The First Choice Live Auction Raffle
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 This one is easy, but not necessarily for every auction. It is a slight variation of the popular "54 Card Drawing", but can also be handled like any standard raffle the night of your charity auction.
In a nutshell...you sell your guests “the opportunity to take their choice of any item from the live auction before it even starts."
You pick the number of tickets to sell and the price at which they are offered.
Sell 100 chances @ $100 each for $10,000! or Sell $50 Chances at $50 for $2500!
Every room has a different level of comfort for buying tickets at a given price.
Draw the winner immediately prior to the start of your Live Auction and the winner takes ANY item they want from the live.
Oftentimes, its pretty easy to guess, in advance, what the winner will choose. This will enable you to guesstimate the value of your prize and set your ticket prices appropriately. Make certain you don't have something in the live that could, under normal circumstances, fetch more than your expected gross ticket sales.
EXAMPLE:
Selling 100 First Choice Tickets at $25 each is not going to work if you have a 14 Day Hawaiian Vacation, valued at $7500.00 in your live. In most live auctions, that item is going to perform well and the winner will very likely take the vacation. Bad news if you only sold $2500 in tickets. You could lose $5000.00 on the deal.
Adjust ticket prices to make sure the math is in line.
NOTE: I’ve seen organizations try to exclude one key item from the “first choice” because it was considered to be “exceptional”. I strongly disagree with this practice. It’s confusing all night to be explaining that you could win “almost anything” from the live.
