At the end of our Auction, we have two items that people were actively bidding on. We stopped the "silent" part and went "live." We did this informally by asking for everyone's attention and then just have the two bidders start given amounts. The crowd really got into this and encouraged the bidders to go higher. It was a lot of fun. We will do it again.

We are going to allow people to continue bidding after the time is up if there are two active bidders present.....for expample, you have sporting event tickets, you have two active bidders present, the one who does not win usually says I would have gone higer but ran out of time....so we will allow them to continue to bid until the last bid is determined....make sense?

We give a 15 minute warning over the PA system, then a 5 min warning to anyone in the room. When the last min is at hand we count down the last 20 secs. At that time we have our 6-10 volunteers around the room to "watch" the sheets so that when "time" is called they pull the sheets up immediately. It's also a good way to make sure no one adds a bid after time has been called.

We also do ours in one evening and find that it's more than enough time. Everyone is excited and ready to win that night.

Last year our silent auction lasted an entire week. Each day more and more people placed bids on sheets as they picked up or dropped off their children, and were finally pulled at the end of one school day.

This year we're just doing it one night at our "auction/carnival" night. I'm concerned that 3/4 hours won't be enough time.

For others....when it's about to be over, do you just countdown the last minute and then have volunteers pull the sheets when time's up?

Our fifth grade class does a silent auction every year for their field trip/party fund.

What we do is solicit themed baskets-ie: game basket full of diff games; party basket; movie basket; car wash basket (belive it or not it was a huge seller: $45!), outdoor play basket (bubbles, chalk, jump ropes, etc) and so on. We also ask any parents with businesses to donate a service, and we go to the business community for the same. We have had local gas stations donate oil changes, or carwashes, a local cleaner donated services, hair salons, spas. Depending on your community the list is very long!

Now here are the HUGE sellers in our schools. We have a lot of the teachers who will donate an event of their choice that they will do with the winning bidder (student). The best examples are these: the art teacher (who is LOVED by her students) auctions off a Saturday at the Art Galleries to the winning bidder and a guest and another did an evening at a local laser tag game room. We also had a teacher acution off ice cream parties (for 4-6 studets, winners choice of friends to go with them), babysitting or anything that they want. Another big hit is the Principal for the day and V Princpl for the day. These 2 kids get to "shadow" and "help" the Principal and VP for a day (these two usually start out at $25 each and are heavily bidded on). The teacher events alone last year brought in over $600 of the $1400 our acution brought in.

We also establish before hand what increments we will accept for the items being bid on ($1 , $5 and so on) and where the item's bid would begin (ie: starting bid is $5 with $2 increaments)

Another hint: make sure that when it's over all forms are removed IMMEDIATELY - we have had issues in the past with people coming in after the bidding was over and putting in another bid (of course that would be the winning bid). So make sure that you have enough volunteers posted around to remove the sheets right away.

I hope this was helpful and happy bidding (be careful - it's addictive! I won my dauther the art teachers item - at $60! but It was worth it to hear how much fun she and her best friend had had that day. I'll be at it again this year.)

[ 10-01-2006, 07:49 PM: Message edited by: tlch1967 ]

We are doing a basket silent auction soon. i am making a form that says whose class the basket is from, an estimated value, and a list of items included in the basket. Underneath will be lines for bids. on some we may have an opening bid. not sure yet.

Any tips appreciated.