Westmont firm's auction program aids nonprofits

Consider it a Gesture of good faith.

While attending a charity fundraiser in 2011, Jim Alvarez saw room for improvement in the process of the silent auction being held during the event. In addition to tracking bids that were being written down on paper, Alvarez was wary of the long lines winning bidders had to face to pay for their items.

Alvarez is the founder and president of Gesture, a Westmont-based company that has automated the fundraising process for nonprofits. From using mobile phones for the bidding process to automating the payment procedure, Gesture has proved to be a valuable resource for charities and foundations to raise funds efficiently.

Born in his basement five years ago, Gesture has grown to a 60-person company that is expected to see $10 million in revenue this year, Alvarez said. It has partnered with more than 2,000 nonprofits nationwide, from the Ronald McDonald House Charities and American Cancer Society to small, local private schools and foundations. The company works with the Chicago Blackhawks, Cubs and Fire charities, as well as the foundations of the last four Stanley Cup championship teams and, most recently, the 2015 World Series champion Kansas City Royals.

Key to Gesture's success is a mobile bidding system that will text a bidder when he has been outbid and ask if he wants to submit a new bid.

"In the olden days, people would come and make a bid, then they'd start socializing and never really have a chance to go back to check and see if they've been outbbid," Alvarez said. "What we do now is, as soon as they get outbid, we text them and ask if they want to bid again, and this dramatically helps the charities raise more money."

In addition, the software accepts and holds credit card information during the check-in process, which helps speeds up the payment process at the end of the night.

A dashboard monitors the entire process in real time, Alvarez said. The client can see how many bids they are getting, what the revenues are, and can break information down by item, such as how many raffle tickets are sold or what an individual item is selling for. A custom website is also created for the specific event, which opens the process to a wider group of donors.

"People who might not be able to attend the event can now participate," Alvarez said, adding that several events in the past have hit their fundraising goals before the event even starts.

"More time, more bidders, equal more revenue," he said.

While technology is a big part of Gesture, Alvarez is quick to point out the human factor also makes it successful. For each event, Gesture has a team work with the organization to handle the fundraising efforts.

"An account manager walks through every step of fundraising," he said, adding that process alone can take 10 to 13 hours. "On the night of event, we send a team of 4 to 20 people to take the credit card information at the beginning of event, store that information and collect at the end of night. We also help with the bidding throughout the night and handle the check-out.

"It's not only our technology, but our team that makes sure everything goes well."

And while it helps nonprofits raise funds, Gesture does not take a cut from that money. Instead, it charges a flat fee to the organization beforehand, based on the complexity of the event.

"It never matters if they raise $10,000 or $10 million at an event," he said. "Ours is a flat fee."

Gesture's goal, Alvarez said, is to handle the fundraising portion of the event, so that the nonprofit can focus more on its donors.

"At a charity event, there's a lot of moving parts. What we want to do for our charity partner is to simply take the fundraising portion of the night off their plate," he said. "Now, from a charity standpoint, they can spend time with their donors."

News Bytes

• Technology products and solutions provider ITsavvy, based in Itasca, announced the creation of 30 new jobs for 2016 in its Chicago Loop office.

ITsavvy was recognized by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of his commitment to growing the city's next generation economy as a technology hub through the World Business Chicago initiative. The new positions at ITsavvy will include entry-level sales, tenured sales and several tiers of engineering with an emphasis on virtualization and storage expertise. "We have an internal culture that encourages individual entrepreneurialism within a corporate environment," said John Skeffington, director of talent management for ITsavvy.

• Infinite Peripherals in Elk Grove Village recently released its new PrintKit app, which provides mobile printing of 1D or 2D bar code and QR code labels. The free app works with IPC's DPP-255 and DPP-450 mobile printers, and can be downloaded to any iOS device to create custom labels or replicate existing labels.

"As part of our commitment to delivering complete solutions, we developed PrintKit to give our customers a convenient, 'out-of-the-box' tool to print labels quickly and easily," said Jeffrey Scott, CEO of IPC. "Now, enterprises in a variety of industries no longer have to dedicate resources to developing their own app."

PrintKit is available at the iTunes App Store.