Silent Auction help needed!

[minisaremighty]

Our school is putting on our 3rd annual auction on April 21. We are a school of only 200 kids, mostly low income. The last two years, we raised approx. $25,000 each year, which is amazing for such a school.

This is my first year being in charge of the actual event part of the auction. I am not doing the acquisition, just the sales part of the event.

I am looking for a new method of doing the auction. In the past, they have assigned numbers to each item, made a matching bid sheet. Then at the end of the auction, all items and bid sheets are removed to another area where someone went through it all and posted the names of winners on a large board next to each item number. Well, it's NEVER run smoothly. We have approx. 85-100 items up for auction. People never remembered the number of the item they bid on. It's just chaos. The first year, I worked in the room trying to match up items to bidders and figure out who won. The 2nd year, I did the cashiering. I can see where improvements need to be made in each part.

SOOOOOO, I told them I'd never work the auction again unless I was in charge of the auction "system" and collection of money at the the event.

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Does anyone have a system that has worked well for their silent auction? I have seen there are software programs out there, but I am certain they will balk at the expense. Is there any free program? I think a computerized checkout would be soooo much easier. Do you think a software program is the best way to go?

I'm doing a ton of research on the net, but haven't come up with much help yet for the actual AUCTION, just on how to coordinate an auction in general. I thought I'd just throw this out there to my forum friends and see if any of you might be able to give some advice!

Thanks!!!

 

[Lisa-Ruff N Tuff Minis]

I ran one for a couple of years at my daughters school it was a school of 18 (ok it was a pre-school) and we made anywhere from 3500-4800.

We started collecting donations EARLY like 8-10 months early and did alot over the summer. As far as the actual auction goes.. it was not that difficult- we just collected all the papers...

(during this time there was a drawing going on for other prizes to keep everyone busy- the drawing had some donated gifts and some funny type of things .. one guy won 20 pairs of dress socks, someone else won underwear, thermals, ballet lessons just stuff that sort of got everyone giggling to help take up some time along with some certificates and such.)

there was a master list made of who won what and for how much it was given to the cashiers...(the list was premade with the number and the item description) so all we had to do was add the name and $ amount.

Then we simply announced the winners (we had from 100-200 items) it went pretty quickly.. the Winners came up got there sheet showing the final bid and there name... presented it to the cashier who checked agaisnt there master list.. they paid and off they went with there loot.

It was tons of work and really took me at least 6 months of hard work and getting after parents (we had a rule that every parent had to donate a certain amount of merchandise from there own work/ pocket or actual donations from other people) and then the main donations

The amount we requested from parents was pretty minimal and it was taken and gift certificates were bought.

We had so many different items from paint ball games (at some place) jewelery, parents donated there services be it landscaping, whatever they did. I loved it.. stressful, tons of work but made money and we also had it the acutal auction middle of Nov so that many were thinking Christmas gifts and spent a bit more and got some great deals..

 

[minisaremighty]

there was a master list made of who won what and for how much it was given to the cashiers...(the list was premade with the number and the item description) so all we had to do was add the name and $ amount.

Then we simply announced the winners (we had from 100-200 items) it went pretty quickly.. the Winners came up got there sheet showing the final bid and there name... presented it to the cashier who checked agaisnt there master list.. they paid and off they went with there loot.

This is the part of the auction that never flows well. That master list takes awhile to complete, plus the moment the auction ended we had people wanting to pay and leave. This year we'll avoid that a bit by telling everyone in advance that check-out will be 30 min. after the auction closes.

We can't really do the announcing winners thing because our event has a band that is performing at the time of the auction ending, so it's just too loud and plus, we don't want to interrupt the entertainment.

As for the rest of the auction, I will NEVER do any of that stuff! LOL!! WAY too much work that I just don't have time for. We have a pretty good size committee, so we are lucky.

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