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Perhaps I should have called this nick markakis white home jersey "Event Planning Is Not My Bag, Baby."

One thing I do to give back to my community is to volunteer at my church. For example, I wrote a successful grant proposal for funds that helped the church with some renovations so we could host a Head Start classroom.

This year, when the time came to start planning this year's silent auction for our children and youth program, I raised my hand to volunteer. I felt obligated since my two teenagers benefit a lot from the program and the items up for bid at last year's auction were so disappointing that I wanted to help improve the situation.

As Pamela Grow said, "Unless your organization already has a prominent signature event, or a committed bunch of talented volunteers willing to do the grunt work for you, events are generally a losing proposition."

This auction was turning into a losing proposition. It was organized and run by the same staff person and same volunteer for three years. I knew it had the potential to be a prominent signature event and I thought I could parlay my volunteer experience to recruit other volunteers next year. Besides, having helped out with a couple of six-figure fundraisers, how hard could this be?

In its own way, it was very hard. We weren't staff people organizing a nonprofit gala; we were just one staff person and a group of volunteers. Here's what I learned.

1. Check the calendar for similar events

Late April and May are popular dates for auctions in general. Many parents at our church had already attended at least one auction by the time ours rolled around. Also the night of our auction kickoff, another church preschool was having its auction so we lost potential bidders who would have dropped by ours. Not only do bidders get "auction burnout" but so do businesses that are asked to contribute goods and services to be auctioned off. As a result, we will likely change the date of our auction next year.

2. Have a plan

An obvious one, right? I had no idea to what extent we were flying by the seat of our collective pants. We had no organized process in place to solicit items, no deadlines for accepting unsolicited items, not even a check-out process.

The lack of a check-out process was a particular problem because for the first time this year, we used a "Buy It Now" technique to generate attendance nick markakis white home jersey the first night. There were a limited number of "Buy nick markakis white home jersey It Now" items yet when I asked about how to check them out, the answer I got was, "We'll figure it out later." We also had gift certificates from several businesses but no central place to put them. There were people contributing items not just the day of the auction, but during the auction!