Despite the fact that I’ve never even been to a silent auction, I’ve been given the task of organizing one for the animal sanctuary I volunteer at. I have the list of donors for last year and have been told what seems to sell well, but other than that I’m sort of lost.
The woman who’s run previous auctions is rather peeved that she’s not involved with this one, so she’s not going to be much help to me. The owner of the sanctuary and the sanctuary manager have both been helpful, but they have very full plates, so I’m trying to take take care of everything I can without asking them for help. There is also a volunteer who has helped gather donations in the past who said she’ll make some calls this year, but so far she’s been busy with other sanctuary related things.
So! Who’s been to one of these things? What items were popular and which ones sank? How were items displayed? What would you have liked to see up for bid?
Not only have I been to several, my fiance ran one last year, although he wasn’t responsible for getting donations. Since you’re running one for an animal sanctuary, check with your local zoo and see if you can get a few tickets for it. Local restaurants and attractions may also be willing to donate. Check with your members and see what they’re willing to donate. The nice thing about silent auctions is you can set minimum bids, but you don’t have to. I’ve contributed homemade bath salts; on the other hand, at the silent auction at my church, someone offered a weekend at their vacation home. If you have people who do crafts or bake, homemade things go over well. I’ve seen people who cook well put a home-cooked dinner up for a silent auction and get bids on it.
You’ll want to keep in mind what sort of people will be attending the event when you decide on what to get. Definitely use the list of last years donors and what sold well as a guideline. For an animal sanctuary, animal-related things should also do well. I’d see if I could arrange for some gourmet dog and cat treats and some rather fancy toys. I’d also see if you can arrange to get some t-shirts or other tchotchkes with the sanctuary’s name and logo on them.
As far as setting things out, this is where you can let your inner marketing guy come out to play. Display things nicely, but make sure you’ve got room for the bid sheets. You will, of course, need one per item with the minimum bid marked, if there is one (I’ve seen minimum bids as low as $5.00). Make sure you’ve got enough pens and pencils for people to write down their bids.
Sorry if this is a bit disorganized. Please e-mail me or PM me if you need more information and good luck. These can be fun and great fund raisers!
I’ve helped set one up for our local children’s museum, and also for our school. It seemed that really popular ones were things to do – tickets to Oprah, and a dinner at a nice restaurant nearby. We’ve had people volunteer to do a child’s birthday party, or take someone duck hunting. So your “prize” would be breakfast at a local restaurant and a specified number of hours hunting with your “guide”. We’ve also done well with donated signed sports stuff – pick teams in your area and beg for signed items. If you know of any celebrities that are big animal lovers, see if they will donate items. It doesn’t hurt to ask, and we really scored with quite a few. Muhammad Ali signed a pair of boxing gloves and sent them to us!
I’ll join Seige in saying I’ve ran these before as well.
Here are some great things that tend to get big monies by category: Outings:
Get overnight packages to ski resorts, B&B’s, Hotels, someone’s cabin out in the woods, someone’s Time share, free plane tickets.
Destinations packages: A stay at Hotel or B&B, Dinner Somewhere close to the Hotel or B&B, and some tickets to an attraction. Sporting Events:
Team tickets to somewhere… Furniture:
Speaks for itself. Services:
Brake Job’s
Car Repair
2 hours of an Architects time [I personally donated this last season and it went for 600 beans!]
Lawn Care Services
Memberships to local museums etc…etc…
Maid Service for 6 months…
I love slient auctions. Like, to an unnatural degree, Probably because I’ve gotten pretty cool stuff from them.
The ones I’ve done have had items grouped up into loose categories, like Jewelry & Clothing, Travel & Events, Kids & Family, Home & Garden, etc. So as you’re strolling around, like items of particular interest to you were located near each other. Also, they “closed” them at different times, so if you had items you were really hell-bent on getting, you weren’t freaked out about which area to cover for your last-minute rebid (if needed).
I like seeing a mix of stuff youd buy anyway (like certificates to restaurants we’d eat in) and things that were a little fancier or offbeat. I also liked a mix of fair-market value items. My son’s former school had a policy that it wasn’t really worth their time and effort to have items that wouldn’t sell for at least $50. I don’t know about that–I like having lower-amount things to bid on, and an organization is more likely to part me with my money if they have reasonable things. However, in addition to the time-and-trouble issue, you can’t have so many things that the bids get spread out and nothing gets bumped up much.
I’ve been to a silent auction, where a number of items of moderate value were donated (lots of baked goods, some ornaments, etc.), and the more valuable then sold for way under market price.
That’s discouraging. Great for the lady who walks off with a bunch of stuff worth far more than she paid, meh for the organization, kinda sad for the donors–who probably didn’t find out the final price for the items.
On the other hand, I would say that the biggest problem with that silent auction was the ratio of items being donated to bidders. If you’ve got 20 people donating stuff, and 20 people buying stuff, and it’s the same 20 people–you’ve got a problem.
Might not be as big a deal with higher value stuff, or it might be a problem.
Excellent, thanks everyone for the advice. Glad to know a few of you survived running these things. I’m going to snip some replies so my post isn’t a mile long.
I sent out an email to our mailing list and did get a few responses, including a gift certificate for a massage, a few themed gift baskets, and some Reiki treatments (had to look that up!). I see from last year’s list that many people bought new items to donate, I’m trying to go straight to the companies to ask for donations. Frees up more money for people to bid with if they’re not spending it buying donations.
I have several paintings, matted photographs, and lots of jewelry to display, any suggestions on how to set them out?
