How much can a dance studio raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: how far past the enrolment you reached, and whether the recital was used.

Working it out past the enrolment

The families are already at their annual limit, so the number turns on how far past them you reach.

• Extended family across the enrolment — grandparents and relatives with no studio bill
• Parents' employers, and how many run matching or community sponsorship programmes
• Recital attendance, which is every family plus every visiting relative on one night
• What it funds, named accurately for the entity that receives it

Do not count the studio's own families as the audience. Tuition, costumes, tickets, photographs, competition fees and travel have already landed on them this year.

What moves it

Extended family

Grandparents and relatives who come to recitals, watch the videos, and have no studio bill. One line in an email opens them.

The recital

The single best moment available — the whole audience in one room with time on their hands: recital fundraisers.

Employers

Matching gifts and community sponsorship budgets, which almost no studio has ever asked a family about.

What the families have already paid this year

The limiting factor. Tuition, costumes, tickets, photographs, competition and travel add up before the fundraiser is announced.

Setting the goal

Name what it funds and be accurate about who benefits. Where the studio is a business, say the money goes to the trip or the equipment rather than implying a charity — accuracy costs almost nothing and inaccuracy costs the studio's standing in the town.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Whether your studio is a for-profit business, a nonprofit, or a parent booster organization alongside a business changes what a donor may claim and what you may say — this is a situation to put in front of your own adviser.