We do sheets of tickets, 20 per sheet and charge $16 for grand prizes.
Other schools do it differently, where you buy, say 3 or 5 tickets for $10. Personally, I don't like that way, I think it's being cheap.

Pretty much all the major players putting together our auction are of the same mindset; give people a fun evening out, be generous with the prizes and in turn, they will buy more tickets and we make more money. This scenario seems to be working as we have sold out the event for the past 3 years running.

Also note that we have 6 elementary school in our district and they all do this type of event at the same time of year. Lot's of competition, both for attendees and local donations.

For those of you that have grand prizes how much do you charge for those tickets?

We just received a large donation this year and we aren't sure what to charge for the tickets for that.


Cindy

All, We do ours 'Chinese Auction' style. Not a very politically correct moniker so it has been changed to 'Tricky Tray'.

It is one night, adults only, sometimes at the school or at a large hall. We serve food and dessert, coffee and drinks (non-alcoholic). We typically have 400 baskets in 4 catagories: <$75, >$75<$200, grand >$200 and classroom baskets. They are very large and jammed with stuff, all put together and named with common theme.

Ticket prices are based on the type of basket. we sell sheets of tickets so people feel they are getting value for their money. Each basket has a bag next to it with the correspoding #. Callers (usually our 1st grade teachers)mix up the numbers, announce winning # and runners deliver to the winner.

It is a HUUUUUUUUGE amount of work. We routinely net anywhere from $18-$25k from the evening.

Our first auction was adults only in our gym ($5/ticket). We've also tried adding a silent auction to the many activities at our spring family night (not very profitable since the parents couldn't concentrate on the bidding while the kids wanted to do the other activities). By far our most profitable, and most memorable auctions were the ones we've held at a local golg club. Adults only, fancy dress, strolling food (not a sit down dinner), cash bar, dj, silent and live auctions. The workload is basically the same, so we make it as nice an event as we can.

We have a night-time casual, dinner-dance event with a live band and a professional auctioneer. Tickets are expensive($100 ea) but it includes food, alcohol and of course, the great band. We have live auctions and silent auction items. Last year's fabulous, hard-working chairman raised over $80,000, almost twice as the year before. I doubt that effort will ever be duplicated.
SHC

We have a live auction. A local professional auctioneer volunteers to do this for us. We charge $5/person admission. The auction committee provides beer. Our local soda rep donates soda and a local water bottling company donates the water. We ask all of the parents who are attending to bring either a dessert or appetizer to share. While we are canvassing for donations, we also ask local restaurants if they'd be interested in donating food (pizza, etc) for that night. It is not a dinner. More like snacks. We do not allow anyone under 21 to attend. We open the doors at 630 to allow people to arrive and check out what we have to auction off. Then the bidding begins at 7. We have parents who volunteer that are the runners, baggers, accountants, etc of the evening. It is a lot of fun. We do try to promote it to the community any way that we can, but it is mostly parents and their friends/family that attend.