the QR code on the table cards, the silent auction display stands and the check-in desk, and add it to the screen slide shown before the live auction.
Guests upload from cocktail hour through the last lot. If there is a photo booth, open the booth link on its Windows or Mac laptop so its photos join the gallery too.
Approve the queue, send the gallery to the honoree, the volunteers and the sponsors with the thank-you letters, and download the originals for the annual report.
Try uploading as a guest.
Scan this with your phone the way a guest at your event would. Choose a sample photo and upload it from your browser, then open the demo gallery to see it land. In this public demo, photos appear at once and videos wait for a person to approve them; at your own event, you decide.
- Scan the code with your phone camera — it opens straight in the browser.
- Upload a sample photo. Look for the upload confirmation so you know it reached the host.
Use a sample you are comfortable sharing with Picsui. Please keep personal or sensitive photos out of the demo.
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This is the same kind of code your guests scan at your event.
Getting the most from charity auctions
Put the code where people stand still. At a charity auction that is the silent auction tables, where guests hover over bid sheets with a pen in one hand and a drink in the other, and the dinner tables once the auctioneer takes the stage. A small card beside every third bid sheet works better than one large sign at the entrance, which people walk straight past while they look for their name at check-in. Ask the emcee to mention the code once before the live auction begins, while the room is seated and listening, and show it on screen for the minute before the first lot. Do not interrupt the fund-a-need for it. That is the part of the night where the room should be listening, not scanning.
Agree how the evening is photographed with the people who matter most. Some donors give large amounts precisely because nobody announces it, and a close-up of their paddle at the top giving level may be the one photo they would not want passed around. Talk to the major gifts officer before the night, keep host review on, and brief the volunteer on the queue to hold back anything that pairs a giving level with a recognizable person. The paddle raise as a whole room, arms up across fifty tables, is the photo you want anyway. It shows generosity without singling anyone out, and it is the image the board will ask for in the year-end appeal.
Use the guestbook for the mission, not the menu. Replace the default question with one that ties the evening to the work, such as what brought you to this cause, or a note for the families the program serves. Written messages from guests make good material for the next appeal letter, with the writer's permission, and they mean a great deal to the program staff who could not leave the shelter or the clinic to attend. Send the volunteers the gallery link first, the morning after. They worked the check-in desk and the check-out line while everyone else ate, and they are the people most likely to have no photos of the night at all.
Common questions about charity auctions
Can our sponsors' names appear on the gallery and the slideshow?
On a partner event, yes. When the nonprofit's event planner or agency runs the gala through the Picsui Partner Program, the event can carry a 'Sponsored by' link under the logo on the gallery, the guest upload page and the name form, and the sponsor's name shows under the logo on the live slideshow. Every tap on that link is counted for the event, leaving out link-preview bots and crawlers, so you can tell the sponsor how many guests tapped through. A plain Event Pass bought directly does not include sponsor links, client logos or white label.
Can the photo booth's pictures go into the same gallery?
If the booth runs on a Windows or Mac laptop, yes. The event dashboard gives you a booth link. Open it in Chrome or Microsoft Edge on the booth laptop and choose the folder the booth software saves into, whether that is dslrBooth, Sparkbooth or another program that saves to a folder. Each new booth photo then appears in the gallery and on the live slideshow within moments, credited Photo booth, and skips the approval queue. Nothing is installed. It does not work for booths that run on an iPad, and anyone holding the link can add photos, so keep it on the booth laptop.
Will photos of our donors end up public?
No. The gallery is private by default, reachable only through the link or code you share, and guest pages are kept out of search engines. With host review on, nothing a guest uploads is visible to anyone else until a member of your team approves it, and the slideshow shows only approved photos. That matters in a room where giving levels, honorees' families and major donors mix. You decide when the gallery link goes out and to whom: every guest, the board only, or just the honoree's family. You can close the gallery to new uploads once the evening ends.
Can this help us raise more at the auction?
We make no promise about what a room gives, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What the gallery does is practical. It gives you photographs of the room at its most generous, taken from inside the tables, to use in thank-you notes, the annual report and next year's sponsorship packet. It gives honorees and volunteers a record of a night they spent working. And it saves the development team from collecting photos one email at a time in the week after the gala, when they should be processing pledges.
Can guests find their table and check in without a paper list?
Yes. Import the guest list, build the seating chart, and each guest sees their table from the personal invite link you send. At the door, volunteers check people in from a phone and see who has arrived and who is still expected, which helps when a table captain is waiting on two missing guests before the salads go out. Bid numbers, auction items and payments stay in your auction software. This handles the guest list, the seats and the photos, and it does not try to run the auction itself.
What does it cost the nonprofit?
An Event Pass is $29, paid once for the gala, with no subscription and no per-guest fee. It covers unlimited uploads under a 25 GB fair-use bound, the seating chart and door check-in, host review, full-resolution downloads and 365 days of hosting. You can try the flow first on the Free Preview, which shows the first 60 uploads as watermarked previews and locks the gallery 7 days after the event. Sponsor links and white label come only on partner events run by a planner or agency in the Partner Program, who sets their own price.
Every photo from charity auctions, in one place
One-time Event Pass, $29. No subscription, no per-guest fee.
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