The City of Brookings, SD placed a $400,000 investment using GFOA YieldAdvantage, a new Internet auction website offered by the Government Finance Officers Association. Traditionally, government entities and school districts solicit bids from banks and broker-dealers via phone. Using the GFOA YieldAdvantage website, state and local governments are able to solicit bids easily and efficiently from a larger number of banks via the Internet and to conduct an on-line auction in which these banks bid against each other for the deposit. The City of Brookings was interested in investing $100,000 in the following four durations: 6-month, 1-year, 18-month and 2-year. They received a total of 18 bids from 6 banks.
In December 2003, the GFOA entered into an alliance with Grant Street Group, a fixed income Internet auction house and parent of MuniAuction, to create the GFOA YieldAdvantage website (www.gfoayield.com).