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Fund Raisers – How Do You Set Up A Charity Auction?

Written by: Lee Lister

Article Overview: You have little money but you want to raise money for your local charity. So how about a well publicized auction?

Fund Raisers – How Do You Set Up A Charity Auction?

You will be benefiting from a whole pile of human emotions:

* The public’s desire to give to good causes.
* Local business need for cost effective advertising.
* Local businesses wishing to be connected with good causes.
* The public’s wish to purchase special items at good prices, whilst still being seen to be doing good.
* Local media’s needs for good local interest copy.

It is going to be some hard work for you, but if you are organized, polite and persistent you will do well.

First of all – check with your local authorities as to the kind of permits etc that you need. Make sure you adhere to all rules – lotteries for example are heavily controlled – so get advice first.

Secondly as it is for charity you have to make sure that you keep excellent records and can account publicly for all auction gifts, all money taken and what the money is used for.

Now Publicity

Set the event for about 1 month ahead. Go to your local radio stations and tell them about it. Ask them to publicize it for you. Do the same with the local papers. You have a great local event so they will be interested.

Set up some flyers giving details of the auction. Also set up some posters that local businesses can put up. Leave a space on these so that they can promote what they are giving to the auction and ask donators to put them up in their shop and office.

Ask your paper to be at the event to take photos and provide a report on the results. If you can hold the event in order to purchase a particular item for your charity – that’s great!

Getting Your Items
Go around local businesses and ask them to donate. Tell them:

* Their name will be mentioned during the auction item. – “Donated by…..”
* Their name will be on the auction catalogue.
* Adverts in the auction will appear on radio and in news releases.
* They can put a poster up demonstrating what they have donated.

Try to encourage competitiveness by providing a special mention for key prizes.

Also contact all the members of your local charity and say same thing.

Try and get a few main/big items that will make your publicity stand out. For example a day’s golf training with a local celebrity. Meal for 4 at a great restaurant etc.

The Auction

Be professional and see if a local celebrity or auction house or comic will control the auction for you. This does great for your publicity as well.

Have refreshments available and seating. This encourages people to stay.

Keep very good records and keep telling people the totals during the auction. Say things like – “another $50 takes us to a $1,000”, “We are almost able to buy two xx’s – just need to give a little more.”

Ensure that the donators and bidders get good publicity and everyone feels that they have donated to a good cause.

Announce the final total and leave a bucket/tin available for other donations. Thank everyone and close the event.

Give the local papers and radio stations details of the event, the amount raised and what it is being used for.

Good luck!

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Article Tags: adverts, auction catalogue, business need, charity, competitiveness, cost effective advertising, desire, flyers, human emotions, local authorities, local businesses, local event, local media, local papers, local radio stations, lotteries, news releases, posters, prizes, publicity



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Re: Best Florist! - Question for the Forum, Is aligning yourself with a Charity (or a Charity of your customer's choice) good business practice? Is this being over done?
Re: Can someone explain Search engine optimization to me? - Hi, Ask yourself, "What is the goal of a search engine like Google?" A search engine's goal is to provide the most related (or best) web page results when someone searches. Do you think people are searching for "Auction Cars Government" or "Government Car Auction." In fact type those keywords into Google with the quotation marks. You will find that Google gives different results for each keyword phrases. Granted you get many of the web pages ranking the same but there is a difference. My answer is, use "Government Car Auction" or even "Government Seized Car Auction" because that is what people are searching for. That is how the majority of the indexed pages use. That is what makes sense when you read the phrase. Jeff
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