Donate Your Time For A Successful Auction
It takes a great deal of effort to make this a successful auction, but many hands make light work. Each year, please reflect prayerfully on how you can serve the children and families of our school community by participating in this important event.
Even what seems like the smallest job, makes a tremendous difference to our auction. You can help by just making a few phone calls, asking for donations at businesses you frequent, writing text for the catalog or setting up on the morning of the auction.
The auction is really a fun way to become involved in the school, meet other parents, make new friends, and help keep our tuition low!
The best way to find out how to help is to call the Development Office at 434-964-0400 (Ext. 301) or email development@cvillecatholic.org. Help is needed year-round to make these auctions successful.
The auction organizing process proceeds in several phases:
- In the fall, the greatest need is people to help with Acquisitions (Donations).
- You would be surprised how easy it is to ask local businesses to donate to the auction. It has been our experience that many businesses are more than happy to support our school, but they need to be asked! Businesses are much more likely to give if they know the person asking. If you are a regular at an establishment or have a friend, relative, or other contact at a particular business (local or out of state), please ask them to consider making a donation to support the Charlottesville Catholic School Auction. How can a repair man deny you after you just paid $2000 to have your furnace replaced?
- If you are concerned a business has already been approached, consider asking in this way “Has anyone approached you yet about donating to the Charlottesville Catholic School auction?”. You can direct them to this web site for more information. You can pick up acquisitions forms at school and the acquisitions chairperson will be happy to show you what needs to be done.
- We have a master list of businesses that need to be contacted and you can sign up to help generate acquisitions for a particular category of items.
- You should think about any skills you have. If you can make, do, or teach anything, you can transform that into something that can be sold at the auction.
- We also need people to solicit advertisements from local businesses, send out business letters and thank you notes.
- In January, we shift gears away from acquisitions to organizing the big night. We need people to write text for the catalog, help with layout, organize displays, print bid sheets and place cards, and a whole host of other big and small jobs with must be done to pull off such a large event.
- On auction day, we need people to set up the displays and decorate the auction room. During the auction, we need volunteers to work in the sales processing room, check-in & check-out, close out silent auction tables, bid spotters, and to sell various other offerings during the event. Finally, a crew of help is needed to help clean up on auction night. The following afternoon, another crew is needed to help in the unloading process.