Mid-October meeting - - Special Meeting: Silent Auction and Spaghetti Night 8th Grade Eagle Bluffs Fundraiser

Monday, October 14th, 8:30 am
Attended: Patty McDonald (8th), Misha Liang (4th), Dana White(6th), Julie Swanson (5th, 7th, 9th), Katya Gardner (4th), Jen Jeffries (12th), Janet Pope (8th), Beth Samy (8th).  Kelly Mann

GOALS

• To support Kelly Mann, Allissa Koenen and Cassie as they prepare for Silent Auction and Spaghetti Night
  
• To publicize the event
  
• To raise money for the event
  
• To broaden parent involvement in the event, and lighten the load of the work
  
  

SUPPORT
Ms. Mann

• Silent Auction
• described the timeline ahead to November 7th.  A key date is next Monday, October 21st, when all 8th graders and their parents will be attending an informational meeting for the trip.  
  
• The CVAPG was given an overview of auction items collected to date.  The donors from previous years have all been contacted, many have already responded with donations, and she and Cassie are in the process of following up with those who have not responded.
  
• overall donations are a little down from this time last year, but more are expected.
  
  
• Spaghetti Dinner
  
• last year dinner supplies came in very late.  CVAPG discussed strategies to try to avoid this. 
  
• Specific instructions on what was needed were suggested (“6 packages of 40 12oz cups” or “9 3lb packages of gluten-free rotini--Costco can supply”).  Volunteers find it easier to bring things in when they have specific ideas of what might be needed.
  
• Kelly said she was planning on having a sign-up list at the parent meeting next Monday for supplies and jobs.
  
• Katya suggested that these things should be written down somewhere (like on a shared document) to make planning next year easier.
  

PUBLICITY

• NFTV
  
• Flyers - Patty said she’d do this
  
  

RAISING MONEY

• AUCTION ITEMS
  
• Advisory Baskets will be put together by each advisory group.
  
• Prior year donors have been contacted.
  
• The CVA community will be solicited for donations via flyers and NFTV.
  
• David Glick supplied the group with a fundraising letter so we can seek further donations.  The group discussed how to best personalize this letter to each potential donor to maximize response.
  
• The current donation list was reviewed.  Janet, Beth, Jen and Dana volunteered to contact individual potential donors, both on the list (in collaboration with Cassie and Ms Mann) and some of the new potential donors who were discussed.
  

IMPROVING ORGANIZATION
Ways to improve turn out and increase the fundraising potential of the evening were discussed.  Attendees suggested several ideas from their experiences at other schools

• DOOR PRIZE
  
• Misha Liang suggested this, and said if we went with it she had five concert tickets to the SPCO that she could donate to be used in this way.
  
  
• RAFFLE
  
• This would ideally feature a fabulous main prize and several smaller prizes.  Tickets would be given to the eighth graders to sell on their own time.  It was suggested that the student who sold the most tickets would be given a bonus on his/her share of the take to cover his/her trip expenses.  Other ideas were that the student who sold the most tickets could be awarded some (reasonable) number of raffle tickets.
  
• 8th Graders could sell them before school too--so people who couldn’t attend the night of could still participate.
  
• This would need to be organized by next Monday to be effective this year.
  
• CVAPG agreed to attempt to do this, with the idea that this could be a both a “dry run” for doing it next year, and, with some work, potentially be a great fundraiser even without a huge prize--provided that the tickets were priced low.
  
  
• Kids’ Auction
  
• Several of the parents have seen this used effectively at other schools to drive up attendance.  Kids are informed, in class, of specific desirable Auction Items--and they then hassle their parents to bring them to Spaghetti Night.  The auction is held in the form of a raffle. Typically kids are given a few “starter” tickets to encourage them to come, but they can buy more tickets if they want to.
  
• Beth mentioned that her sister would be willing to donate an archery lesson to a class (as a field trip), but her employer could not donate it for an individual’s party.  We discussed putting this in a kids’ auction and perhaps having kids compete to earn the treat for their class.
  
• Katya mentioned that at her old school, a rummage sale was held in the spring.  Auction organizers would select out a few of the more kid-friendly desirable items and hang onto them for the kids’ auction. 
  

Next meeting:  Monday, November 11th, 8:30 AM