How to Hold Your Own Successful and Profitable Silent Auction

If you are able to put on a silent auction successfully this can be a great way for churches and charities to make some extra money for their cause or for the silent auction donation ideas needs of their church. However, you need to know how to get the most out of your auction and this mans you need to be very organized and have plenty of people on hand to help you organize and run the auction.

One of the first things you need to do is to get items you can put on auction. One way of doing this is get a hold of some local businesses and see if they have anything that they would be willing to donate for your auction. You will need a large variety of things in order to get people interested in coming to your auction. Make sure to let them know that in exchange for them being so generous that you will make sure that you will advertise their business for them by putting their name in the program or even on a banner where the auction is being held. The companies can also be thanked throughout the evening by the person who will be the emcee for the evening.

You will need to have tables set up for smaller items and make sure that they are displayed neatly and can be easily examined by those who might be interested in biding on the items. You should also include a description of each item as well. Larger items can sit on the floor and be displayed in that manner. All of your tables will need to have a bid sheets that have all of the items listed with their descriptions and places for the bidders to put their names and their bids.

Make sure that you have enough volunteers so that you can assign them to all of the tables that are filled with items. You will need to have at least one person for each table that has items displayed. They need to be there to answer any questions and to watch the bidding as well as for security reasons so that none of the items are stolen.

You will need to make sure that during your event that you are having along with the silent bidding that you post a time when the bidding will stop. You need to make sure that all of the bidding is stopped at the same time. Usually when people hold these types of auctions they are in conjunction with some big event that the charity or church might be holding and this means bidding can probably go on for a couple of hours before ending. Make sure that the emcee makes a couple of announcements prior to the end of bidding to enable last minute bidders and to help build up the excitement of the auction.

Once the bidding is over you will need to get all of the bid sheets and note who the high bidders are and the amount they bid. You will then need to announce the winners and give them a receipt for their item or items. This would be the checkout line. Here they would pay the amount they bid and you would give them a receipt. They would then take their receipt over to the bidding tables where your volunteers would still need to be. They would take the receipt and give the person the item that they won and paid for.