This is our second year hosting an auction. We have a bigger variety of items and some nice higher value items that were donated locally. Last year they set the starting bid at 20% of the FMV. I'm afraid we've now set the tone that the audience is "trying to get a deal" instead of raising money for the school. How do we go about changing that mindset? I'm afraid if we set the starting big higher this year (like 30% of FMV) we won't have as many bidders. For some of the donated items, we have to return a form that states the final auction amount. I'm afraid this will hurt our chances for another donation next year if we have a low final auction amount. Has anyone experienced this? Any suggestions on what to do this year?

To give you an idea of our auction -- we host it at the school with a bingo night, and basket raffles. There is no charge for admission. We are expecting a turnout of about 500 people.

Thanks for your help!

Love the Ymca donation!! That is awesome!!! We recently received 6 stadium chairs from a printing business that our school does business with. The name of the company is 4imprint(dot)com If you do business with them, I am sure they will certainly donated. Anyone have any new leads?? Just love to hear from ya!! Thanks!

Both are based on your revenue plan - how much do you need to raise through auction? Estimate packages will sell at about 60% FMV for Live and 50% for silent. You may do better than that, but that's a conservative estimate. (If you know how things sold last year in relationship to FMV you can adjust to those percentages.) So if you need to raise 10k through live and silent, you need to procure about $20K in fair market value. If you want lower priced, more accessible packages (so everyone can bid) you'll have to get more packages in order to get to the revenue number you need.

Live - A rule of thumb is about 8-12 packages. Plan on 3 minutes per item.

Silent - plan based on number of buying units (wallets) in the room, not the number of guests - couples count as one buying unit. Make sure you have enough packages that there is some variety, but few enough to generate competition. Keep in mind on average it takes four bids to reach 50% of FMV. Package smaller items together so you have fewer overall packages with higher FMVs.

Hope this helps and not fully sure I am answering your question. This is our rule for auctions with goals of $50000 to auctions with goals of $150000. Love hearing from others their opinions too.

I have co-chaired two auctions. One auction that has a $150000 goal and with this auction, we go on the premise that less is more. We have seven live package items and nine silent items and that is it. We receive a lot of inkind donations, even one cash donation at $50000 and two at $10000 so off the bat, we have $70000. Tickets are also $175.00 a piece to this auction and there is minimal overhead as everything is donated. Best practice for auctions is to have less items out because clutter overwhelms people.

For the current auction I am doing with a $45000, we have to have a lot more items to auction off. Our ticket prices are only 35.00 but luckily most everything including food has been donated. We will be bundling items more and having a buy it now option on key items that is higher than we would anticipate getting via bids. Last year we had too many items and had leftover items that we took to the school website and let those who did not attend buy, first come, first serve.

Here is a formula I have learned from auction trainings. Not sure if this is what you need or if I am on a tangent. Good luck.

How much do you need to raise through auction? Estimate packages will sell at about 60% FMV for Live and 50% for silent. You may do better than that, but that's a conservative estimate. (If you know how things sold last year in relationship to FMV, you can adjust to those percentages.) So if you need to raise 10k through live and silent, you need to procure about $20K in fair market value. If you want lower priced, more accessible packages (so everyone can bid) you'll have to get more packages in order to get to the revenue number you need.

Live - A rule of thumb is about 8-12 packages. Plan on 3 minutes per item.

Silent - Plan based on number of buying units (wallets) in the room, not the number of guests - couples count as one buying unit. Make sure you have enough packages that there is some variety, but few enough to generate competition. Keep in mind on average it takes four bids to reach 50% of FMV. Package smaller items together so you have fewer overall packages with higher FMVs.


Just my two cents and I love hearing from others! Good luck .

Anne - I did two auctions last year & really looked at the results to see where we made money. In the first auction, we had teachers put together baskets and most had a value between $200-$500. With the exception of a golf themed basket, all of the higher $ value baskets came in at well under 50% of value. We saw the best results from items that were valued at $50 & under. So, on the second auction, I tried to have as many as possible under this dollar amount.

Is it best to auction items separately or to combine them into packages? We packaged a lot of things last year and were careful in packaging things that went well together and people seemed very interested in what we did and happy to bid - but, I was wondering if we could have made more money if we had auctioned them separately so they would have been less expensive? Any thoughts???