Hi Nicurn,
One large thing in your favor is your co-chairing an Auction "next Year".. time is key to success.. I really put this auction together starting in January and ending March 8th so it can be done but not without many many late nights and sacrifices. Some things I did right were: soliciting for goods and services locally at a time no one else was.. January was a good time for many retailers in my area. I also had great success from just mailing letters to local sports teams, museums, play places etc.. I was amazed at what people would send (ie. Yankee Candles, potato chips from Cape Cod Potato Chips, Juice from very fine and American Girl did send a doll). Soliciting is a lot of work and if you can keep a running data base as you do it it makes life a lot easier. Try to input items as you would put them into a program. This will make the printing of your program easier. You can then cut and paste as opposed to recreating it. I did not have enough time to get the programs to everyone prior to the auction but put the program on a web site and listed the web site for all to see. This was a big success.. People came to the auction with preprinted lists of what they wanted to bid on. The big bid items tended to be "hand painted" furniture by the classrooms and a ride in the fire truck from our local firestation.
Another success (thanks to many posts on this site) was check in and check out.. we kept track of ticket sales so we had a preprinted list of folks attending. With this we were able to create a master list with mailing labels to stick on invoice forms. We also had a file for each bidder. When the bid sheets came in from the silent auction we were able to go to the file of gift certificates (all filed by item number) and file in each bidder's file folder -- this allowed for a very quick check out. It was all done manually but we did have a laptop and printer on site for any last minute changes we had to make.
The biggest problem area was set-up.. mostly do to lack of time/help.. It helps to organize your stuff according to the program so folks can find things easily. We tried to do this but ran out of time. See Normans suggestion (a good one) above for how to resolve this.. Good luck and enjoy. I am very glad mine is over but learned quite a bit! Would be glad to answer any questions this post may be a little unclear.. OH one more regret and a large one was the auctioneeer.. In retrospect it pays to have a professional Charity Auctioneer.. I had a professional auctioneer but not for charities.. I can honestly say he probably left $4-5000 on the table simply by not meeting with me before hand.. This was very disappointing to me. Would have preferred to have auctioneer more accustomed to these types of events..
Thanks for the kind words. It makes my meager attempts to "make a difference" both rewarding and satisfying.
It also reflects the many other PTO Forum posters who freely share advice and experiences knowing that by sharing each other’s knowledge, we can all achieve the benefits from others.
Hi mom3boys, when you have relaxed from your auction [img]smile.gif[/img] If you have any suggestions to share with us, I know I'd love to hear them as I have agreed to co-chair an auction next year and we have never done it before. Congrats on your sucess! maggie
PS: Norman, I have saved everything you have added to the silent auction/live auction posts, I just wish I lived in maryland! Your suggestions are awesome!
Now that your auction is over, now is the time to document what went well and what did not go so well, so you have a record for review in the next year’s to come, both by you and future auction committee members.
You are now a seasoned veteran. Like you, I learn something new and how to improve at EVERY auction I do. In reading about your time problem in setting up, I would suggest that next time you sort out the items in boxes and in numerical order for the silent auction. Then you could utilize several helper’s to unbox them and lay them out in order, with a final few minutes to adjust the items in the space you have so that nothing is piled on top of another. I also get a hint that you did not had enough help, since you said it took YOU two hours to set up….if I’m right, this tells us that we can NEVER have too many helpers.
