With regard to getting people to attend the auctions, I can say this - my first year heading the auction and FUNraising Chair. Because of the success of our Innisbrook and note card sales this past fall/winter, I realized that parents are more than willing to spend the money WHEN they feel they are getting something in return at a good rate of return! And so my theory was to just get people in the door, have awesome donations (thanks to this board I have gotten above and beyond what I ever dreamed of) and the rest will hopefully take care of itself.
First, we changed the auction from formal to informal and are holding it at an upscale bowling martini bar this year; we will have bidding and a crazy bowl tournament as well after the auction tables close. We also chose a Saturday night in April vs. October and made sure we picked a weekend nothing major was going on in our city as well as the local professional baseball team being out of town. We made sure that 'no one' would have an excuse to attend something else b/c of a prior longstanding committment.
Because of our venue choice, we had limit our ticket sales to 150 because of venue capacity. In addition, last year, when the auction had to be cancelled b/c of very low numbers (we ended up having an internet auction and raffle that did okay $7000 considering), we heard that the price of $50 was too high for parents to be expected to pay when preschool tuition. I agree that when people are spending that much on tuition and in today's ecomony, very little is left over for entertainment. I was confident that lowering the ticket prices to $37.50 per person for a period of time would put us on a track to success - after 4 weeks of ticket sales, the remaining 3 weeks had a ticket increase to $50pp.
Also, I parred down the invite list from 400+ to the people who are going to normally attend the auction of a preschool which from the last 3 years has consistently been only the current families, the Board of Directors and friends of these sets of people/families. We live in a large metro city so people are hit up for auctions all the time, so instead of spending the money on sending out 400+ invites like normal to alum families, past donors, merchants and city big wigs, I decided to par down the list to the people who we knew were going to attend and concentrated on them.
I also researched the heck out of this site; got ideas from here and expanded my search. I have received TONS of stuff that I never could have without this site. In addition, I got some AWESOME book donations from authors of children's books who live in our state! Not well known authors but published authors who are with Scholastics typically - the books that we all buy from those book flyers! I got the donations that I believed would garner interest for potential RSVPs.
We also started plugging the donations that we had received during the cheap RSVP period. I think this helped b/c every Friday, we sent out an auction update. We also provide free babysitting (capped at a certain number) and pay our teachers to babysit the kids at the school while the parents attend the auction down the street; so basically we are including drinks, eats, bowling, bidding and babysitting into the ticket price of $37.50 pp - a STEAL!
To say the least, our theories have worked so far - we sold out the event in 3 weeks. In addition, because we lowered sponsorships to $250 adn $500 levels which with the sell out has now given us $1400 above projected ticket sales profit! So far so good!
Our auction is 4/9 and we are in the final stages of planning now!
I have always said that too high of ticket prices will prevent people from coming and it won't matter if you have the neatest donations in the world; if you don't have enough people to bid on things, it won't matter!
In addition, we received a donation from a time share company in Orlando; I am NOT pairing this up with our Disney tickets but selling them at different closing times b/c if someone doesn't need the other, you automatically cut that person out. I have realized to not back yourself into a corner by having an American Girl Chicago Weekend package - sell the doll by itself and have the Chicago weekend package be gender neutral or you cut out all the families with boys. You must keep everything neutral for the highest potential!
I LOVE THIS SITE! THANKS FOR ALL YOUR INPUT!