Thanks fo the info. That explains a lot. I will need to see the bid sheets and stuff like that. I will probably try to check out some auctions as you said. Just have to find some going on. Most of them seemed to be in the early part of the school year around here.
We did a Silent Auction with dinner last year for the first time and this is the timeline and planning we used.
We call our a Winter Feswtival and have a dinner and Silent Auction the first Saturday Night in December.
June-Pick a date and place and reserve it! Get together a small committee to start getting addresses for potential donors together. enter them into a database (we just use MS Ecel-nothing fancy) We started by doing a search on this PTOtoday forum and got all the addresses from previous posts and then we expanded. We put in every local business in a ten mile radius of the school and then entered addresses of big local business even farther out.
July-decide on whether you are going to have a dinner with the Auction -- get a form letter together to use to solicit donations (we use a one letter for local businesses and one letter for businesses a little farther away or national businesses)
August-start sending out donation letters--you can never send out too many. We send out about 550 letters and receive about a 50 % donation rate. Also, I have found it is best to send out the letters on the first of the month rather than later in the month. Many businesses have a monthly quota for donations and they are donated on a first come basis.
September-decide if you are going to have a dinner with your auction. If so, get a small committee together to plan it. We do a free-wiill donation for the dinner, but some people sell tickets in advance or at the door. We found that the free-will donation brought in much more than we could have received from selling tickets. Also, if some really valuable donations have come in, decide if you should have a live auction as well as a silent one. At the end of September, after school is well under way, I try to find a parent or two from each classroom to work on a classroom basket or project. A classroom basket is just the class picks a theme and the parent coordinator send s home a note requesting theme items for the basket. Some parent coordinators have donated a unpainted wood child's rocker or table and the class painted it. This year a parent coordinator is having each child paint a fabric square and she is putting it together for a classroom quilt. I also send home flyers to the parents letting them know if they would like to make a donation or know of a business to solicit to let the committee know. With our donations, we usually group together small ones into baskets to make sure each basket has a value of at least $50. We also start putting together baskets, on paper at least, and then determine what we may need to purchase to complete a basket (see out budget below for details).
October-start to think about decorations. Also create your bidder registration cards, bidder number cards, bidding sheets, and put together the bare bones for an auction booklet with all the items listed.
November-start putting together baskets and find a safe place to store them. You may want to put the gift certificates in the baskets latter if your storage space is not that secure. At the end of November, we get the Auctions books to the printers so they can go home to parents one week before the auction. Call for more volunteers!!
December-one week before the auction, we have a volunteer meeting to explain all the different duties. Enjoy the auction and the reward$$$!
Our Budget
$150 for basket wrapping supplies (cellophane, ribbon, we shred our own fluff with a papper shredder (People donate the baskets or we get them from rummage sales or Goodwill/Thrift stores)
$300 for food/paper products/beverages to feed about 300 people
$200 for items to finish out baskets
$200 for postage
The letterhead and envelopes the school donates tot he committes
$75 for decorations
We use the school's copier for all miscellaneous copies and find a copy shop to donate the cost of printing our Auctions Booklets.
Hope this helps! If you do a search for various items here in the forum, you may find help for smaller items (like what a bidding sheet look likes)
One other helpful tip--the two chair people of the committee go to check out other area school silent auctions throught the year for great ideas to take back for our auction. The Auction booklets from other schools are invaluable--they give you plenty of names of businesses you may have forgot to solicit.
