Our school has hosted an auction in the spring for a number of years now. A few years ago we purchased computer software to help with keeping track and check-out.Keeping people happy at check-out is essential. 3 years ago, we started closing our silent auction table 2 at a time, every 30 mins or so. This makes it easier for people to bid up the items they're interested in and makes entering the winning info easier. The rolling table closing also increases interest, so our last tables to close are the ones with the most valuable items.
I would offer this advice about utilizing a computer & database idea ---
The computer concept is good, in that is will add the prices of the items by bidder number, avoiding possible errors in adding the totals.
On the downside though, if you have only one computer, and want to print out the summary sheet for each bidder/buyer, this often results in a big time bottleneck, especially if you have 200-400 items, and make the check out time take a really long time, with long lines.
A good manual central hard copy filing system, along with 3-6 checkout cashiers who can all walk to the filing system, pull out all the bid sheets for a particular bidder, then use a portable calculator to run the totals, still seems to be the fastest way to handle the checkout.
Quick checkouts are a key to the enjoyment of the attendees, and in getting them to come back to next year’s auction.
Thanks for your input. I'm thinking of developing a spreadsheet or database that will allow me to enter bids quickly from bidder sheets and then separate and tally them for the 100+ items in our silent auction.
We handle our auction almost exactly the same way. The interesting thing that you added to help me is the closing off the area to tally the amounts and names of winning bidders. That is where we have our main problem. We have all of these parents waiting around and not being very patient to have everything gathered and tallied. Last year I made it to where they signed in with a number so that the bidding was more anonymous and you didn't feel bad because you "outbid" your neighbor. If you don't know their number nothing was intentional.
One thing that I want to do this year is to not only have silent auction items but also to have raffle items. I find that the parents who can afford the "best" items are the ones always getting them and that is discouraging to others who can not afford it. By having raffle items not only does everyone have a chance by the "draw" of their ticket but also for our advantage some of the items such as tickets to museum can bring in more money than their face value. If the ticket value is $20 for 4 tickets and 50 people want a chance at winning it you have made $25-50 depending on the $ amount you put on your tickets.
I have to agree with the last poster that I would tend to think that the sealed bids do not generate as much $ as their potential??
Your silent auction sounds like an excellent scenario to use "Absentee Bids" At my "Live Estate" type auctions, we often have bidders who preview the auction, but due to time constraints, they annot attend the auction or stay until the items they want come up for auction. We allow them to place an absentee bid of a maximum amount that they are willing to bid. We then have a staff person bid on their behalf. We start the bidding for them at about 25-35% of their maximum amount and continue bidding on their behalf until they win the auction, or the bidding exceeds their maximum amount bid. This systm works very well, however, we are only handling one auction item at a time.
In your case, you could have several silent auction items closing at one time, and this would mak it difficult for you to manage multiple absentee bids on multiple items that are closing at the same time.
I would suggest a modified version of this Absentee Bidding. Offer the Absentee bidder a "One Shot Absentee Bid", say at 10-15 minutes before the silent auction closing time, where your auction staff will place the Absentee Bid on their behalf, if that bid holds up they win the item....however if other "live body" bidders bid more, then the absentee bidder loses.
On another note....in regards to your policy about the Sealed Bids for higher value items, I have to ask What has been your experience on how this works out for you? The fundamental thing about auctions is the "competitive bidding where people bid just one incremrnt higher that the last bidder, then the next bidder may choose to bid higher. Do you think that you are truly getting the maximum bids possible with your Sealed Bid Process?
We do a silent auction at the end of the school year in conjunction with a kid-centered festival. At yesterday's PTA meeting our Silent Auction chair, Liz, posed this problem: We do our silent auction by having everyone sign in and assigned a number. The items are displayed on many tables around the gym and each one has a lined paper next to it. To bid on the item you write down your number and a bid amount. There are minimum bid amounts for some items. This goes on from 4:00 to 7:00. At 6:45 people rush back and run to the items they want so they can be the last/highest bidder. We also have half a dozen or so higher priced items (valued @ $100 +) that are by sealed bid only. Here's what Liz brought up - if you are not there at the very end and you want something popular you have zero chance of getting it. And any parent working the last shift at a game will definately not have a chance. BUT, if we do everything by sealed bid, it would take forever to go through all the bids to figure out the winners. As it is, they close the room down at 7:05, quickly figure out the winners, post the names and everyone comes back at 7:45, pays and picks up their stuff. There are usually just a dozen items left which are picked up at the school within a few days. So how can we make this a little fairer for people that can't be there at the end but still get checked out quickly? Thanks for any ideas!
