Hi Everyone,
This is my first year running an auction and we have had some success, a lot of which is because of all the great contributions on this thread, so for that I think you! We are about 6 weeks out from the auction so I am about to begin walking the streets locally to hopefully get some "last minute" donations. I have a few questions.
1. When you do these walk-up requests, do you ask for a manager immediatly? Also, if they ask you how much in value or what kind of thing you'd like them to donate, how much is too much to request?
2. We currently have about 40 different donors, which is a lot considering we will only have about 75 people at the event. This makes me nervous that not everything will sell. What is the protocol for items donated to benefit your event that are not sold at the event? Do you keep them as a board/organizer for next year, do you just hand them out at the end of the event? What is the best way to handle this sticky situation?
3. We received a package from Elite Island Resorts that includes 3 different 7day, 6night Caribbean trips. The catch seems to be that you MUST pay $120 per night, per person for the all-inclusive part of the package. This means that at a minimum the trip will cost $720 per person, then when you include airfare it could be around $1200 per person, plus whatever you spend on bidding for the vacations. This sounds really expensive for a trip that is donated and meant to be in complete form for the person that is bidding on the vacation. Has anyone used an Elite Island Resorts vacation in the auction, how did you handle it bidding wise, and if you have yourself heard responses from it, how did the resort stand up to the reviews (which seem great from all the reviewers on Tripadvisor, which has been reliable for me in the past on multiple vacations).
Thank you again for all your advice and I really hope anyone can give me an insight on my questions. Thank you in advance!
Did anyone else have trouble with the Redbox link (survey monkey)? It keeps taking me to survey monkey registry page. Nothing that has to do with Redbox. I'm guessing they took the link down.
Our auction was Saturday night. We made about $8000 on auction items. We had about 100 baskets, with values ranging from about $900 down to $25, and we averaged 75% of value. It was a huge leap forward from last fall, when we averaged closer to 43% of value for our items. Our parent population is small (we are a Christian school with 115 students) and our city is recovering from a natural disaster that about wiped it out, so many families took a substantial financial hit in the last year. Most of our normal business donors have not yet rebuilt or simply cannot afford to donate. 80% of our items came from out of our region, and I can't tell you how grateful I am for national companies that were willing to send us gift cards or items.
We had a few items that came in the last week or so prior to the auction:
Redbox
mounted fish from a taxidermy place (surprising popular - was shocked)
fireworks package from a local company
lots and lots of jewelry (every local jeweler we asked donated something, ranging in value from about $50 to $500)
DeWalt Tools - had parent contact there
I wish you all success - and if you ever find yourself trying to run an auction after a significant national disaster, please feel free to message me and I'll happily send you a list of companies who go out of their way to assist in times of great need.
I know exactly how you feel!!! I have done silent auctions for many a year, and I have to tell you that this year has been the hardest yet.
I absolutely don't understand how some of the people post that they have made thousand upon thousand of dollars. I'm sure a lot of that is possibly having parents who can offer wonderful items, work for companies that can, or it's the person who knows the person who knows the person.
Anyway, I am sure that you will have a wonderful event. All we can do is do the best that we can and look to do a bit better next year!
Thank you so much for all of the great ideas and donation request suggestions. Our school held our auction on Saturday night. We did basket, silent and a live auction and made $79,000 for our scholarship fund. It was a lot of work for an office of 2 people! We are a boarding school so our parents are scattered all over the country. We had a few local parents that helped, but a majority of it fell on our development office and it was very stressful. But in the end to know we made that much money, it makes it all worth it. Thank you again for sharing all of your auction knowledge!
Wow Ninja. That is really awesome!!
Our event went well, overall, but we did not bring in nearly as much money as you did!
I think we could have had many more sponsors but our chairs for some reason ignored suggestions for places to contact. But we are still happy with the amount of money we brought in, as it was a little more than we have brought in in the past.
We did have a couple of mishaps, for people to try to avoid. One of our biggest sponsors attended and bid on a $700 luxury item and paid for it, but then the event Chairs realized they lost the voucher provided by the vendor!!
We also had several vendors send in very nice items early on and the chairs did not list/advertise their items in our booklet. One was a live auction item and there thus had been no pre-event advertising for it. The parents who had worked hard and used their connections to get these items were not to happy.
It's so important to treat the vendors and parents helping with respect and their donations with care. I know 98% of people do this. I honestly do not know what was up with our chairs this year. I don't think we will get any of these items again next year.
Despite all, the event was a success. Though some were left with a bad taste in their mouth and that is a real shame for people who simply wanted to help to feel that way.
