Organizing a student art auction - Community connections

Arts & Activities, Jan, 2003 by Judy Domeny Bowen

RELY ON THE KINDNESS OF VOLUNTEERS Your main job the night of the auction is to oversee the volunteers and fill in wherever you are needed. You will need approximately 10 volunteers to help orchestrate the auction. (Materials needed are listed in the accompanying sidebar.)

Two of the volunteers will sign up buyers, hand out numbered bid cards and later serve as cashiers. The auctioneer can provide the sign-up sheets or you can make your own. These sheets simply have numbered lines. Each buyer must register, writing his or her name (and address and phone number if desired) next to a number.

The volunteer will then hand that customer a bid card with a very large corresponding number written on it. Index cards will work for bid cards if you are making your own. At an auction, when a person bids and is the successful buyer, he holds up his numbered bid card. It is this number the clerk--a third volunteer with exceptionally good listening skills--records, not the name of the buyer.

Of course, you will need an auctioneer. I am an auctioneer and whenever I conduct a charity auction I always provide the numbered bid cards, sign-up sheets, and clerking tickets (forms on which the clerk records the number of each artwork and its selling price). Ask your auctioneer if he or she can provide these items. He or she can also provide a clerking box or computer system of some type that categorizes the clerking tickets for easy reference at time of payment.

Two volunteers are needed to remove artwork from the walls and bring it to the auctioneer. Another two volunteers are needed to be runners, carrying the sold artwork immediately out to the buyers. Two more volunteers help hold up artwork as the auctioneer sells it. I usually sell choice of two pictures at one time. This pits your buyers against each other and raises more money.

LET THE BIDDING BEGIN You will be amazed at the prices some of the artworks will bring. Typically, pieces sell between $5 and $15, but I have had some pieces go for much higher amounts. My highest selling student artwork brought a price of $160! Buyers are generous, as they know half the money is going right back to the individual children. Depending on the number of pieces sold, auction totals can run anywhere from $400 to $1,000 or higher.

The day after the auction, divide the money to be given to the artists. You need your copy of the clerking tickets and the list of names and numbers you made out earlier. By comparing the two, you can add to your list of names and numbers, now filling in a selling price for each piece. Write each student's name on an envelope. Place half the selling price of the student's artwork in that envelope and deliver it to each child.

Even if a student's artwork sold for only $1 and he or she is receiving 50 cents, you will be delighted at their joyous reaction. After all, it's more than just the money. Someone thought enough of their artwork to buy it and that in itself is a pretty good pat on the back.

That brings up a good question. Does every piece sell? No, there may be a few pieces that do not sell, especially if a student's family is not present at the auction. That possibility must be made clear to the students prior to the auction. It has been my experience, however, that very nearly all pieces sell.