SCCQG - January 2011 Program Notes

Sorry! I also apologize for mistakes made in the translation of notes that were taken. I had to guess on some things! If anyone has any things they would like to add to the document please feel free to email me and I will be glad to add or delete things that you feel were incorrect. Cathe Hedrick chedrick@housing.ucsb.edu

Table with General Topic of their Choice

Raise Dues and eliminate fundraisers

Quarterly Business meetings only save cost of rental

Members teaching to community groups to benefit guild!

Opportunity Quilt Table

Use pattern of famous designer, pay designers fee for use, possibly sell designers pattern as part of use agreement and give designer credit on label! Feel folks more interested in purchasing tickets on a quilt from a well know designer.

If you elect to go the Opportunity Quilt fund raising way make sure you take the quilt to venues that are not the usual, like women’s clubs, reunions, beauty shops and spas, high visibility events in your community and surrounding communities. Talk to local art galleries to see if they are willing to do a quilt event for you?

Are the profits for opportunity quilt in line with the investment such as fabrics, quilting, hour’s invested in creation, hour’s invested in selling the tickets and promoting the quilt?

Create a prize for folks within the guild who are top tickets sellers!

Require in the by-laws of the guild that selling a certain number of tickets are required to be a member or could be handled by raising the dues by the price of a book of tickets so that each member automatically pays for tickets with their dues.

To cut cost get quilting, cost of fabrics and man power hours donated to make the quilt.

Possibly auction off something other than an opportunity quilt, maybe a trip to Houston or Sisters, or Paducah, some high profile show to raise funds.

Sell advertisement on the tickets, from local stores, other vendors or local art museum. Maybe have an offering on the ticket such as admission to the local museum to offset the printing cost.

Boutiques or Craft Sales

In this area most of the folks focused on craft sales at their Quilt Shows. Range from donation with all proceeds going to the guild to 15 to 25% of proceeds to the guild. In some guilds members are able to pay a fee for a table where they may sell their items, cost approximately $20.00 per table. One guild in conjunction with show charge a fee of $25.00 and folks may then enter as many items as they wish and proceeds are the members.

National Teachers

Excellent way to build membership, draw folks in for the opportunity to experience famous national teachers.

Open up classes to members and non members advertise on your site and the sites of others also flyers or emails to other guilds. Charge a fair price and possible advertise in your local paper.

Share teacher with other guilds in your area so that you may share expenses. Contact store owners locally who offer classes, they may want to share.

Set up workshops a year in advance and advertise and accept registration early so that you may be able to add on additional class days with the teacher.

If you are a guild that only brings a teacher in once or twice per year really promote the Teacher and give lots of notice and promote strongly within your group.

If you bring national teachers in for your Quilt Show as the featured artist, start the promotion on that teacher as soon as you get a signed contract. Start promoting the classes and make it a major part of your fund raising. Maybe hold the classes the two days prior to the show so that folks will come in early to take the class and possible offer them a pre-showing of your quilts on the night before you open. Make it a very special event.

Bus Trips

Bus trips to Quilt Runs in California

Road 2 California

PIQF

Long Beach

Make the price right so that folks will want to ride your bus, offer snacks, and play games on the bus, such as fat quarter game, trivia game, quilt word search and Quilt-O. We do have folks what were at this table who will be glad to share how to play those games if anyone is interested. Am I right girls??

Bus trip in conjunction with wine tasting and shops of your choice.

You could organize Cruises for your Guild, not a bus trip but includes travel. Some cruise lines are willing to organize a cruise tip just for your guild.

Quilt Shows

Well quilt shows table had more notes than any of the others!
Discussion included yearly, even years only, every other year?????

Many guilds seem to have quilt show one year and another major event the next year like an auction, Tea, Sewing Room Tour, or Opportunity Quilt?

Problems that were expressed

Quilt Chairs hard to find, other guild said they have not had a problem??

