I am also from the St. Louis area. No on the local restaurant gift cards, as far as St. Louis goes. However, we live in a small community in the metro area and receive donations from many of our local restaurants. Places specific to our area. Good luck!
Hey All!
Love this forum. I am seeking donations for a volunteer appreciation event in a few months. I'm in the St. Louis area. Any suggestions? Also, I haven't had as much luck as I hoped for with donations from local restaurants. Anyone have any luck with chain restaurants donating gift cards?
Thanks!
I also read somewhere that you should take the amount of people you are exspecting and divide by 2 and that's how many auction items you should have.
Our auction wants to generate that much but I'm not so sure we can do it. I'm trying my absolute best to gather the best packages I can since I'm in charge of donations but I can only do so much.. this site sure has helped a lot though..
This is a formula I read somewhere, in order to figure out how much you need to have on hand to try to reach a certain goal. I am going to see if this holds true for us this year.
Live auction generates 66% of the income from an event
Silent auction generates the other 34%
Live auction items yield 75% of the items' actual value
Silent auction items yield 50% of the item's actual value.
For our auction, we have a "dare to pay full price" program where anyone who pays full value for an item goes into a drawing for additional prizes. Since we started that, we now get at least 75 - 80% value on our items. Prior to that, it was closer to 60%.
That said, if I were trying to earn $45,000, I'd try to get about $60,000 in donations.
