Clients often come to us wanting to know how big a facility they will need for their event. The size needed for any particular auction depends upon a number of related items that I will attempt to summarize below.
The basic rule of thumb is that each person AND each silent item requires 10 square feet of space. The guest’s 10 square feet will be in the dining/auction area; the silent item’s 10 square feet will be in the silent auction area.
For example, let’s assume a gala event with 300 people. Using the basic rule of thumb, we know that the dining/auction area for this event will need to be, roughly, 3000 square feet in order to comfortably accommodate all your guests. What do those accommodations look like? A 60" round table with 10 chairs will fit perfectly inside a 10' X 10' square, or 100 square feet. Since 10 people will fit around that table, in 100 square feet, and we have 300 people, the event will need 30 tables, each in their 10’ X 10’ square. Remember that these numbers are not absolute—you can actually nest the table a little tighter if you wish or need to.
Let’s continue into the silent auction area, using this same event as an example.
For the silent auction we advise that you have a MAXIMUM of 1 item per 2 guests, so for 300 guests, you would have 150 silent auction items MAXIMUM. Each of those silent auction items will need 10 square feet—a total of 1500 square feet. Why does each item need so much space? Basically, each silent item should have 1 square foot of table space with 9 square feet in front of the item for bidding & bidder traffic. To spell it out: 150 silent items will need 150 linear feet of table, depending on the size of your items. (These requirements may increase if you have many large items like framed art.) Using both side of ten (10) 8' tables provides over 150' (8’ x 2 x 10 = 160’) which would probably be enough. If you have two silent item tables facing each other, you need 7.5' for each table, or 15' total.
If you are a different number of items from this example you can do the math a slightly different way. For a reception you need about 7 square feet per person plus about one square foot per item.
These calculations do not include room for the bar, registration or an item pick-up area.
Depending on your crowd, 300 people will usually require 2 bars. Each bar will take up about 150 square feet for the actual bar and a place for people to line up in front of the bar.
Registration personnel 1 per 75 guests and 3’ of table space for each registration person plus an equal about of table space behind the main registration table with a 5 foot walk way in between. This roughly winds up working out to about 1/2 square foot per guest for registration plus an area to stand in line.
Often a part of the silent auction area can be used for an orderly item pick-up. This area usually takes about 1.5 square feet per item. So 150 + 20 (assumed live auction) = 170 x 1.5 = 255 square feet
Here is the example summarized:
Guests =300 Silent Items = 150
Dinning 300 x 10 square feet = 3000 square feet
Silent Auction 150 x 10 square feet = 1500 square feet
Bars 2 x 150 square feet= 300 square feet
Registration / Cashiering 150 square feet
Pick-up (assumed to be in silent auction are)
Minimum Required Space (rounded) 5000 square feet
This formula will usually provide enough room for Live Auction item display.
Notice that we did not allow space for a buffet since they have a detrimental effect on auctions.
Attendance:
Generally you need to invite 60% more people to the event than you need to attend. For this example you want 300 people at your event you invite 480 = 300 x 1.6.
Operational costs generally run between 25% and 50%
Yields: Silent Auction >50% Live Auction >67%
Average auction proceeds per attendee nationwide ~$165
Other critical factors are:
▬ What time the venue closes for the night
▬ The quality of the sound in the room (both sound system and acoustics). Rarely are in-house systems adequate.
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