Space of a size needed difficult to locate at affordable prices

Lack of participation of members

Lots of man hours needed

Amount of hours justify the money earned?

Quilt prizes awarded by vote of attendees rather than professional judge

Some guilds said they don’t judge quilts as the quilts shown are available for sale

Cost of professional judges

Suggestions

3 quilts donated for use for show, opportunity quilt for sale, one for giveaway for Quilt Chair, one for person who sells most tickets, stimulates interest in several ways.

Presidents booth at show for current and past presidents of guild to show their work.

Booths manned by the charities that the guild donates it quilts to each year showing what they do and representatives there to share the mission of the group.

Back to basics show, no vendor’s just quilts hung to show the work of the membership.

Some Quilt Shows have auction at the show and most things for the action are donated and proceeds go to guild.

Most shows had vendors

Boutiques ranged in price on proceeds to maker. Some as high as 50/50

Education booths help promote quilting, offer guild members opportunity to show off their skills with demonstrations and have a spot to entertain smaller children by providing a quilting project.

Auctions/Some events called by different names

Live and Silent Auctions seems to be a great way to make money, everything is donated and the proceeds go directly to the Guild.

Start soliciting donations at least 8 month before the auction.

The Auctioneer is vitally important they are the ones that can run the prices up on the items. It might be worth hiring a professional

There is a strategy to the sequence of the live auction items, it seems that starting slow and building is the best way to go your biggest item in the middle of the auction and then slowly down to a small item again. Do not allow guests in your audience to start getting up to pay for silent auction items until the bidding is complete for the live auction. Make sure announcements are made from the stage that the silent auction cashier will not open until everything is complete. If you do not do this you will lose proceeds and the audience becomes distracted.

You will need guild members who are good at asking for donations from community business, quilt related and other. Never too early to start this process. Items that sell well are personal in nature like a donation by a quilt shop who will host a certain number of guild members for a day with food and special attention.

Live Auction items can be quilts or quilt tops donated by members or local vendors. Discounts to retreats donated by local retreat companies, sewing machines by local dealers and any other item that you think will appeal to your audience that is of a more expensive nature.

It is smart to have some kind of entertainment at these events. If you check around in your community you will find folks that can entertain, maybe at your local high school, college or professionals in the area. One guild has used a professional magician and he was a huge success and really warmed up the audience. He was a surprise no one knew he was coming and that worked well.

Open this event to the general public, encourage membership to bring friends and family. An ad in the local newspaper is a great idea. No charge to guests.

As your special Auction items come in take pictures and feature them on your website.

Baskets seem to be a great auction item, all of the items donated and pictures of them being assembled should appear on the guild website! The items in the baskets are new product.

Packaging is important, throwing things on a table and hoping that folks will spend a lot to dig through does not work, you need to take the time to sort all of the donated items. Start 8 months in advance to collect donated items. Rent a storage unit, if you do not have a guild member willing to donate their garage or other space to work in. Make sure the storage unit is big enough to set up tables and chairs so that guild members will help out in increments of a couple of hours to sort and package and labels items. Have members donate ribbons, and plastic storage zippered bags they get their sheets and other items in so you may use those to make up your auctions items. Sort fabrics by size and colors and mark on the tag the amount of fabric approximately in a package and the approximate value. You can take the yardage and divide the current rate per yard by about 4 and charge that amount per yard. Same goes for quilting tools or quilt related items. Put a minimum bid on each item.

Live Auction items are usually quilts or quilt tops donated by members or local vendors. Discounts to retreats donated by local retreat companies, sewing machines by local dealers and any other item that you think will appeal to your audience.

There were several suggestions on how to set up your bid process for the silent auction. Most of us did talk about bid sheets, they should have the number and name of the item and the low bid price.

Some guilds keep their silent auction open for 1 hour and the last 15 minutes reduce the price of the min bid by ½ for that 15 minute period on items that have no bid on them. This usually gets everything sold. Remember the goal is not to take anything to the thrift store sell it all at the Auction!!!!!

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