Friday, March 8, 2013

What to Offer at a Preschool Auction?

My daughter has been at her current preschool since January.  They have an annual auction, and we've never participated in one before.  The committee is somewhat (ahem) aggressive about soliciting donations from parents.

Initially, I had no idea what to donate.  And, I thought that other people might be similarly situated and need help generating ideas. 

So, I turned to Facebook (my current favorite place for crowd-sourcing), the internet and my own imagination and here's what I came up with.  I'm assuming that the auction organizers are trying to get donations directly from businesses, so this is a list of what I might want to do on my own (without donations from businesses). 

Offer Your Service
  • Offer whatever you do for a living (a free color consultation?  Tax preparation?  A will/trust?)  
  • Teach someone to knit
  • Offer a night of babysitting
Offer Someone Else's Service
  • Spa services
  • A gift certificate to a restaurant
Buy Something and Repackage It
  • Wine
  • Olive Oil
  • Soaps
Make Something
  • Handmade jewelry
  • A knit hat
  • A quilt
  • A tin filled with cookies
Give Away A Piece of Something You Have
  • A weekend at your condo
  • A few hours at your country club
  • Tickets to a Cal game
  • Tickets for one night of a lecture series or performance of some sort
  • A basket of your kid's best hand-me-downs.  Not the stained stuff, but the stuff that your kid never wore or grew out of before they had a chance to wear it
Here's what we decided to do.  My husband and I both decided to donate our own services.  He's going to offer a will/trust package.  And, I'm going to offer to teach 2 people how to knit.  We are also contributing to our daughter's class gift which is a package of camping stuff.  For that, I'm sewing some napkins.  I think I'll make 6 napkins with the same pattern on the front and then each with different solid colors on the back so each person can use the same napkin throughout the whole camping trip.

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