PS 334, The Anderson School
The Anderson School (PS 334) is a K-8 New York City public school that was founded to teach students from New York City’s five boroughs who have met specific criteria for being intellectually gifted. Anderson uses a broad, flexible, pedagogical approach to teaching an accelerated and enriched New York State curricula. Because of the success of the program, Anderson's enrollment has been filled to capacity since its inception.
Highlights
- The Anderson School credits Greater Giving with helping them to improve the process of procuring donations, increasing their overall donations by 20-25%.
- Using Greater Giving creates a more relaxed and enjoyable environment at their event for both guests and volunteers; guests continue bidding instead of leaving early to get to the front of the long check-out lines.
- With Greater Giving’s reporting capability, the school’s auction committee can review prices and values from prior years, and analyze which items brought in significant revenue (trips, packages, tickets, etc.). With this information the school can focus on procuring items that they know bring the most value to the event.
Challenge
Anderson’s auction committee was keeping all their donation and auction information listed in a spreadsheet, creating auction packages manually, and then writing the descriptions in a separate document. Registration was also done manually by RSVP through the mail. The primary concern was that their procurement information was stored on one PC, so only one person could update that information. This process was time-consuming and difficult to manage, and created document version control issues.
The procurement and donor management issues were only part of the problem. Another issue affected both volunteers and guests the night of the event—prize redemption and checkout. Although The Anderson School used a credit card terminal, volunteers would have to hand-calculate what the guest owed at the end of the evening. Guests would queue up in long lines and present their bidder number—and wait to check out while the volunteers would retrieve their items and tabulate what the bidder owed. This process created an environment that drove guests to leave the event early to get ahead of the long check-out lines, rather than staying to bid on more items.
Anderson’s committee of parent volunteers set out to find a solution that would manage their large database of donations and donors, help them with procurement, and streamline the checkout process.
Solution
The auction committee turned to Greater Giving for a new way to manage their benefit auction. They utilized Greater Giving Online Payments to take registrations and auction donations online, managed all of the donor, donations, package, and guest data with Greater Giving Event Software and used Auctionpay terminals to pre-swipe credit cards at registration to enable an Express Checkout option for their guests. This streamlined process transformed the event into a relaxing, enjoyable experience for staff, volunteers and guests.
2007-2008 Auction Technology Chair Phylliss Hill says one of their favorite features of the Greater Giving software is the reporting. By analyzing the previous year’s package sales numbers, the procurement team can focus on procuring items that they know will sell. They also run reports during the procurement phase to see where they stand, and track donations by class to see how many donations have been procured and which volunteers in the community are participating, and which grades or classes may need some coaching or ideas. Said Hill, “We were able to track week by week how our procurement was doing as compared to last year.”
Hill also finds it valuable to be able to see which grades’ procurement efforts in the school generated the most revenue in the auction and to discover what items were most profitable. In addition, they can identify buying trends from year to year. For example, soliciting donations of local hotel room stays for in-town getaway packages was difficult—and those hotel rooms were not generating significant dollars. According to Hill, easily identifying the items which are most valuable to their attendees was the most important discovery for their organization.
Tips from The Anderson School
- Use the Greater Giving Event Software reporting tools to identify trends with popular items from year to year.
- Utilize the online version of the software, so that multiple users can work from any location with an Internet connection.
- Set up a system to take donations online for both the auction and to support your organization year round. Also offer online event registration with the option to donate if an invitee cannot attend.
Results
Using Greater Giving has heightened the professionalism of The Anderson School’s Spring Auction, and makes guests feel better about spending money at the event. There is also a more relaxed environment at the event for guests, staff, and volunteers. Guests can continue bidding, because they don’t have to jump up and get into line feeling pressured by the time it takes to check out. Volunteers aren’t pressured to calculate checkout totals on-the-fly. Staff can enjoy the event, knowing that it will generate more dollars to support the school’s programs.
New this year to Anderson’s auction committee is Greater Giving Event Software online edition. Using the online edition in conjunction with Greater Giving Online Payments, the school set up online donations both for the auction and the school, and implemented online registration. Hill says moving to the online edition is a wonderful upgrade. They successfully implemented user-level security, allowing more users on the system with access only to functions they needed while still keeping data secure. The school had 20-25 named users using the tool throughout the event rather than just one harried individual. This aided greatly in writing online catalog copy and managing all the details of the event.
Overall, the suite of Greater Giving products has helped Anderson’s Auction increase its overall revenue by 20-25%, while giving them valuable data to utilize for future fundraising events. Now, that’s a smart move!
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