I hear that restaurant certificates frequently go for more than their face value, so I’m trying to get lots of those. Problem is, all donations have to vegan-friendly, so I have to hunt down restaurants with at least a few vegan menu offerings. Not many of them around here, but they’re not non-exsistent, either. I have one private chef offering his services, and a company that delivers veg meals giving a gift cert. No duck hunting Even the zoo (as Siege suggested) is skating on thin ice, you never know where people’s personal lines are drawn. Impossible to please everyone all of the time, but I’m going to try darn it!
Phlosphr, those are excellent ideas, thank you. I have some derby tickets, but I should call the major sports teams in the area and see if they’ll help out.
These are wonderful suggestions, thanks! I like the idea of grouping items by catagory, that would make everything much easier to keep track of.
Eureka, I am setting minimum bids, which in past auctions are 40% of the value of the item. Hopefully underpaying won’t be an issue, people should be coming in a generous mood.
It seems likely that you may have many there who are pet owners. Perhaps you could solicit donations of services from local veterinarians, pet groomers, doggy school, pet photographers or whatever. Similarly, perhaps you could get donations of pet food, pet toys, or various pet accessories.
In looking for “event” type donations, consider contacting others for such things as theatre memberships in addition to sporting events.
Having staged closing times is a good idea. Not only are you easing the “closing” stress for your bidders, but also for yourself because you can deal with one set of paying customers at a time, rather than all in a clump.
If you’ve got artwork, can you get easels or something easel like to display them on? Small display touches that can add to the overall appeal of decorative items are good.
Bidding sheets marked clearly with: the item being bid on, the closing time of the auction, and bidding rules such as minimum bid and minimum bump up, even acceptable payment methods are good. If you can attach each bidding sheet to a clipboard even better because you can then tie a pen for bidding to the clipboard.
Make sure you have an adequate number of people around to deal with any questions, and to keep an eye on the auction items on display.
Don’t have only high-priced items. Many people would like to help the organization by buying something, but don’t want to spend a lot. A $5 minimum bid is pretty high.
For a recent one, I donated a small box of misc. office supplies. I just looked around my office, and picked things I had lots of, or hadn’t used in a while, and tossed them in the box. That went very well – sold for about $15. I doubt that the supplies in total were worth much over $8. But people saw it as something they could use, and the price was cheap enough to be considered a donation. This year, we’ll have similar boxes of out-grown kids toys, and seamstress/knitter supplies.
Another possibility is a lunch date with somebody prominent in the field. As a political group, we offered paid lunch dates with various elected officials or candidates. It didn’t cost much (often the officials offered to buy lunch, or we had coupons from local restaurants), and there seemed to be a lot of bidding on these. Maybe a lunch with the shelter director, or a local zoo official, or the local humane enforcement officer might be attractive to your crowd. And generally these people are flattered to think that anyone will pay to have lunch with them.
P.S. Why do restaurant certificates have to be vegan friendly? As long as they are clearly labeled, people can choose whether to bid or not. An edict like that would just tempt me to donate a meal at a local meat-only Brazilian churrasco restaurant.
Another silent auction veteran checking in -
There’s lots of great ideas in this thread (in fact, I’m thinking of sending it to the woman coordinating our silent auction this year!) Here are some random thoughts:
Re: artwork - for small pieces, you can pick up small easels at your local dollar stores (I’ve had the best luck at Dollar Tree, but YMMV.) The artwork will stand up and look nice on the tables, and there’s more room for other stuff on the tables as well.
We’ve had good luck with theme baskets - pasta, sauce, a bottle of chianti, and some candles for an italian dinner basket; grill tools, tiki torches, strings of outdoor lights and a grilling cookbook for a cookout basket; cat collars, toys, and a bed for a kitty basket; that kind of thing. You may need to pick up some small items to round out baskets, but it helps take a bunch of small-value random items and turn them into more valuable, more-likely-to-sell packages.
For autographed photos of celebrities, a used book, CD, or DVD pertaining to that celebrity can help up the bids.
Our event is also animal welfare-focused, but while we try to make sure that the food we offer to attendees is vegetarian, we don’t turn down any restaurant gift certificates. Many omnivores are deeply concerned about animals, and these are really good sellers for us.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to have wall space available. The auction is held during a banquet at a hotel, I doubt I’ll be able to hang stuff on their walls.
I love this idea! I wonder if I could get an author, that would be awesome. The reason that restaurant certs have to be vegan-friendly is because the majority of our attendees are vegetarian or vegan. You don’t tend to volunteer at an animal sanctuary if you eat the animals you’re trying to help
Winkie, thanks for the suggestions. I haven’t seen easels at my local dollar store, but I’ll look. I’m really hoping we can get some autographed celebrity stuff, there are lots of famous people that are involved with animal welfare. Something from Prince, maybe.
At my parish, one of the items up for bid that was most hotly contested was a gourmet meal prepared by the parish priest. He was an excellent cook, but it was more that it was something different and personal. In the end, he ended up doing tw0 dinners for four, and they went for almost $400 each.
Something like dinner with your director, or “Dinner with the Animals” could get people bidding.
Hit up places like PetSmart - they do a lot of charitable giving.
Definitely contact pro sports people. Especially with the Michael Vick thing, people want to be seen as animal lovers.
And remember - you can’t make all the people 100% happy all the time. If you can get non-vegan restaurants or the Zoo to donate stuff, let them. Presumably not everyone in your organization vegan/anti-zoo.
I’m going to snip some replies so my post isn’t a mile long.
Even the zoo (as Siege suggested) is skating on thin ice, you never know where people’s personal lines are drawn. Impossible to please everyone all of the time, but I’m going to try darn it!