Again, thanks to all of you for your comments and ideas. The gears are now turning. If it isn't too much to ask, Critter and KLH, is there a way you might be able to email me a copy of what your bid sheets look like so I can envision the copies that are left on the table and also pulled? Our set up from last year really needs improvement so looking at something like this would help so much. My email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Anyone else with more input I welcome your thoughts and tips. I now have about 150 stand-alone items, 30 themed baskets, and 100 artwork pieces that will be part of the auction, so it will be fairly big and I need all the help I can get to make things run smoothly. Last year we had the same artwork items and baskets, but only about 10 stand-alone items, and everything was strictly through silent bid sheets, no chinese auction items. Our event runs from 5-8 PM on a Friday night (at the school, kids will be with parents). I was thinking of closing in 3 waves now--maybe 7, 7:15 and 7:30. Or 7:15, 7:30 and 7:45 (but then this can get late with the kids). What would you think of pulling/announcing the chinese auction winners first (high value items) at 7 along with perhaps the artwork projects? Then the baskets maybe at 7:15 and at 7:30 the stand-alone items (value range $35-100, 150 tops for a few). Sorry to ask so much--your experience would help.
We just had out 2nd dinner live/silent auction on March 11th. Here are a few of the things that we did.
We have a 3 part bidsheet. The top two are pulled and brought to the cashier table. The winning bid is circled and the last sheet is left on the table for the winner's to see.
Each person has been assigned a bid number and a folder. The top two sheets of the bidsheet are put in the winning bidders folder. Along with a two page closing statement. Upon check out the bidder comes up and gives their bid number. WE pull the folder, tally up everything and give them the yellow copies.
We had three silent areas. We did this by color. We closed the tables at 7:15 7:30 & 7:45. Our live auction began at 8:00.
We use 6th grade student volunteers to circle and pull the bidsheets. We also station a few at the tables with the more expensive items. We have not had a problem with people stilling bidding when the table is closed.
We had 136 people attend this year and we raised $12,000. Dinner was $18 a head and was catered by a great BBQ restaurant. If you have any questions or would like copies of the bidsheet and closing statement let me know.
We desparately protect the bid sheet tops so we can do analysis later. We have our system on MSAccess, so we go back a fews days after the auction and enter all the winning bid amounts, the number of bids per item, and the winning bidder number. This gives us the data we need to do analysis til we're blue in the face. The info is like gold for planning the next event.
We also use two waves of closing out the tables. Each bid sheet is glued to a piece of construction paper to "frame". We use one color construction paper for the 7:30 close and another for the 8:00. And we try to divide the prizes so there are some class baskets in each and simlar items are divided. It also states the closing time on the bottom of the bid sheet.
We don't use bidder numbers but sort bid sheets by last name. But the items all have numbers.
Our raffle/chinese auction items typically have a value of $50-$100. We have 4 to 6 of these. For ours, we only use $1 tickets as that works best for our economic population. We could probably go up to $2. But I doubt higher wouldn't work for us. But I could see us maybe having a big prize and using a different ticket/denomination for that.
Thanks to both of you so much for your input. You know, last year the gal running our auction tried to close out by organizing all the bid sheets by Item no. rather than by bidder no. and it seemed to be nightmarish shuffling through the paperwork as each person came up to check out. It's now becoming more clear to me that organizing the paperwork by bidder and then stapling those together for one bidder and totaling it would make check-out so much easier! Critter, tell me, how and when do you worry about recording or transferring info over to some sort of master log that numerically lists all the item numbers--e.g., who the winning bidder was, the amount, etc. Is this done afterward? Did I miss something or do you not really worry about these details at the event itself...
Sorry if this is a confusing or short-sighted type of question.
Also, thanks for the input about staggered closings. I was going to avoid this this year as last year we tried to stagger the table closings but I don't think it was organized properly and it became confusing. I might have a better idea now on how to do this. I might be able to close out in two or three waves with classroom art projects and themed classroom gift baskets closing out first, followed by the stand-alone donation items (which for the most part are of highest value as they are outings around town for a family of four, eye-catching mother's day, and father's day items).
Also to anyone else reading these posts--do you have suggestions for chinese auction ticket pricing? I've read some other posts from back in February that provide suggestions, but I'm specifically looking for input from those who might do both silent auction with bid sheets as well as a selection of chinese auction items. If I order the chinese auction ticket sheets that have 25 tickets on them, I'm a little concerned about pricing the sheets at say $20 each--my goal is to have this option as being open to almost all attendees. Maybe some only wish to throw $5 or $10 into the hat. (?) Am I then better off using a different type of ticket and selling 3 for $5? Decisions, decisions. Wisdom welcome. The items that will be in the chinese auction will likely be fairly valuable--over $100 (in a few instances $200 or more, or "priceless" type of items. Some are weekend trips, a luxury sports car loaner from a local dealership, an airplane simulator ride--things in which I don't think bidding will reach the actual stated value--and if bidding does go high then we alienate a lot of parents which becomes a problem (has in the past)). This is our first year trying to introduce something like this and I prefer to not use different pricing for different type of tickets based on the value of the items--for the first year I wish to keep things simple.
