Over the last couple of years some of our interesting items were...

Lunch off-site with the principal

Name the Driveway (this costs about $70 each year for the street sign, if you already have a pole; the family gets the sign at the end of the school year)

Art teacher did a mural in a kid's bedroom

Teacher who is a very good cook and from India made an Indian dinner for 4.

(We eliminated auctioning Principal for a Day because it didn't seem like something your parents should be able to buy for you, more like an honor.)

School handyman gave a day of painting/plastering.

Ice skating lesson by one of our teachers who is also a skating instructor

2 hours of computer instruction (for kid or adult) from our computer teacher

Most of our other things were more typical donated things like restaurant gift certificates, museum tickets/memberships, massages. Also, each classrom does a theme basket, like Game Night, or Leapfrog, Bath/Beauty, Sports, etc. In terms of big things, a parent who is a dentist donated a teeth whitening treatment, a parent who is an artist donated a portrait, and some years a family donates a week at their vacation home.

ShellyA - a "tricky tray" is a type of drawing where you buy general tickets and then apply them to the specific prize you hope to win.

At our spring event, we do a combination. Most of the items are silent auction, but 4-6 are drawings (we don't use the term "tricky tray"). A big jar is placed in front of each item and participants put their tickets in the jar of choice.

Some people use two-part tickets (one in the jar, one to keep), some use a master ticket with tear off stubs, some use the type where you print your name. That's what we do. We create tickets on a business card template in Word and cut them into slips 10 per page that ask for Name and Phone Number.

With a silent auction, you place bids on a piece of paper and highest bid wins. So you are (generally) limited by the value of the item as people won't usually bid more than it's worth. Plus bidders have to keep an eye on the bidding if they want to keep a chance of getting it.

But on a Tricky Tray, the popularity influences how much you make. An item might be only worth $50, but if you have 100 people willing to spend $1 on a chance to get it, you might make $100. Plus everyone who puts in a ticket has a chance to win.

Art teacher - donates an after school one-on-one art lesson. (Same for music teacher)

Our Principle let us auction off this parking spot! Brought $40 for one month of parking... teacher's bid, and parent's bid for teacher gift.

Ride with a Cop - brought $30 arrange with your law-enforcement officer.

Boy Scouts - raking leaves, the troop offered two of these, brought in about $25 each! Two hours of leave raking by the troop.

we had other ideas but had to many auction items to use them all.

Could you please explain to me what a "Tricky Tray" event is? I've never heard of it.

thanks
Shelly
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We have two great ones for our Tricky Tray! The first is lunch for one kid and two of their friends with our Chief of Police - he'll pick them up/bring them back in front of the school with sirens and lights going.

The other is a consultation at your home with a reputable garden/landscaping guy from our town's nursery. This guy is great--people are always bringing him bugs, diseased leaves etcetera to see what's wrong with their flowers or trees, so to have him come to your yard (he doesn't do this normally) to see what any problems are and tell you how to fix them is something a lot of yard-freaks (like my husband ) would kill for. He's been trying to get the lawn of his dreams since we bought the house over ten years ago and has almost succeeded a couple of times, but the grass just never seems to hang in there.

We made these two special prizes for our town's residents only.

We're still trying to find an in with a fire department to see if we can get them to host a birthday party--we'd supply the party supplies in the basket, what we'd like them to do is give a ride (if liability issues allow) on a fire truck, slide down the pole, do games like which kid can get the equipment on the fastest, roll out the fire hose the fastest, that sort of thing.


Good Luck!

how about lunch with a teacher>?
15 minutes of playing on the playground with just a friend before the kids go out to pe?
free ice cream from the lunchroom?