How much can a choir raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: whether the concert audience was captured, and whether the ask happened in the room.

Working it out from the room you already fill

The membership is small and the concert audience is several times larger — size against the second one.

• Concert attendance across a season, which most choirs have never counted as a list
• Singers and their families, plus what the members do professionally
• The venue's own congregation or community
• The cost you are funding: the accompanist for a season, a commission, the music for a programme

The first input is the one to fix permanently. A card on every seat and a sign-up at the door turns an audience the choir already has into a list it has never had.

What moves it

The concert audience

Several times the size of the membership, present, warm, and almost never asked. Capturing them costs a card in each seat.

Singers' own networks

A choir membership is a directory of professions and connections that nobody has ever read as one.

The venue's community

A church, a school or a hall has its own congregation or membership that overlaps the audience and extends past it.

Whether it closes at a concert

A deadline the audience is physically present for beats any online close date.

Setting the goal

Name a real cost — the accompanist for a season, a commission, the music for a programme — and publish it. Choir finances are small enough that a specific number is achievable and surprising, and an audience that learns what sheet music costs generally gives.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.

General information, not legal advice for your choir. Performance, recording, streaming and arrangement rights are specific and are decided by the rights holders and your own licences, not by custom — check before recording or selling anything.