How much can a preschool raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: the number of enrolled families sets the floor and the number of grandparents you reach sets the ceiling.

Working it out from forty households

A preschool can count its audience exactly, which makes this the most precise sizing exercise in the series — and the most obviously capped.

• Enrolled families, which you know to the household
• Grandparents reachable through those families, which is the number that lifts the ceiling
• Alumni families from the last three years, if anyone kept the addresses
• Two average-bid figures: one that works for the least well-off family in the room, and a separate one for the keepsake lots

Then subtract for everything else you have asked these households for this year. The same forty families are paying tuition underneath every fundraiser, and total ask is the real constraint rather than enthusiasm.

What moves it

Whether grandparents were reached

They are not paying tuition and they want the keepsake more than anyone. One line in the newsletter asking families to forward an item link changes the arithmetic more than any other single action available.

How many keepsakes you made

One per class rather than one for the school. Each has a natural audience of that class's families and their grandparents, and the classes do not compete with each other. See keepsake and class art items.

What else you asked for this year

The same households are underneath every fundraiser and the tuition. Total ask is the constraint, not enthusiasm.

Whether the purpose was named honestly

Tuition assistance asks for something a parent can picture. The playground asks them to fund an amenity they already pay for through tuition, and in most schools the assistance is the truer description of where the money goes.

Setting the goal

Work from one purchase or a defined number of assisted places, publish the figure, and report it afterwards. In a school this size the reporting is trivial and skipping it is noticed — everybody knows everybody.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.