The donations come rolling in

It's been an... eventful couple of months. I have not blogged as often as I should.  I will do better now, I promise.

My first mailing, of 75 or so letters, went out in late January.  Which is much later than I intended.  But I must be livin' clean or something, since the donations have been coming back fast and furious.  I've entered some of what I have received into our school auction website - go see what I've received so far (click the "Catalog" link at the top of that page.)

The mind-blowing discovery of the week came when I found this company: Versaic (here is their client list, and here is a shorter, even more partial version of the client list, but one with links to the company pages.

Versaic provides online donation-request forms and sponsorship-request forms for various national companies. Which makes them very useful to auction chairs like me.

Holiday Leftovers?

Earlier this week, I saw a great Facebook post from one of my customers, inviting her friends and followers to contribute "duplicate" gifts from the holiday season to their fundraising auction.  What a great idea - I just stole it and emailed the RGMS parent list with this:

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Hello fellow RGMS parents,

You'll hear much more about this in the weeks to come, but this spring (April 8th to be exact) the RGMS Foundation and PTA will be hosting a fabulous, fun, fundraising auction, to raise money for  new computers and arts education at our school.

There are ample opportunities to help, but for the moment, I want to point out that any holiday gifts that you received that 

a) don't match your home decor, 

b) are duplicates of cool things your kids (or you!) already had one of, or 

c) are designed to encourage you to pursue pursuits you are no longer physically up for (as with me and those rollerblades a few years back) 

might make lovely items to include in our silent auction. (New stuff only, please - and no fruitcakes, please!)

So while you have your computer booted, and are thinking about this, click here:

https://rgms.schoolauction.net/2011/donate_items/new

...and let us know what you can contribute to the cause.  

Thanks!

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More on how well this works as the season progresses...

Time to mail?

Wow.  It's been a while.  I've had my head down, teaching at Portland State University and dealing with the crush of the fall auction season at SchoolAuction.net.

But, I have the letterhead for my mailing, and my list, and it's time to get those letters in the mail.

Or is it?  On the one hand, getting them there before the end of the year allows businesses to send off donations in this tax year if they wish.  On the other, the Holiday Season has begun.

Your thoughts?  Experiences?  Should I wait until January?

Interesting procurement opportunity

Had a conversation today with a guy named Scott Merrin.  He's got a great story - for years he was The Guy at American Airlines who got all of the letters from auction chairs, asking for donated tickets.  He made the decision who got a donation, and who didn't.  And he saw a whole lot of mediocre letters, from chairs who had no real understanding of why he would choose one request over another. Plus a few really good ones, from savvy chairs who did.

He doesn't do that job anymore.  He's an entrepreneur now, running a company called Silent Partners.  He has a huge database of people in the kind of job he used to have.  And he knows what makes a great procurement letter.  And (for a fee) he will send letters on our letterhead, over my name, to his database.

Interesting...

Next up: Credit-Card Processing Account

What am I working on now?

Credit-card processing.  It's vital; people just spend more if they know they can put it on a card.  Bidding goes higher in the live; people signup for more easel-parties, etc. PLUS, it lets us sell tickets online (when coupled with our SchoolAuction.net website) and we can use it throughout the year for things like selling Chinook Books, etc.

And something I know to be true: we can use pretty much any bank we want.  There are specialized services designed to just provide credit-card processing services to fundraising auctions; the biggest such player (Greater Giving/Auctionpay) has their offices just a few miles down the highway from us. There's another one in Minnesota. But like any middleman/specialty reseller of services, these companies mark up the fees, by any where from 1 to 2% (the underlying bank fees range from 1.74%-2.5%, based on a whole bunch of qualifications.)  In return, they give you an "express pay" service - you can have guests swipe their card when they check in at the beginning of the night, and then if they don't want to wait in a line at check out, they can just leave, and you can charge them later.

But you know what? There really isn't a need anymore for these specialized resellers.  There are many, many "regular" merchant-processing banks that are willing to compete for non-profit accounts - even PTAs. Couple that with an Internet Payment Gateway, and I can integrate it into our auction software to provide for swiping at check-in (the "express pay" option), and thus, a quick and easy check-out on auction night. And if I skip the specialized reseller, then I can get away with paying about half the processing charges. Woo hoo!

So, I have an application sitting in my inbox, from a local company, and I'm going to get that filled out (with the PTA Treasurer's help) in the next day or two.  The rates are reasonable (interchange plus 0.35%) and the service is great, and it's going to work well.

A Date, A Venue, An Announcement

Much of the planning for our auction has been suspended for the past two weeks, while the PTA and Foundation wrapped up the Fall Fundraiser (a Fun Run) and I negotiated a date with our preferred venue.

I'm delighted to report that the negotiations (and the Fun Run, for that matter) are finished. Our auction is going to be on April 8th, at the Multnomah Arts Center. Yay! Now I just have to call the auctioneer back to see if he is available on that day (pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!)

And the PTA sent out an announcement yesterday that it is on. So that's good.

Checking In

Anyone who has ever chaired an auction will understand, when I apologize for not blogging for almost a week and explain why.

We're in a little bit of flux, regarding dates (the calendar was already almost full before I ever volunteered to do this), and the venue (there is a preferred venue whose calendar for next spring has very few available dates).  I think I have an auctioneer, but I've only confirmed him for one of the possible dates (which works on the school calendar, but not at the preferred venue).

Problems like these can make a person crazy, but there are many more crazy-making opportunities ahead of me. So I choose to see it as just the current challenge.  Auction chairs, like any managers, must take these in stride.