Raise Money for Your School with a “Benefit Auction”
By Jay R. Fiske

These days, it is difficult to find a school, or nearly any not-for-profit organization, which doesn't host an auction.  If your school hasn’t as yet ventured into these fertile waters, or if your school hosts an auction but needs a little “boost”, this may be the time to evaluate the auction process further.  Auctions are not only great fun and financially beneficial, the rewards for the committee, and the community, are many. 

So why are auctions a great fund raising event?  To start, they raise money.  Lots of money.  More money than most schools can generate from any other fund raising activity.  At the same time, the value of building teamwork and a sense of accomplishment in the school “community” is invaluable.  When a well thought out plan is properly executed, and the night of the event actually arrives (after much anticipation), there is just no way to describe the overwhelming sense of accomplishment everyone feels as the “numbers” continue to add up with each declaration of  “sold!”  The next day, as the committee awakes bleary eyed from a little too much party the night before, the euphoria of a job very well done is consuming.  The best part is that an auction is a “renewable resource” - you can have one every year!

I remember the first time I was asked to serve on an auction committee, in 1989.  I had never even attended a fund raising auction before, but there I was, selected to be the “auction chair”.  I didn’t know where to start, but I did know that our success or failure would rest squarely on how well we executed our auction process and plan.  But first, we needed to have a process, and a plan!  With little experience to go on - the members of our committee were all novices - we decided to follow the only process I knew well.  Having been in sales and sales management my entire career, I was well versed in the art of writing a business plan.  I had also served as a trainer for my company in the then very popular “Deming Principles of Continuous Improvement”, also sometimes called “TQM”, Total Quality Management.    I had remembered that a good friend of mine was fond of saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will take you there.”  It has been among my favorite sayings because it forced me to always seek a path, a repeatable path, which leads to a predictable result.  It has become the cornerstone for my consulting business and is one of the first principles I teach in my auction workshops. 

So there we were, the new auction committee, barely able to understand what could be done, what needed to be done, never mind how to do it.  We were about to organize our first school auction as a committee, and the first ever auction for the school.  What to do first?  We started with a goal.  A tangible goal, one that could be measured with real numbers, a goal which would let us know when we had arrived at our destination.  We had a path, or at least we knew where the path had to lead.  Now all we had to do was create the path.  The plan.  This was actually the easy part.

Our plan was simple:  Get a lot of items donated, invite a number of guests to attend our event, and hope like heck that the items and the people “bond with each other”.  It actually wasn’t that bad of a plan!  We picked a date for the event, picked a location, a theme, organized teams to solicit items, created a database to keep track of the items, created decorations, selected the food service, ordered a sound system and display tables, and then set out to invite our audience.  We never did get around to hiring an auctioneer so that duty fell to me (not all that reluctantly).  It was for me a life changing process.

On auction night we were all amazed at how generous our guests were, paying ridiculous sums for items like baskets of toys and foods, rounds of golf, gourmet dinners cooked by amateur “chef’s”, tickets to baseball games and other very readily available items.  We even had a “bidding war” over a tray of fudge cooked by a few of the students.  I remember that my first job as an “auctioneer” was less than perfect, in fact, I was dreadful by today’s standards, but it didn’t matter.  I wasn’t why the audience was there.  The school and the kids were the reason.  I was merely a facilitator of the auction.  I never forgot that experience.  It was humbling to see the outpouring of generosity the parents, grand parents, aunts and uncles, friends and others in the audience expressed for the school.  They expressed it with their bids, and it didn’t matter what the cost.   It was after all, “for our kids”.  And I was hooked.  A few months before, I couldn’t wait for it to be over, so I could return to my normal life as a sales manager.  After our first auction, I couldn’t wait to organize another one.  Sooner rather than later would be nice.  I didn’t have to wait long.

A few weeks after our very successful event, I was called by a parent at another school who asked if I would be willing to share some of our “secrets” that made our first ever auction so successful.  I was, after all, an “expert” on the subject, having been the chair of the event!  Of course, I was very willing to share my vast knowledge bank of one auction!  It was the beginning of the biggest change in my life, where I became an “auction consultant”.  I had the bug, and would never again be content at work except when I was helping to raise money for good causes.

I am not suggesting that if you decide to chair an auction, or serve on a committee, that you will want to do it over and over as I have.  I will promise you, however, that the reward you will receive in terms of the feeling of accomplishment will never be measured adequately.  Helping your child’s school receive much-needed funds, and knowing that you have helped others share in that reward, is a tremendous feeling.

The beauty of an auction is that there are never any losers, only winners.  The organizing committee receives a level of satisfaction that is impossible to measure.  The donors of items receive a sense of helping a good cause, perhaps a tax break, maybe some advertising value.  Regardless, they donate willingly because they want to help you, and that may be all the reward they need.  The guests who attend are entertained for their money, and if they buy something, they get rewarded again with an item or two to take home for their “donation”.  The volunteers are rewarded with the knowledge they have assisted a much-needed process, and they get to share in the joy of seeing the money grow as the evening unfolds.  And then of course there is the cause, the school, which gets to deposit the money in the budget for those much-needed books, or scholarships, or faculty enrichment, or computers, or playground equipment.  The point is, everyone wins. 

So where should you start?  First, set a realistic goal.  Make it one that can be measured directly.  “We want to net $50,000” is a goal.  “We want to make as much as we can” is not.  Next, evaluate your resources.  Can you get enough people interested in serving on your committee?  For most school auctions, you will need a good “core group” of about 20 people.  What sort of contacts in the community do your committee members have?  Remember, you will need to solicit items to sell from local businesses and families.  Networking is the best way.  Does your committee have a network of people they can draw upon?  Will your school community support an auction?  In other words, if you throw a party, will they attend?  Getting items is important to be sure.  Getting buyers to bid is equally important.  A key point to be made here is this:  Bidders will always eat your dinner, but eaters will not always bid on your items.  You must focus on getting “bidders” to the event, not just filling the event with “eaters”.  Make it clear you are holding a fund-raiser.  You are not inviting people to a dinner and hope they bid.  This is a crucial step in setting the tone of the event.

Finally, be sure that what you are doing is based on a plan that covers more than one event year.  You will be much more successful, and credible, if what you are doing this year is based on a five year plan.  Lay out a goal for growth of your event over five years.  This will allow all of your committee, your volunteers, your guests, and even your donors to understand that fund raising is a continuous process, not a singular event.  Making the current event a step in a much larger process, one that has no end but instead relies on continuous improvement and modification will add a new dimension to your feeling of accomplishment.  You will feel rewarded for years to come, knowing you set your organization on a path that pays dividends each year.  Having a database system that will guide you, and your successors, from year to year will also pay big dividends.  You do not want to reinvent the process each year - only improve on it.  Having excellent records, and a repeatable process to follow, will reduce the stress of your volunteers and committee.  Have them focus on implementation and activities that add bottom line value.  Creating tools (which may already be available for the asking) is not the best use of volunteer time. 

Remember to enjoy yourself! Volunteering to help with a fund raising event should not be viewed as a task but an opportunity.  Enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

About the Author:

Jay R. Fiske is the President and co-founder of MaestroSoft, Inc., a Bellevue, Washington based software company.  MaestroSoft specializes in event management software designed specifically for helping not-for-profit organizations organize auctions and golf tournaments.  In addition, Jay is the founder of Northwest Benefit Auctions, Inc., an auction management company which provides consulting services and auctioneers for charity events nationwide.

He can be reached  by email at jfiske@maestrosoft.com or at his web site,
www.auctionhelp.com  or by calling 800.438.6498.

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