After the Auction

After the Auction

            After the art auction I put on for Rescue:Freedom, I have mainly been working on completing the very last tasks associated with the event.  I have also been ruminating over what I’ve learned from the experience.  I conveniently was interrupted for a week due vacationing in Las Vegas (of all places), but now I am back on track. 

            Before and during the auction, I really was not sure how the actual purchasing of won bids would work.  I could not decide if it was better for guests to purchase their winning bids during the event or after the event.  I thought purchasing their items after the event would make the auction itself less stressful.  I was even a bit stressed about how the actual payment process would work during the event, especially since we were allowing payment via credit cards.  But the risk for purchasing won bids after the event would be guests not following through on payment later on.  It turned out that most everyone purchased their winnings at the auction.  The actual payment process actually happened without issue.  Incidentally, the vast majority of guests paid with a credit card.  I have only had to follow up with five individuals about picking up and paying for their winnings, and they’ve been completely reliable.  Actually, I had heard it would be this way, and it was true.

            I should have all payment collected for each item by Thursday.  Once we have that, we’ll be able to advertise to our guests how much money we were able to raise for survivors of sex-trafficking.  Also, half of our proceeds will go to one of our auction’s featured guests, Arts Aftercare.  I’m excited to be able to tell guests how much we raised (especially since most won’t know what our goal actually was).  I’m also excited to have an excuse to get in touch with them.  It will give me an excuse to reach out to them and hopefully get them involved somehow with either organization. 

            I also have a few other follow up tasks to complete.  The first is to send thank you notes to our volunteers, our partners, and maybe even some of our art purchasers.  Another is to figure out what to do with the art that didn’t sell.  Hopefully Jeremy will want to use it at a future event.  I don’t mind giving it back to the original donors, but I’m also a bit sheepish about it. 

            Ultimately, I learned a few things from this experience.  The first is that in order to raise the amount of money you want, it is very helpful to match your event’s guests to what they are purchasing.  In the case of our auction, our more expensive fine art didn’t sell because we didn’t specifically have art buyers there.  It also can be hard for art auction guests to bid a lot of money on art because its value is so subjective.  I also learned that planning a fun, well run event does create an opportunity to share with guests about issues that need funding, such as sex-trafficking.  Last, I learned that even though I now know I can manage a large event, it is still important to not lose sight of future funding opportunities.  In our case, I was hoping to connect more auction guests to volunteering with Rescue:Freedom.  This could still happen.  I did just put a note about that on Facebook.