From the Nominator

For 35 years, The Bishop’s School has hosted an annual in-person gala to raise current funds for the school’s Financial Aid and Faculty Professional Growth Programs. The volunteer-driven event enjoys staff support and leadership provided by the Senior Director of Advancement and her administrative assistant. When faced with the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and the realization that our popular in-person event was scheduled to take place at the height of the pandemic crisis in California, we evaluated our options—do we cancel? Do we postpone into the summer or fall? Or do we reinvent our gala as a virtual spring event? The need for the funds, particularly for financial aid, became ever more critical in anticipation of the economic impact of the pandemic on our community. 

With the funding urgency, we chose to move forward, and create a virtual live-streamed event that maintained as much of the auction characteristics we would have enjoyed in an in-person gathering. For the last decade, online and remote auction technology has emerged as integral components of our live auctions. Therefore, we were confident in our ability pivot to a complete online auction with a virtual bidding component. However, creating an interactive live auction with the same tools would be new. The early selection of One World. One Love. One Knight. for the in-person gala was a fortuitous choice in light of the state of the world. The first step was to rebrand the event into One World. One Love. One VIRTUAL Knight.

From the Judges

The marketing and videos are great and very creative. Love the use of vendors, and the virtual auction process/planning details were really great. Really great use of Zoom tech to include students and guests.