One-Woman Show

Lessons Learned

As her business began to take off, Sorbo realized that she had expenses to cover: “I always have to look presentable, and it costs money to do so.” At first, she was unsure how to ask for payment. Most auctioneers work for an auction house, which is responsible for paying them; customers rarely pay the auctioneers directly. And most fundraising auctioneers come from companies that plan fundraising events from start to finish; the live auctioneer is part of the package.

As it turned out, her clients never questioned her fees—quite the contrary. “I was more respected when I charged, and every year I would increase my fee,” Sorbo says. “The respect continued—the more I charged, the more respect I got. So now it’s not really what I charge; it’s, ‘Are you available on this day?’”(Sorbo says that National Auctioneer Association guidelines forbid her from revealing what she charges. She does say that she has a tier of fees that is based on the amount of money she expects to raise.)

Sorbo believes that her humility has been a key factor in her success. At a fundraiser held by a Jewish organization, for example, she auctioned off a fur coat by saying, “Now gentlemen, wouldn’t this be nice for your wife for Christmas?”

Sorbo pauses as the audience did that night. “The whole audience, their mouths dropped. And I said, ‘Did I say something wrong?’ And they’re staring at me, and it just dawned on me. I wanted to go home. I wanted to cry. I wanted to quit. But as I left the stage, I said, ‘Happy Hanukkah, everybody,’ and they forgave me. I’m still doing that auction today.”

She’s also learned other lessons about knowing one’s audience. At one high-profile event, she sold an item for $50,000 and thanked the bidder, though not by name. He pulled her aside after the auction and said, “If I spend $50,000, you better say my name.” The following week, a man made a large winning bid on one of the items. Remembering her last encounter, she thanked him by name. But unlike the previous one, this donor was mortified that he hadn’t remained anonymous. Sorbo was not invited back the next year—but she came back the following year, after event organizers didn’t raise nearly the amount of money that Sorbo had.

Sorbo used these experiences to improve her reading comprehension of the audience’s verbal cues. “You kind of know if they want to be recognized by the way they hold themselves,” she says. “If they’re sitting a certain way after they’ve spent $75,000, you better find out their name and give them credit.” Typically, she adds, “those who want to be recognized look directly at me, and those who do not look down after they bid and cross their hands in front of them.”

The “Real Karen”

Sorbo’s empathy for charitable causes, she believes, has also helped her popularity. In 1969, she was temporarily paralyzed with a kidney disease. “I had been in a wheelchair, so I could empathize with some of these people, and that came across as well, because for every organization I take on, I basically marry their cause,” she says. “I want to learn about their cause, and I want to be theirs and only theirs that night. I take on every auction like it is my first and last one.”

Last March, Sorbo accompanied a team of doctors to Peru as part of a trip for Minneapolis-based Smile Network International, which sponsors repairs of cleft lips and palates for children in Peru, Mexico, and Thailand. The trip helped Sorbo add a touch of urgency to her work for the organization. “I can ask for $500 a smile [at an auction] because I know what it takes,” she says.

In addition, Sorbo has developed what she calls a “Fund a Need” auction, which she tacks on as a finale for many of her events. After the main auction, she’ll call for bids on a nonprofit’s particular need—remodeling the organization’s out-of-date offices, for instance, or computers for an elementary school. To get more dollars, Sorbo calls for more people: one person to bid $5,000, five to bid $1,000 each, and so on, until the goal is reached.

One could say that it’s the charity, not the money, that’s the essence of Sorbo’s business. “I think that there is a very deep, quiet, spiritual side to Karen that you might not know is there when you first meet her,” says Kim Valentini, founder of Smile Network International. “It’s that side of Karen that governs her whole life. She’s very vibrant and outgoing and enthusiastic on the exterior, but there’s a gentle spirit underneath, and I think that is the real Karen.”

In her home office near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Sorbo points to a framed quotation on the wall, from the late newspaper columnist Erma Bombeck: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”

“Every day, if I do not use the talent that God has given me, my day is wasted,” Sorbo says after re-reading the quotation. “I believe that everybody here has a purpose, and I really enjoy and am thankful for my purpose, and that is helping others through my talent.”