On Friday December 13, the Business Education Department at New Trier hosted a silent auction to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation, ultimately raising $6,500 for the cause.
Make a Wish is an organization that gives children with life threatening illnesses a “wish.” A wish could be something like a dream vacation, a chance to have a meet and greet with a favorite celebrity, or even an opportunity to play Batman in all of San Francisco. “It costs about 5,000 dollars to grant one wish to a child,” said Kristine Fischer, New Trier Business Department Chair. The goal was to raise enough money to grant one child their wish. In fact, “Our goal every year is to raise 5,000,” stated Fischer.
The silent auction is an annual event in the second floor rotunda. Tables flanked the east, west, and north wings that lead off from the rotunda. Categories included -but were not limited to- tickets to special events, gift cards, jewelry, and athletic gear.
The Business Ed Department “solicits donations from our students, from teachers, and from employees of New Trier, and we find that people have all kinds of things,” said Fischer. All donations are tax deductible. Fischer said, “Because of our connections in the community, we have lots of kids who donate tickets to the Bulls or to the Bears or to the Blackhawks.”
“The biggest items are typically the tickets; they go for the highest dollar value,” Fischer said. This year, the Business Ed Department auctioned off tickets for the Blackhawks, Miley Cyrus, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and a “pick your game” for the Cubs and the White Sox.
Jonathon Jaggard, a business management student and junior at New Trier, said that the Miley Cyrus tickets “were a hot commodity. The bidding went down to the wire.” It is not unusual for the tickets to be bid on until the last minute, so the department takes the highest bid at the exact end of ninth period.
Fischer also noted that the Xbox One raffled off went for a lot of money as well. Jaggard said that he helped with the raffle tickets periods 4, 5, and 6. He collected tickets at the table with the Xbox One. For the second half, he walked around selling the tickets to students in other parts of the school. He said that tickets were not that hard to sell and that “people were generous when they heard it was for Make A Wish.”
Fischer added, “We typically raise over one hundred dollars on almost every set of tickets that we raffle off.” This year was no exception, with the highest bided item being four tickets to the Bears Packers game on December 29. She said, “A student won those.” These tickets sold for five hundred and twenty five dollars.
Post auction, 15 – 16 of December were spent “having winners come and pay and get their item. Sometimes they don’t come, so we have to go to the second highest bidder,” said Fischer. This means that the Business Department had to do some additional calculations to find the exact amount of money that was donated.
Every January, the Make a Wish Foundation hosts a donor’s luncheon. In the past five years, New Trier has been the only high school that has been invited to this event. Fischer noted “we are the only high school that gets invited to that because you have to raise a certain amount of money.”
This auction has helped grant several wishes to sick kids in past years. Jaggard said that the silent auction is a “good morale builder for the school, to be able to help people in need.”