What kind of art projects did your kids do that were auctioned off?? I've heard that things like that go for ALOT of $$$ because all the parents want the item that their kid helped make!! We're going to add that to our auction this year!
Our school does one. It's called a Gala and is held at a local country club. There is alcohol served, definately helps with auction. The tickets are like $75 per person but it includes 3 or 4 hours of open bar. They raise like $40,000. I've never attended one because I don't drink too much and not willing to part with that $75. It's a huge success. They've been doing it for about 10 years now. They have a live auction and a raffle. Families donate stuff like..timeshare vacations, frequent flyer miles, and things they've purchased.
All 4 of the private schools here in our city do these types of events and raise big money. I guess the public schools don't do them because of alcohol conflicts, maybe? I don't know. Our school raised about $57,000 this year. There are many high-income folks at our school (myself not one of them!) so that helps, of course, because the bulk of this money comes from the parents. For many years, we had a Mexican theme but some years it's been a little different. We have great food, margaritas and a band and the tickets are $50 each. Now, you could tailor this to fit your school's needs(scale it down for starters). Our events have been held at homes (big huge ones) and nice public facilities(museums, etc.). The chairman finds "underwriters" who will donate $100-$500 to basically pay the cost of putting the party on. Their names are printed on the invitation. Then, the cost of the party is paid for and everything else is profit. The school "Lamplighter" in Dallas used to have a good webpage about their gala fundraiser with great detail about their various committees. This is a huge undertaking, I'll warn you, but once it's successful, it takes on a life of its own! We also put great effort into our children's art projects that are put up for live auction.(I can share ideas on those too if you want) Lots of different neat things to do there. Then, we have a silent auction of things that are donated--trips, merchandise, excursions with the teachers (all teachers donate their time for some kind of outing with a child/children). One local school even produces a program for their event and sells ads for it. This year one school auctioned off a year's free tuition ($100 raffle tickets). It's tons of fun and ours for 2005 is already in the planning stages!
Good luck!
Shelly
We call ours a Tricky Tray and our tickets this year will cost $30 and you get a sheet of tickets and 4 course dinner with soda, coffee & dessert.
The catering facility gets $23 of the ticket price, so we make $7 a ticket. Last time our tickets were $40, but we found a place to give us a better price this year, thus bringing the price down $10. We made $14,000.00 the last time we did it.
Sometimes people also add entertainment. The previous year we were going to get a group of men who dress up like women and perform, but in the end it would have driven the price up much higher and their are also time constraints. If we were not out of there on time we would have gotten clocked big money.
Ideally, if you can find a VFW, American Legion, or the like that would be awesome & much cheaper & they always have their own bars. Our problem here is that none of them are big enough. We need a place to sit 500 and the biggest one locally we could find only could fit around 250.
Basically, I think any of these nights out are big money makers. People like to go out.
Another idea...The VFW here every year holds a comedy night. They hire 3 comedians to come in they charge $15 a ticket and you bring your own booze and food. Everybody gets together & goes and they sell out every year. Everyone looks forward to it every year.
There is a book that talks about this kind of event called How to Produce Fabulous Fundraising Events: Reap Remarkable Returns with Minimal Effort (Book & Diskette)by Betty Stallings.
It has a plan for something called "The dynamice dinner." That might be helpful.
Thats how we do it here. We use a big catering facility (A place that does weddings). You get a 4 course sit down dinner included in your ticket price. There is a bar in the room so people can purchase drinks if they like. The place sits 500 and we sell every ticket.
However, becuase we go big like that, the evening is also open to the public. We adverise it in all our local papers & anywhere we can. There are people out there who love these type of events and they will come.
