Silent auctions for community theaters, set up in minutes

Check the licence before you build the catalogue

This is the step community theaters skip and it is the one that can stop an item after it has bids on it. A licensed production comes with an agreement covering the title, the logo, the artwork, merchandise, photography and recording — and a fundraiser built around the show you are currently staging sits inside that agreement whether anyone read it or not.

Three questions to answer from your own licence, per production, before the catalogue is written:

• May we produce or sell anything carrying the show's title, logo or artwork?
• May we photograph or record the production, and may those images be used to promote a fundraiser?
• May we auction a prop, a costume or a set piece from this production, or does it belong to a rental house?

Two of those catch companies out routinely. Costumes and set pieces are frequently rented rather than owned, and the answer about photography is often narrower than the photographs already on your social accounts would suggest.

The building is your fundraising asset

A company that owns or holds a lease on a theater has something almost no other volunteer organization has: a distinctive space, in the evening, that people already associate with a good night out.

• The stage for a private event — a proposal, a party, a rehearsal dinner
• A seat with a name plate on it, permanently
• The lighting box during a performance, or a spot at the tech table
• A backstage and fly-loft tour, which nobody who has seen a show can resist
• Ushering, or calling the half, for a night

None has a price a bidder can look up and none costs the company money. Every one needs a decision from whoever runs the building, which for a volunteer company is usually a board vote rather than a manager's nod.

Sizing an ask against a season that is already sold

Working it out from the subscriber list

A theatre already knows its audience precisely, which makes this the easiest sizing exercise in the series.

• Subscribers, plus single-ticket buyers for the current season
• The cast's own families and friends, which for a large musical is substantial
• Two average-bid figures: donated goods behave one way, seats and access another

Full breakdown: how much can a community theater raise?

When an auction is the wrong instrument

If the company is mid-capital-campaign for the roof or the seats, an auction competes with a capital ask to the same subscribers and will raise less than the ask would. If your season already carries a gala, a raffle at every performance and a programme ad drive, the auction is a fourth approach to the same three hundred people. And if the volunteers running it are the same people building the set for the next production, the auction will lose — put it in the gap between shows, not in tech week.

Reaching an audience that already comes

Channel order: the subscriber list, which is the warmest list a theater has and is frequently used only for renewals; the current production's ticket buyers; cast and crew's own networks, which for a community company is a large and genuinely enthusiastic group; the theater's social accounts; the local paper, which covers a community theater readily; and the businesses in your programme.

One move worth building in: put a QR code in the programme of the show running while bidding is open. A seated audience with a programme in their hands and twenty minutes of interval is the most attentive audience your auction will ever get, and it costs a printing change.

General mechanics: how to promote a silent auction and marketing templates.

Opening night is the date

The house is full, the mood is good, everyone is standing around before curtain and at the interval, and the cast's families are there. Opening bidding a week before and closing at the opening-night reception is the shape that works: opening night packages.

Ten weeks, and not one of them is tech week

• Week 10 — read the production licence and answer the three questions. Board agenda item on building lots at the same meeting
• Week 8 — company and subscribers, asked at a rehearsal with named examples
• Week 6 — programme businesses and nearby restaurants, coordinated with the ad drive so nobody is approached twice
• Week 4 — regional suppliers, gap filling
• Week 2 — catalogue closed; programme QR code to the printer
• Week 1 — bidding opens to subscribers and the run's ticket holders
• Opening night — lobby table, interval push, close at the reception
• Closing night — announce the total; thank businesses in the next programme

Your procurement volunteers are your production volunteers. Put nothing in tech week; they will choose the show and they will be right to.

Four jobs, one of which is reading the licence

• Rights and approvals — the licence, the board vote on building lots, and the director's sign-off on anything touching the production
• Procurement — company first, then the street, coordinated with the ad drive
• Lobby and listing — the catalogue, display sheets, the programme QR code
• Checkout and fulfilment — invoices, and booking the seat items into the box office so they do not surface in three years

Where community theater auctions go wrong

• Listing a licensed item. Show merchandise, production photographs, a rented costume. Recoverable before bids, awkward after
• Auctioning seats you would have sold, and discounting a subscription your own renewal letter then has to compete with
• Seat items with no expiry, which reappear at the box office years later
• Two committees, one high street. The ad drive and the auction arriving separately at the same restaurant
• Closing at the end of the run rather than at the opening night reception, which loses the room that was going to bid
• An appeal after the curtain call, which reads as using the performance

What it costs, and what the company keeps

Close to nothing. The building, the production access and the company's own skills are the catalogue, and the only real outlay is a printing change to the programme and a table in the lobby.

Watch one line: if seat items come out of sellable inventory, the auction's net is lower than its gross by whatever those seats would have made. Using held-back or invented packages instead is the difference between a fundraiser and a discount.

After it closes, and next season

• Book every seat item into the box office immediately, with its expiry
• Announce the total on closing night, to the audience that was in the room
• Thank donating businesses by name in the next programme — free, and it is what makes the second ask easy
• Keep the one shared business list with which ask each received and when
• Note the licence answers per production, so next season's committee is not re-reading