<Marie>, I have wondered about theft. We have an offer from a volunteer group to help with the actual auction. I had planned on having someone roaming around to ask questions and keep an eye on the items.

We store our items at the school. So dividing things up won't be as tough. I was planning on having a sign in sheet for items as they come in. I thought we might have someone copy it and pass it out to the donation liaisons so they can see what has come in and who needs a reminder call.

I realize there are lots of ways to do an auction. We will not have an auctioneer. We already get an average of 60% of the value on our items. Plus this is our second year so we want to stay simple.

Maybe the way we did it was different from the way everyone else does it because there were lots of small one time jobs. The biggest single job was keeping track of donations. The next biggest jobs were getting the donations. I figure set up for the auction and other similar jobs that don't require a huge paper trail can be broken up.

Critter mentioned all the things I thought of right off the bat except I don't know if your list included signs to go next to each itme identifying the item with Item # and some info on the item, similar to info in catalogue.

I am packing away my auction stuff this week in the school files, maybe something will jog my memory.

Oh, you didn't mention floaters during the auction, people who can answer questions for people that don't get the auction process, don't understand an itme, have questions about payments -- also to watch that nothing gets stolen. A Catholic Church near us recently had several small items (e.g., autographed baseball, bottle of wine) get swiped during the auction viewing.

I'll keep thinking.

It's been my experience that there aren't that many "small jobs" for an auction, but there are tons of medium-big jobs, and a couple of very BIG, IMPORTANT jobs that shouldn't be divided.

Specifically, we've always had good luck with ONE Donation Inventory Manager. That is, one person whose house is used for storage of donated items and whose job it is to keep a running inventory of all donations actually procured. You could concievably have someone else in charge of getting the donations and following up on leads, but once the item actually comes in, it goes to the storage house and gets logged by the inventory manager.

We also have had great luck using MS Access (database) for creating our auction catalog. The database also allows us to create our bid sheets, item labels, thank you notes, donor lists, statistical reports, and more. But...it's a one person job since all the info resides on one computer and it's a bit complicated to use. The Inventory Manager turns over the information of what is an actual auction "lot" (because it may be made up of several donated items) to the Database Manager who then loads the info into Access. If your group isn't using a tool like Access, another set of jobs includes creating the bid sheets themselves, and the auction catalog-neither of which I would classify as small, unfortunately.

I'm not sure I saw "cashier" on your list of jobs. We've worked on refining our cashing out process because it can quickly become a bottleneck that could spoil an otherwise great evening. Depending on the size of your event, you might need 4-6 adults to be cashiers. Don't leave this as an afterthought - consider the traffic flow, supplies/equipment needed (ex: calculators, pencils, receipts, etc.), lighting, filing boxes, etc. I would definatley have one person in charge of the planning, setup and training, and several actual cashiers.

We used highschool honor society students for our runners the night of the auction. So, another job can be to recruit, train, and supervise the students at the auction.

Decorations? Is that on your list? Depending on your venue, your decorations team could go crazy or simply order a few flower arrangements.

How about Auctioneer schmoozer? If you have a "celebrity" auctioneer for your live auction, maybe assign one person to be his/her contact that night.

Ok, that's all for now, dinner's calling.

I am trying to figure out all the possible jobs for a silent auction so we can advertize for new volunteers or import some. Please help! I'm not sure I have everything covered. I want to have lots of little jobs so that people can volunteer once or just an hour a week.

This is what I have so far.

Event
writing up bid sheets
clean up auction
set up tables
print up winners list
runners

Baskets
putting together baskets
Advertising class baskets for donations/ coordinating with teachers, class moms?
keeping track of donations for baskets

Donations
keeping track of general donations
advertising for donations
dividing up donation areas for donation liaisons (typing up a list of prioritized leads)
recording donations
donation liaison lead - keep track of donation liasons
Donation Liaisons -lots!

PR
publicity internal - planning and writing
publicity external - planning and writing
presell dinner tickets
writing letters for donation solicitation
making flyers
putting up flyers
thank you cards
passing out flyers at school
contacting local media

Corporate and Volunteer organizations we may be able to call on:
contact the foresters
contact Target Volunteer Captain
contact local JayCees
finding sponsors for dance and publications
Finding matching funds donors

Student senate and student volunteers -
decorations committee
adult leader to supervise students

That doesn't seem like small enough jobs to me. And what am I missing?