bid with blat gmarah instead of cash
Not to useful to keeping the lights on in the shul.
A shul I used to go to in Brooklyn allowed people to pay their bids either in dollars or volunteer hours with each hour being worth $54. Was actually a great move, because the shul had many events that would never happen if not for volunteers.
That being said, overall, I find the auctioning business of questionable benefit: Is the donor base actually increased through the auction and do participants contribute any more than they would have otherwise donated to the shul without a kibud? What's the record on collecting the funds (and this is an area where online bidding would probably be more effective with a credit card payment made upfront)?