Charity Auction Help please

MDUK

I did one for the Tsunami and raised £1840, a lot of work orgainising it, more than i realised and i did this on my own. on the day i had a number of friends helping, an accountant organised the system for logging the lots and collectin money. i was the auctioneer. To keep it moving i had 4 helpers, they took it in turns to hold the item up, take it to the winning bidder and take the money and hand it to the accountant. That worked really well.

Suggestions:
Try phoning or going in to local businesses as well as writing, i did both and the best donations came from business (ie cheque donations) vistis to shops gave me things to sell also helps if you have some photos to show them, all the better. The local paper were great and offerred to act as a collection point for donations as well as promoting the story leading up to the auction.

Our local MP donate a tour of the house of commons and lunch there
Got a one hour limo ride from a limo company, they came and parked outside on the day of the event so got loads of publicity.
Free valet from the local car valeters
Free haircut
Meal for 4 from the local chines restaurant
Meal for 4 from the local pub
If you write to the theme parks remember they get LOADS of requests and they can't help everyone that asks so enclose an SAE and it is appreciated
Both local jewellers donated some watches
Butchers donated a whole lamb (the winner could collect it meal by meal!)


Good luck

geniusmum

A great big THANK YOU to everyone for your suggestions.There are some really good ideas in there.
So far we have made a list of all the shops in our little town & have started writing to them. Also someone told me to try the bigger businesses eg Cadbury's,Debenhams, Boots etc. Gunstone's is our local bakery so we'll try them as they make goods for M&S.
Other things we have planned are:
Bag-packing in Somerfield. Sponsored swim. Sponsored Lyke WakeWalk. Coffee morning & tombola stall on market day. Stall at the local gala selling home-made jam & cakes, guess the name of the Teddy, how many sweets in a tin & guess the weight of a cake.
If you have further suggestions we would be very grateful.

Sallys_Savings

If you wish to hold an evening event, here are a few that have gone down with our fundraising:

A race night..which went down a storm, and its really great fun. If you wished to know how to run an evening (I'll send you an email with all the details of how to run one/posters we used etc) and where we hired our videos from just pop me a pm and I'll let you know.
Casino night this is more of an initial lay out for this so if you're worried about not selling tickets its perhaps better to avoid. (we had people from the race night all saying they'd come along so we took the chance and raised over a £1000)
Quiz night I do have a quiz pack that you're welcome to have that has been typed up and ready to use, just give me a pm and I'll post it to you.
Games night ...this could be anything..a beetle drive, card games etc.
or you can model the night on a game show on the tv...or even combine them both. The last one I held was a "Price is Right" game show (your tickets have numbers on and you call the numbers out for people to ..come on down)
Mince Pie and Mulled wine night :xmassmile (We have held ours just between 7 - 9)You could ask a local school (or even a couple of schools) to supply a choir (and on your daughters return she could return the favour by going in to school to show the children all about Sri Lanka....i.e. take in globe/map, postcards, her own photos, buy fruit from the supermarket to show, etc. etc...oops getting sidetracked here) You can either include the mince pies and mulled wine (alcholic and non) in the ticket..thats we have done and it works well. Set out tables with table cloths, xmas displays and candles on. If you are using a place that has several halls/gyms like a school you could set up a mini xmas shopping event in the other hall to go to afterwards (charge stall holders £8 - £10)...or you could just have your own stalls with friends/relatives manning them...all christmas ones...like pickle onions/chutneys/jams.....put the nose on rudolf...jewellery etc.
Darts/pool Competition/football tournament/sports comp Contact your local snooker club?..darts team/league. My sons were both in the darts league and the lovely man who runs the league said that one of the nights they had several teams coming over (sorry cant remember what it was called) he would hold it for our fundraising. £300 was raised and all we had to do was come along with some details and run the raffle because all the teams were already going to be there. Apparently they try to do fundraising events like this about four times a year so your local league may be the same. Or there maybe someone you know who could run it for you?
Family Disco with buffet/bbq Ask around local singers/bands/discos and see if they would do your event for free for publicity (pop it in the paper the following week thanking them for their support). We were extremely lucky with this as a lady contacted us when we asked for help in the local newspaper.
Pampering evening or afternoon These go down extremely well...you hire/or freebie a hall for the evening/afternoon and invite beauty/pampering people along to pay for a stall (£10 a stall). Stalls like candles..special gifts..lingerie...virgin vie...jewellery...beauty therapists...nail technicians..hair dressers...gyms...etc. Get people to offer a taster session for a certain amount..we had a lady doing indian head massage for £2.50 (took about 10 min) and she donated the money. It was advertising for her and the money mounted up too. OR you can just invite people to offer services..i.e. massage, nails etc and then offer a set price ticket £10 which includes a glass of wine/juice and three taster sessions. Don't forget to hold a raffle too...in the past when i have held craft stalls we stipulate that the price for the stall is £8 plus a raffle prize.

