FYI regarding American Girl. We just received our first doll with a note saying they used to donate once every 3 years but now it is ONCE for your school EVER.....
Our school loves the auction. We raise about 27,000 when we have it. We rotate every other year with something like a dinner theatre. Our school is from K-8, about 700 students. We find that the younger class gifts raise the most money. We have made $1,500. on a platter. The platter was picked up at a ceramic studio; the students put their finger prints around the edges, in a variety of colors; then the studio glazed it for us. We have also done well on ceramic tile mirrors, which each student in the class decorated their own tile. A father made the mirror, and it was beautiful! Autographed items do well. Contact large corporations for donations, for example, we have Bose in our area, and they are so generous about donating a Bose Radio with CD. We have a state rep. that donates lunch with her and a tour for at the state house for four people. We have a silent and live auction. Also, we have a 50/50 raffle. If you contact the Pleasant Company in enough time, usually 3 months are needed, they will generously donate an American Girl Doll. They will donate to one school every other year. A parent bought some unfinished furniture and decorated it. It was auctioned as a set. Don't forget to look around your school and community for craftpeople. We have artist, stained glass makers, woodworkers. It is amazing how talented so many parents are. We also had people donate time shares, etc. I hope that this has helped in some small way, and good luck with the auction. We are having our next one in March.
We do several of these in a year one with each dinner.
We normally have around 6 to 700 dollars worth of donated merchandise. We ensure that we have kids bags to. The Kids bags start around $5 each is the same (otherwise you run into problems with the kids bidding). We try to match things to a theme like a night out will include certificates for dinner for two at a very nice area restraruant, a show, and perhaps a cocktail louge after wards. Normally this is one of the highest ticket items on the table running around $180 or so. We start the bidding for that at $30 and normally see about a hundred for it. We have access to a rug store that will always give us a 200 dolalr area rug that we start at 30 also and get 80 to 100 for. All toll a table with about 6 packages on it will bring us 400 to 600 dollars.
We seek donations from our area merchants, locally owned business not the chain retailers, like hair styling, hair care products, dry cleaning, sporting goods, dinners and the such. We are lucky to have a very fine team of parents that go around asking for donations and we have a lot of merchants that love the idea of being about to support the schools in this manner. We also advertise them as a means of thanking them in several ways.
We leave the auction table open from just before dinner starts to shortly after it is finished, about 2 hours. We mix this with several other activities we have going on.
We do chinese auction and raffle baskets, etc. but we keep the pricier items and do a silent auction for those. Usually put a piece of paper with item and signature lines (in $5 increments) and people just keep signing at higher prices and outbidding each other. We have a small school, but usually raise $4,000.
We do a Fun Family night every year and part of it is a chinese auction (silent). I ask our area businesses for donations such as candy, gift certificates, and other items. We sell tickets that people put their name and phone number on the ticket and they place the tickets in cups or bags in front of the items the want a chance to win. I have found that gift certificates for such places as local restaurants, arby's, denny's etc, go well. The other part of the night consist of carnival type games, a cake auction, and we sell pizza and hot dogs.
This year our auction brought in almost $1,000.00.
I hope this helps. Please feel free to email me. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
My school is planning our first Silent Auction and would love to here feed back from those who have done it before and been successful. How much money did you raise, what items sold the best, what did you do for entertainment and food etc.....
Our event is planed for March of 04 and we really want the event to be sucessful. Please share!
