How much can a library Friends group raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: whether you asked any authors, and whether the auction rode the book sale or ran alone.

Revenue across libraries and Friends groups

Working it out from what you have collected

Borrower records are confidential, so the reachable audience is whatever the Friends have built.

• Names collected at the desk and at book sales, with permission
• Book sale attendance, if the auction is attached to one
• Two average-bid figures, not one: goods and author items behave differently and averaging them hides the plan
• How many authors you can realistically ask in the time available

The fourth input moves the total more than the first three. One manuscript critique or signed first edition can outweigh a whole table of donated goods.

What moves it

Author items

A signed first edition, a manuscript critique, a school visit, lunch with a writer people have actually read. Nothing else in the catalogue behaves like these and they cost the Friends nothing. See author experience items.

Whether it attached to the sale

A standalone auction has to build an audience the sale already assembles.

A funded thing rather than the library in general

Summer reading, museum passes, the author visit, furniture. The town funds the library; the Friends fund the parts it does not, and saying so is a stronger ask.

The list you built at the desk

Borrower records are off limits, so the Friends list is whatever you have collected at sign-up. Its size is the ceiling on a standalone auction and the reason to start collecting before you need it.

Setting the goal

Work from the purchase and confirm the route: if the money buys something the library will own, check how the Friends transfer it and whether the library has to accept it formally. Then report what it bought — a photograph of the new furniture in the children's room does more for next year than a total does.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.