CHINESE (Ticket or Penny) AUCTIONS

There is an fundraising auction event dating back to the mid-1800's in the northeast United States. At the time it was called a penny auction. Today it is often called a "ticket or chinese" auction. Whatever you call it it is a great way to incorporate a very fun event into a fundraiser with a minimum amount of work. It works well with baked goods and can be put together quickly and easily. It's great as an addition to another event, especially with a dinner, lunch or social.

The auction is actually a "raffle". You sell a sheet of tickets that are perforated for easy tearing. Each sheet of tickets has one number that is unique to that sheet. There are 25 tickets per sheet, plus one extra ticket for the door prize plus a numbered stub for a total of 27 perforated tickets. Originally the "sheet" sold for 25 cents, hence the name "penny auction". The tickets can be any color. The numbering is critical because the auction is run by those numbers.

A small bin, box or bowl is located next to each donated item. The crowd tears their sheet into individual tickets and places the tickets into the container next to the item he or she likes the most. The more tickets one places into a single item the more likely he will be to win it. At the end of the auction the auctioneer draws out the winning tickets and announces the winner of each item. The winners can be all drawn at once or they can be staggered over the life of the event.

The obvious gain for the organization is you can generate far more funds than the worth of the items with this method. Say you ask 20 people to each bring a cake for a cake auction. Some will be very fancy, some highly decorated, some unique. Each has its own value, but if you did a live auction most would sell for between $5.00 and perhaps $25.00 generating somewhere between $100 and say $400 at the top end if you averaged $20. each. But with a "ticket auction" you can sell a sheet of tickets for $5.00 each or 3 for $10.00 and sell an unlimited amount. If you sell 100 sheets you will generate $500. at $5.00 each. Sell 200 sheets at an average of $4.00 each and you will net $800. You can see how a 'ticket auction' can make money for you.

Baked goods work especially well for a ticket auction. Anytime a crowd is going to gather it's an easy fundraiser and many people love creating fancy baked goods for this. It's easy to add other types of items with baked goods. You can have a table or two or three of baked goods and a few other tables of other items and stagger the closing of the tables over the life of the event. Say you start at 4:00 and have people coming and going. The first table can "close" at 4:30, the next one at 5:00 and so on, so you can sell tickets to people during the course of the event. This type of auction works great for times when the crowd comes and goes.

Our Kiefer Auction Supply house sells the perforated auction tickets at a low cost. We can custom imprint and you can actually sell them in advance or use them as an entry ticket for those who don't want to sell them at the event. We can imprint all the time/date information and the "ticket to get in" becomes the auction ticket. You may want to check with your state if a raffle is an issue, as technically a "chinese auction" is not an auction but truly is a raffle. It usually is not an issue with small fundraising events but selling the tickets as entry tickets with various door prizes using the tickets would seem to overcome that issue.

The ticket auctions are a fast, easy fundraiser when you need to raise a relatively small amount of money or looking for a fun event to tie into another event such as a dinner.