Is there an initial ticket price to enter the event and then additional tickets need to be purchased at the event? And how much are these tickets usually sold for? I am a senior class advisor and I am looking to put together a tricky tray but wasn't sure about how the ticket were sold. I'm going to go to a local event when the school year begins to get a clearer idea of how it all works.

Thanks

Bear;130017 wrote: JHB thanks for the info. Where I live tricky trays are very popular. They seem to be springing up all over. Here they are done in banquet halls along with a full course dinner. They tend to have about 400 or more prizes. They are so organized that I thought if there was a detailed guide line from start to finish, a somewhat dummies book, we would purchase it in a heart beat. We did purchase the one on PTO "auctions" but it was not detailed and it was not what we were looking for. They are on a grander scale in my area and a lot more involved. They make $20,000.00 or more for the evening.
I am going to do more research for something. Hopefully I can find one.

At our school (and other schools in our community) we call this a Card Party. In the past card parties were held at banquet halls, and some still are. Last year our school downsized and found the profit was the same for A LOT LESS effort.

We solicit local and national businesses/companies for donations. The school also kicks in $1000 for prize procurement for this low-key card party which we hold in the school auditorium. With one person soliciting locally, me soliciting national companies and a few people donating or getting donations from their companies, we ended up with loads of gifts. We had almost 100 theme baskets (a dozen were funded by the school), 110 "Super Sweeps" gifts which were individual items, gift certificates, etc..., a "Dining Out" category with 60 gift certificates.

Guest paid $20 for a light buffet, soda, beer and wine. Decor was simple but fun (tropical was this year's theme). You could buy individual raffle tickets for the various categories (theme baskets, super sweeps, dining out). We also ran the big money maker, which was a Super 50/50. Five hundred $100 tickets were sold and the grand prize winner got $20,000, with second and third place prizes of $3500 and $1500.

We sold all 500 tickets so the school automatically had $25000 in profit. With 180 guests, we ended up making another $5000 in raffle tickets. THen we did a smaller 50/50 raffle and got $1400 more.

We did a post-mortem to figure out how we could spend less and do better next year.

The best part is that instead of needing 60-70 volunteers for a banquet hall production, we did our fundraiser with ten volunteers and made the same amount of money.

You can find lots of soliciting info on this site on the boards, so take advantage and brainstorm with a crew of volunteers as I did and you will come up with an amazing number of resources and can get SO MUCH for your event that you'll be amazed.

What I find is the biggest obstacle is getting people who are willing to solicit. I am mentoring people to do this for next year so just two of us don't get stuck doing the task ourselves. I'd appreciate hearing about anyone's ideas on improving solicitation.

We have our Chinese auction, Silent Auction and Spring Carnival all on the same night. We don't send our kids out to fundraise door-to-door, so this is our one big fundraiser.

We separate our gym in half and put the silent auction items on tables on one side and the chinese auction items on the other. Anything that was a certificate/hotel stay was photocopied and the copy was actually taped to the wall at eye-level. We had names and numbers on the backs of the tickets for the chinese auction and winners' names were written on huge sheets of paper taped to another wall. That way everyone could see if they won, without having to announce names and listen for your name or number. This worked out great and we cleared almost $5,000!

Yes, I agree that what I have described is daunting. But truthfully, all fundraising is challenging and all event planning is time consuming. So if you are committed to starting this type of event, I say go for it.
Our event is big but it is accomplished by a handful of people..the old 80/20 rule. We have over 1200 kids in our school, we had 90 volunteers who had various levels of involvement but when you boil it all down, the whole event was run by 10 key people.
The first year is the most challenging, as it's a big learning curve but once you get that under your belt, the following years are not nearly as hard.

ademom74;130044 wrote: .... we net $31,000 .... # of cash boxes (at least 6)....

While I applaud your enthusiasm, do let me point out to others who might be a bit intimidated those numbers, it can be scaled to ANY size. Ya'll are talking about some pretty big events (400 prizes, $31,000 proceeds). Don't get me wrong - I think it's great you guys have pulled this off!

The bag auction/chance auction/tricky tray is way of doing the fundraiser, whether you have 4 or 400 items. Obviously, if you have a lot of items, the work increases.

At our annual elementary school Spring Fling, we'd profile 4-6 items this way along with our regular silent auction. At the High School's Holiday Bazaar (with vendor craft tables), each vendor donated something for the bag auction - which was about 30-40 items.

So for someone just starting out - don't feel you have to do a gigantic one.

Bear - You live in Jersey... there are tons of tricky trays you can go to. Get to one or more in your area, get their program and use it to determine your solicitation list. Go to www.trickytray.com . Find a mentor...anyone in your district who does them? Call them up and see if they would give you any advice.

Yes, tricky trays are a huge amount of work but the rewards are enormous. We held ours in the beginning of March and we net $31,000 (I live in Jersey too).

Below is rough outline of things you need to consider. This list is in now way complete, just something to get you thinking:
Secure venue…either school or outside hall.
Get approval from district.
Start application for gaming license with state.
Decide upon theme, size of event, food served.
Put out letter to school population asking for volunteers.
Get teachers and staff excited and involved early in the process.
Put together subcommittees and sub-chairs: solicitation, ticket sales, 50/50, food, runners, publicity, program, set up, basket wrapping, outreach. Each of these subcommittees will have volunteers.
Who will wrap and store baskets? This is a biggie as these items take over your home. Best to get one of those storage facilities to donate space.
Determine price structure based upon others you attend in your area. Have start up meeting at in October for spring event.

Put together solicitation list of all local and national vendors. Beg or borrow one. This site is great resource for that.
Put together solicitation letter… mass mail all vendors at least 6 months in advance.
If you are a 501© 3 organization, make that visible on letter.
For spring event, start calling local vendors and visiting stores in January. Be persistant but pleasant. Need core group of at least 4 people to make solicitation happen.
Ticket sales should start 6 weeks before the event.
Use internet for virtual meetings if coming together as a group isn’t possible for subcommittees.
I can go on and on, thinking of all the little things that you should know, like tipping janitors (always take that money out of the 50/50) or # of cash boxes (at least 6) or family donations (encourage them by offering free tickets to those families)… but I would run out of room here.

As I said previously, you need a local mentor, someone who will help you with all the little details. Good luck and keep us posted.