Can you give me some more information about Silent Auctions? I am thinking, its set up like a tricky tray but instead of placing tickets in containers, you write down how much you'd buy it for...like an Ebay thing? Please help, these arent popular in my area and Id like more info, thanks!!!!!!!!!
We have been doing this silent auction for at least 15 years. The woman in charge is an expert at silent auctions (does them for several organizations). She set the prices based on past results. I think mum24kids is right - you really have to know your market to do this.
As for what was in the baskets, everything is either donated or purchased with money parents donate. We live in a big city so there are lots of places to get donations. We don't get a lot of national donations - just local stuff. Everything from theater tickets to golf clubs to Starbucks. We have baskets of all types and sizes. For example, one basket had restaurant certificates and theater tickets with a retail value of over $800 - and it sold for $385. Our squad of room parents and basket parents sends letters and goes out personally and just gets stuff for the baskets. Parents also donate theme items. Some parents just love the competition - as for me I never help with this because it's just not something I'm interested in or good at.
I'm surprised that you had the BIN price set so far below the retail value. I've seen BIN pricing at several auctions, and it is always set quite a bit above retail value. I guess maybe the philosophy of doing this on your baskets is that you don't think you'll be able to get anywhere close to retail anyway, so give people the impression that buy using BIN they are really able to quickly snatch up a big bargain? I think I'd only do this with an auction that had been in existence for awhile so you know what kinds of things usually sell well and what you usually take in on items as a percentage of retail; otherwise, I'd be afraid of leaving money on the table.
We had our annual Halloween Carnival yesterday. A big part of the carnival is the silent auction. Each class does a basket - we had 40 baskets of all types and prices.
Our Silent Auction chair tried a new idea this year. Listed at the bottom of some of the baskets was a "Buy It Now" price (like on ebay). This was basically 75 - 80% of the value of the goods in the basket. We sold 10 of the baskets this way - they are sold immediately when someone agrees to the "Buy It Now' price. Our chair, who is an expert at this and keeps spreadsheets and works the numbers several different ways, really believes we made more money on those baskets. We even had one family that tried to buy a basket above the Buy It Now price but that's against the rules.
Just something to think about. We ended up raising about $11,000 just on the baskets so it was really successful for us.