Other ideas
Raffles....My four children are involved in quite a few activities and everyone has been great with holding raffles (we supplyed some of them with prizes and some supplyed their own)..I brought lots of boxed items from car boots (between £1 and £3) to put into the raffles when we were doing so many and running out. We held raffles at a day centre, different peoples work places (ask friends and family), dance class, hockey, football club, darts.
Fete/bazaar stall ideas The normal cakes/jams always go down well and any other crafty ideas. Different game stalls are good too ...we have done oldfashioned hoopla....(have second hand teddies donated) teddy tombola (prize every time..instead of numbers give your teddies names and put the names in a pot to draw out)....crockery smash (everyone loves if you can do it safely and enough crockery)....Higher and lower.(the bruce forsyth game when you have to guess if the next card is higher or lower than the one in the row, we made up a simple board and used oversized cards..line up 7 cards face down and turn one up to start with. If someone gets across the board they win a bottle of wine) This gos really well if you have a uuumm bit of a loud mouth at the front doing burce forsyth impressions "nothing for a pair..not in this game :rotfl: )....human fruit machine (three people have different fruit in a cardboard box in front of them when the person pretends to start the machine they all pull out a piece of fruit..you have the winning lines and the prize on a sheet at the front of the stall..i.e. 3 bananas...2 apples and a pear etc. Pop in google fete stall ideas and i'm sure they'll be lots more.

How about a fun day/car boot of your own?
Don't pay for halls to hold your event until you've approached everyone for a freebie first We found the local rugby and football team both gave their hall for free and we did have an offer of a Raf club too.

Good luck and any questions please feel free to pm me...Sri Lanka is very close to my heart :heart2:

geniusmum

Well, we've started the ball rolling.... we did a car boot sale today & handed out leaflets to say why we were fundraising & asking for goods to sell (with our contact details) People were very interested & promised to help. We managed to raise £75.
As regards the letter-writing to the larger companies we've either had a very poor response or no response at all.Cadbury-Schweppes say that they only donate to causes in their local area where their employees can get involved and to the larger charities. F1 Wiliams Team gave a similar response.
Does anyone know which of the larger business might donate please?
We are thinking of doing a Quiz night at the local hostelry. Can anyone tell me what prizes are awarded? I'm assuming it's cash, but what sort of amounts?
Also, if we hold a race night are there people out there who would run it for us and how do we contact them?
How can you tell I don't get out much !!

Sallys_Savings

Geniusmum...well done !!

Just received your pm, but am in a little rush this morning so will pm later with all those details.

Discodave

black-saturn wrote:

Could anything you dont sell be sold on ebays charity auction section?

Good luck anyway.

link matey?

scuzz

Also contact your local radio station(s), newspapers and TV stations. They may well provide you with some coverage, which could lead to more donations or more people coming to the auction and bidding

saveapenny

I make hand made christmas cards and usualy sell them for approx £3 each ...I will donate a pack of 20 just print of a voucher and then contact me if they sell...lol

Try Boot I did a summer travel quiz over on HT and they donated for that.
Ask local chemists for for things you can make beauty hampers out of and hunt the freebies board.
Were do you live?

Ask the pub were you do the quiz to donate a gallon of beer for the prize

If you live anywhere near the midlands I might know someone who might donate a kareoke <SP> night

Discodave

just a word to the wise, and to save you time n money

DO NOT contact football clubs, coz i have just posted, and received replies for 60% of the 100 i wrote to asking for signed items.

1 or 2 might send you a signed team picture, but nowt really that you can auction like a sign shirt. save ya postage and time and think about summit else

geniusmum

Thank you to everyone for your ideas. I'm sorry to have been so long in replying but we've been so busy.
We had a tombola, cakes & bric-a-brac stall at the local gala and made £240We try to do car boot sales whenever the weather permits.
We did a coffee morning on market day last week & sold home made cakes, bric-a-brac & books,which raised £140.
She did a sponsored 1km swim & raised a staggering £1100, and has been featured in our local monthly glossy magazine. From this article we have received lots more donations of cash and car boot items.
Another coffee morning in December.
Target £3000+ Fund so far £1890