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1. Identify charitable and volunteer groups in your school and community that regularly raise money to support their activities.
Survey your entire class to see if any student is a member of any of these groups or if any student has a relative or close friend who is a member.
If you find a student with a connection to the group, have that student be your company's liason to that group. His/her assignment will be to find out if that group would be interested in sponsoring an auction at your company's ScoresUp.com website.
If no student is found for a specific group, contacting that group and convincing them to sponsor an auction becomes a responsibility of your company's sales and marketing team.
2. Brainstorm items that would make good auction items. Be creative and be practical.
Make sure if your Company includes an item on the list that you also include ideas for obtaining the item.
Once again, survey students in your Company to find out if any of their relatives or friends have business contacts that could make obtaining the item much easier.
As you're brainstorming about possible items, remember that what you auction is critical to how many people bid during your auction. If you can select items that people really value, it will be easier to get bidders to bid. Likewise, if you can select items that interest or amuse people in your community, more people will bid. A question to ask the class during this item nomination process is, will our local media find the item compelling enough to do a report about the auction. You want to select items to auction that create a "Buzz".
Keep in mind as you brainstorm that it will be possible to pay something to businesses who agree to donate an item for auction. For example, if a distributor of kitchen appliances is willing to donate $100 worth of product, your Company can auction off a dishwasher that costs the distributor $300 and pay the distributor $200 from the auction's proceeds.
Here are some creative auction-item ideas:
The Principal of Your High School will serve a local family a dinner catered by a local restaurant; A select group of students in your class will wash a house-full of windows (with proper adult supervision of course); Free tickets to your school's next football game plus dinner for the family after the game at a favorite local restaurant, One Month worth of Tutoring an Elementary School-Age Student in math or reading, A full page ad in your local newspaper...
3. Split students in your company into three four teams:
Marketing
Creative
Website Operations
Management & Finance
Marketing team will be responsible for:
Soliciting auction sponsors
Soliciting donors of auction items
Selling banner ads at site
Promoting the auctions
Developing partnerships with other websites
Creative team will be responsible for:
Developing Copy for Site that defines mission and rules
Developing Feature Stories about auction Sponsors
Developing Profiles for auction Sponsors
Develop Feature Stories about donor organizations
Develop Profiles for Donor Organizations
Develop written descriptions of items being auctioned
Secure photos for items being auctioned
Write all publicity releases
Write model sales letters for soliciting Sponsors and Donors
Write e-mail messages to be distributed to site's Bidders' e-mail list
Website Operations Team will be responsible for:
The overall operation and maintenance of the website
Placing all content at site
Making sure all content is kept updated
Supervising operation of live auctions
Maintaining the site's Bidders' e-mail list and distributing messages to list
Management & Finance team will be responsible for:
Monitoring implementation of the Business Plan including goals for each team
Creating a budget for the business
Negotiating as needed with Auction Sponsors and Donor Organizations
Establishing rules for each auction
Providing support as needed to each of the other three teams
4. Creative team should develop a general publicity release describing business and informing community of your mission. Release should include benefits Sponsors and Donors will receive when they participate in an auction.
5. Creative team should provide content for the initial version of the website, using the Yourtown demo site as a model. Purpose of initial version of site is to explain to potential bidders, donors, and sponsors the key reasons why each group will want to participate in the auctions. Make sure your initial site includes contacts potential Donors and Sponsors can use to find out how they can participate at the site.
6. Website operations team should put together initial version of site once material needed to do so is received from the Creative team.
7. Once publicity release appears in media, Marketing team should begin solicitation of potential Sponsors and Donors using mail, telephone, and personal visits. As soon as the Marketing team has secured the required components for the initial auction, they should begin promoting it in school and community. Also, once all components for first Auction are in place, including scheduled dates for the auction, a publicity release about the event needs to be created and distributed to all local media.
8. Creative team should interview Sponsor and Donor organizations to secure the information necessary to prepare the feature Stories, profiles, Item descriptions, and e-mail copy necessary to implement first auction and then develop the content.
9. Management team should make sure the Company, Donor, and Sponsor are in complete agreement about the terms of the auction and how revenues derived from the auction will be shared. Management team should finalize schedule for the Auction.
10. Marketing team needs to remind Auction's sponsor and donor to help promote the auction and suggest cost effective ways to do so.
11. Marketing team needs to begin campaign to develop Bidders list at site. Each member of class should be responsible for getting a minimum of five e-mail addresses to add to the site's bidder list. Each class member will be responsible for getting permission to do so from each e-mail addressee. Family members, teaching staff, fellow students, and friends should all be asked to join Bidders' list.
12. Once Auction begins Website Operations team is responsible for monitoring bidding activity and making sure features of site perform as expected and Auction rules are followed. When Auction has ended, management Team is responsible for making sure winning Bidder, Sponsor, and Donor are all satisfied with results.
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