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Potential
Revenues:
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$$$$$
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Revenue Source:
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Sale of raffle
tickets, live and silent auction sales
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Advertising:
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Varies, but
usually in conjunction with a larger event like a dinner, gala, or ball
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Equipment/Supplies:
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Tables to display
items, two-up raffle tickets, silent auction sheets
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Partners:
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Celebrities,
sports stars, and individuals with
autographed items or photos
www.AutographPros.com
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Volunteers
Needed:
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People to solicit
autographed items, people to help put out the displays and bid sheets, people
to sell the raffle tickets
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How It Works:
According to the “Six Degrees of
Separation” theory, everyone is six people away, at most, from any other person
on the planet. With that in mind, how
about using your board’s and supporter’s connections to get celebrity and
sports figure autographs? These make
great raffle items, as well as unusual products for silent and live
auctions. The types of items that have
shown up in these venues can be mind-boggling in their variety: autographed
pictures, sports equipment, guitars, microphones, CDs, DVDs, team jerseys, racing
jerseys, baseballs, baseball bats, team hats, footballs, hockey pucks, team
autographs and even a signed size 23 shoe from Shaquille O’Neal.
Although most of the items sell for a few
hundred to a few thousand dollars, some items have been successfully auctioned by
professional auctioneer houses in the 5 to 7-figure range, making the potential
contribution dollars enormous. Some
examples of rare items acquired at auction include: Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy
Birthday Mr. President” Dress at a winning bid of $1,267,500 in 1999; locks of
hair from Elvis Presley went for $115,000 in a 2002 auction; and Mark McGwire’s
70th-home-run baseball sold at a 1999 auction for $3 million. Granted you’re not usually going to see these
as gifts to your cause, but how about writing to several of your favorite
actors or sports celebrities, that you know support your work? Ask them to sign a pile of autographs, or maybe
a special item for your event. You can
usually find their agents on sites like the Screen Actors Guild’s “Find an
Agent” search: www.SAG.org or by simply Googling
“who is Johnny Depp’s agent?”
If you can’t come up with appropriate autographed
items, one of the best sources is www.AutographPros.com. They give a minimum of a 20% discount to
charities, and have a huge assortment that ranges from autographed guitars by
the Rolling Stones, to rare sports memorabilia.
At the time of this writing, they even offer to ship “consigned items”
to your event for free, and if they don’t sell, they pay to ship them back.
Ideas to Consider:
If you don’t sell your items through your
event’s raffle, or your Silent or Live Auctions, use your MissionFish/eBay Giving account (see
write-up in this website) to sell these autographed items after your event. You
might even want to see if you can get a good price before an event starts, and
culminate the bidding at the event by using that current bid as the starting
point.
If you find MissionFish to be a successful
route to pursue, you might want to broaden your ongoing offerings on MissionFish
– even if you don’t have an event scheduled.
Usually it’s a pretty simple procedure to list an item on the site, and
a staff member can become proficient at putting an item on the site in a matter
of a few minutes.
If you’re going to run a raffle, make sure
that you comply with state laws on the conduct of a raffle. See the write-up on the Fifty-Fifty Raffle for more information, and contact your State
Attorney General’s office for rules regarding charities.
Source
of Idea: Auctions, charities, and autographed memorabilia go
back many years, so it’s pretty hard to pinpoint the original idea with any degree
of accuracy.
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