Boosters turning to online auctions
School groups go for eBay model
With the click of a mouse, you can simultaneously donate to a Brookline school and snag an eight-day Caribbean cruise, currently going for $1,500. If adventure trips are more your thing, Plainville's elementary schools are offering a white-water rafting trip in Maine for $250. The truly adventurous can scroll to a Newton school auction for a private pole-dancing lesson, worth $275.
Facing budget shortfalls that are squeezing education basics, more Massachusetts public schools are turning to online auctions this spring to raise money for supplies, field trips, library books, playground equipment, and computers. And they're raking in from $6,000 to $20,000 in the process - more money than live or silent auctions generate at traditional fund-raisers.
The reason: Not only can far-flung grandparents bid on donated items ranging from restaurant gift certificates to hot-air balloon rides, but civic-minded strangers with no connection to the schools can pick up hard-to-come-by items, such as sports tickets, at a premium price.
"There's only so much money you can get from the same people, and we've been asking and asking and asking," said Sarah Windman, chairwoman of the auction at Heights Elementary School in Sharon. "When we held our auction online, we had people from all over the country helping us."
The Sharon school's new benefactors include a sports fanatic in California who paid $905 for a couple of tickets to a Red Sox-Yankees game and a woman in Indiana who bought a mahogany Chinese checkers set for $40.
Another bonus: The virtual online auctions have incited late-night bidding wars that parents have dubbed the "
That eBay-style competition is often suppressed at traditional school benefits, where a band may be playing, cocktails are flowing, and many parents are preoccupied with socializing rather than bidding. Parents say they prefer the more genteel, anonymous form of online bidding to the social awkwardness of edging out a neighbor or the father of your child's best friend at the auction block.
"If you saw someone coveting a necklace and you knew that person, you don't want to go up and outbid them, because you feel bad," said Alicia Bowman, chairwoman of the fund-raising committee at Newton's Mason-Rice Elementary School. "An online auction doesn't seem quite as obnoxious."
The auctions are typically run by parent groups, which solicit donations of vacation homes and season tickets from other parents, as well as goods from local businesses. The list of auction items is posted on BiddingForGood.com, a website run by a Cambridge-based company. The company, cMarket, charges $595 plus 9 percent of whatever an auction earns.
Since its 2003 inception, the company has overseen more than 700 school auctions and helped schools nationwide raise nearly $10 million, said Jon Carson, chief executive officer.
In the beginning, most of the schools holding online auctions were private schools trying to raise scholarship money, Carson said. But as school budgets have tightened in the last two years, more public schools, especially in Massachusetts, have begun holding online auctions in the month leading up to their traditional spring fund-raising galas. Parents say the virtual auctions create buzz for the live event and allow schools to raise enough money so that parents can focus on having fun at the galas, instead of whipping out their checkbooks.
The online auctions, sometimes featuring more than 200 donated items, have now eclipsed live auctions in many schools, sometimes generating more than 50 percent of what parent organizations raise each year.
"To have it all depend on one night is nail-biting," said Nancy Pronovost, co-president of the parents group at Brookline's Driscoll School, which raised nearly $13,000 in its first online auction last year. "People can participate in their jammies at midnight if they want to, instead of dressing up to go to the live auction."
Leaders of school parent groups say the online auctions also provide an alternative to the barrage of donation requests. The money that groups raise typically cannot be used to pay teachers' salaries and restore programs, but it routinely covers many of the items that taxes used to fund.
Newton's Mason-Rice parents will use the proceeds from its online auction to invite authors and scientists into the classrooms. Driscoll parents in Brookline will pay for maps and globes for classrooms. Heights parents in Sharon are using the money for playground upgrades, including a track so children don't have to run up and down the sidewalks during gym.
But some of the auctions have prompted second-guessing among parents.
The Hunnewell School in Wellesley allowed parents to preview auction items online, but they could bid only in person on the night of the benefit. The school chose not to open the auction to the entire world of Internet bidders, because some people who had donated personal vacation homes, for instance, felt uncomfortable allowing random strangers to stay at their beach and ski houses for a week, said Lisa Hastings, cochairwoman of the Wellesley auction.
And sometimes, stuff just does not sell. Heights Elementary never drew any bidders for a pair of sneakers and a basketball autographed by NBA legend and former Houston Rocket Hakeem Olajuwon.
The school's solution? The memorabilia is destined for eBay.
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.
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