I have organized an "auction" at our local school for the last 8 years. However, the auctions I read about here confuse me. For our auctions we ask school parents to come up with a "theme" and fill a basket. I strees that they think outside the box. Their theme can be movie nite and they buy an large inexpensive pop corn container - available at the $1 store - they add a box of microwave popcorn, a couple of 2 litre sodas, $1.00 boxes of candy and maybe a movie or gift card from a local movie rental store. The themes can be whatever your mind and wallet can take you. Admission is only $5.00 and includes 25 numbered tcikets. They can purchase additional tickets if they want after they arrive. They can put all their tickets in for 1 prize or distribute them among all the "baskets" or prizes on display. I also request donations from both local and national businesses. Some of the larger prizes are raffled off for $1 or $2 each. I also request any new, unused items which can be incorporated into a basket. A free pizza certificate paired up with a donated bottle of wine looks impressive when wrapped and presented correctly. Some parents pair up and donate in order to cut down on costs. We are a small school and have limited space - we can only seat 150 people but we have never made less than a $5.000.00 profit. We sell refreshments and ask local bar owners to donate the beer as we make this an over 21 nite out.

Instead of an auction I would recommend a raffle where tickets are affordable and have prizes that resonate with the demographics. For example, lower income families would love to win vacations, $500 shopping cards to walmart, target, costco etc.

If you are an average school with 800 kids each chilc would only need to sell 5 $10 raffle tickets to generate $40,000 in sales. Pay out $10,000 in prizes and make $30,000.

I would give out incentive prizes to the kids to motivate them. Glow in the dark bracelets etc for anyone that sells even 1 ticket. $500 to the family in each grade that sells the most etc. You could give away $10,000 in prizes to school families and still make $20k for the school.

A win for everyone.

Roger-
Thanks for the helpful tips.

Elena-
Just wanted to let you know that I posted this question on Facebook and a couple of people jumped into the conversation.

Hope this helps.

~Lisa




Follow us on Twitter .
Connect with us on Facebook .

I can offer a lot of advice on online auctions. BUT... I don't think they are a magic bullet. They can expand your community to include out-of-town uncles and aunts, grandparents and the like - but it is still your school community that has to carry most of the load.

And they are not less work than a gala - it's just that the work is different. With a gala, you have to organize the event itself, but once it gets started, you at least can be reasonably assured that you have most of the guests' attention. With an online auction, you have to market the auction constantly. I wrote a white paper on this; send me a message through the site here if you want me to email it to you.

As for the original question, here's my advice:

1) keep the ticket price low or free if at all possible.
2) if possible, serve beer or wine at the event (I realize this is not feasible for many schools)
3) find a way to accept credit cards
4) plan to have about half the number of silent auction items as you have bidder numbers. If you think you can get 150 parents to come, that's about 80 bid numbers (most couples will share one), so plan to sell 40-50 items. You want competition. BUT... also throw a raffle (with a $5 or $10 ticket) and have 9 or 10 signup parties (I have a list of signup party ideas I'm willing to email anyone who asks), and have some fixed-price items like prints of artwork and the like.
5) plan to have at least a small live auction, and make sure there are classroom projects in it. I won't post the link again, but I put up a site showcasing some great classroom projects; let me know and I'll send you the link
6) last - to get to $20k from where you are just might be a 2- or 3-year project. If you don't make it the first year, be committed to stay at it while it grows.

Roger

Badpants and rm1996-
Thanks so much for jumping in with excellent thoughts and ideas!

Elena-
Have you thought of doing an online auction so you can extend the reach beyond your school? Here's an old article that you may find helpful: www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/arti...omy-affects-auctions

Here's a blog that has a round-up of auction ideas:
www.ptotoday.com/ptoblog/category/auctions/

Wondering if anyone in our community has done an online auction and could offer some input?

~Lisa

Follow us on Twitter .
Connect with us on Facebook .

Elena,

Badpants is right in that you won't get a lot of extra people in the community in the door to bid. That doesn't mean that it's a waste of time to do an auction, though. It sounds as though the auction held before you arrived had the right idea for starting up - combine with another event. That way you have people who are already attending and you don't have to convince them to come to a special auction event that typically has costs for food, drink, entertainment, venue, and advertising.

Then it's time to pick the right items to auction. For our auction, we have a good number of things that people are going to buy anyway - we get donations from local car dealerships for oil changes or tire rotation, we talk to salons about haircuts, we ask restaurants for gift cards, we contact exterminators, we talk to dentists about new patient exams, birthday party packages from local bowling alleys, etc. You get the idea. About half of our items are things that people need and are in their budget anyway, so they don't mind bidding on those items. The other half are "luxury" items. We have 2 auctions, a smaller one in late October (where people can purchase Christmas gifts) and one in late April (where people purchase things that they think they will want over the summer).

I try not to ask families to buy items to donate. We often don't get the value back and that makes everyone upset. Besides, if the budget is tight, then every dollar spent on donating an item is a dollar that can't be spent on bidding. Many national companies are willing to donate - see the Ultimate Donation List thread - and often local companies are happy to donate too. Send someone who frequents the business with a letter about the purpose of the auction and you'll be surprised how many businesses are willing to offer something.

Then spend as little as possible to round out your items into logical groupings and also make sure that you have items that will go for low prices. It's okay to have a $10 gift card as its own item, knowing that it will go for about $8, because the family that buys it may not be purchasing anything else. One year we tried to group items so that everything was a minimum value of $50 and that turned out not to be a good strategy, so we've gone back to having some small ticket items too. If you don't have an audience that can pay $1000 for a vacation package, don't put one together. At our auction, each class puts together an art project and these sell well most years (for limited funds). You just need two parents who both want the project to get a good amount.

Once the auction is a settled part of the fundraising effort, you can branch off and have a specific auction event in future years. For this year, I'd also scale back my fundraising goal (to closer to $10,000), but work hard to get every dollar possible.

Hope this helps!

Laura