2024 St. Mary’s Auction
February 10, 2024
Greetings! On February 10, 2024 St. Mary’s will host the 17th Annual Auction. We rely on this money to pay for our yearly expenses, including staff salaries. The success of past years has been largely due to the many volunteers, businesses and individuals who have donated their services, time, cash or merchandise to the event.
Parents from St. Mary’s are a KEY factor to this year’s success. There are six things we need your help with in making this another great year…1) Ask businesses for donations and collect for the auction 2) Sell playhouse tickets 3) Sell dinner tickets 4) Donate to the auction 5) Work at the auction 6) COME to the auction and experience the fun!
AUCTION. Please sign up for at least five businesses to ask for a donation. The list of businesses will be emailed to you in the form of Sign-Up Genius. We suggest you sign up for businesses that you visit, support or know someone that works there. Next to the business, you will see what they donated last year. It’s a good idea to write down what was donated in case a business asks what they did in past years. It is very important you sign up for businesses to ask for a donation before going there so we don’t ask twice.
A letter from St. Mary’s was mailed out recently telling businesses about the auction and that someone will be contacting them. Donations can be a product or service from their business, a gift certificate, or a product they have purchased elsewhere. We also accept cash donations. Donations are to be collected the day you ask or you can line up a date to come back and collect. The deadline to ask and collect donations is January 18, 2024. We also encourage St. Mary’s families to donate an item or service!
Once items are collected, bring them to the school to be stored. These donations are then placed on the auction as a live auction item, a silent auction item, or a general raffle item. Over the years, we have received wonderful donations and no donation is too small. They all help make the auction a huge success.
PLAYHOUSE RAFFLE. Besides the auction, silent auction and general raffle, we raffle off the playhouse. All St. Mary’s families are asked to sell or buy playhouse tickets. Remember, ALL playhouse tickets have to be turned back into the office whether they are sold or not. Do not throw away your tickets.
DINNER TICKETS. The dinner and auction is for adults only. Old #1 is catering the meal. We encourage you to ask friends, colleagues and family to attend one of the best silent and live auction events in the area! Our attendance over the years has been 225+ people. If you do not plan on attending or selling these tickets, please turn in right away so that others can buy them. Remember to turn in all sold and unsold tickets.
As the date of the event comes closer, more information will be sent home. There will be sign-up sheets for various things we will need volunteers for the day of the auction, along with the day before. Tasks include setting up and cleaning up, decorating, money clerks, assisting the auctioneers with bids, etc. The more help we receive, the smoother things go.
The auction and dinner event is a lot of work and we realize we are asking for a lot of your time and help. Keep in mind this is our biggest fundraising event of the year, and it typically nets around $70,000. The hard work does pay off as this is a really FUN event! It’s a great way for St. Mary’s families to get to know one another and work together for our children.
If you have any questions, please contact Nate Copeland at 612-408-1609. or at [email protected].
We are really excited to kick off this event. Thank you and remember to SAVE THE DATE….Saturday, February 10, 2024!