Annual Cowles Auction & Potluck
Mark your calendar for the annual Cowles Auction & Potluck scheduled for Saturday, November 9th, 2013 from 4:30 to 8:00 p.m. The event will take place this year at the FFA Enrichment Center, DMACC Ankeny Campus.
The Cowles Auction and Potluck is our biggest event of the school year. It’s a fun night to meet other parents, teachers, and kids – all while helping out Cowles! We have a live auction, a silent auction and a bake sale table, as well as a wonderful array of dishes shared by everyone. We will have live music to entertain you before and after the live auction, and childcare available throughout the evening to really make it a night of fun for the whole family!
Other schools have fundraisers throughout the year – wrapping paper, magazines, candy – at Cowles, we have this one big fundraiser that provides additional Montessori materials, teacher training, and helps to fill in the gaps that our public school needs to continue to excel. This event makes a big difference – next year we hope to raise enough to send all of our teachers to the 2014 National AMS (American Montessori Society) Conference in Dallas, Texas and/or provide Montessori materials for a new Upper Elementary classroom. We can’t do it without you – it’s all of us working together that make Cowles great. So please mark the date on your calendar, plan for a sitter for the kids and get ready to have a fun evening out getting to know your fellow Cowles parents and teachers.
Here’s how you can help –
Volunteer – Our auction runs on volunteer power – parents who give their time to help make everything happen. Here are the different areas that will need people:
- Promotions Team – starting this spring – help us get the word out!
- Business Donation Team – starting over the summer, until mid-October
- Live Auction – auction night bid spotters, runners
- Silent Auction – pre-auction logging, auction night setup, laptop logging team, runners
- Food/Decorations – auction night setup, potluck and drink attendants, dessert table
- Check-in/Checkout – auction night advance check in, door check in, checkout
- Entertainment – helping to arrange auction night entertainment
- Planning – be part of the planning team – we’d love your ideas and feedback
Donate – The majority of our donations come from parents. In October, we’ll send out the call for donations – anything from gift cards to wine, kitchen items, tools, toys and games. Really popular are hand-crafted items, services (and a good way to promote your business to other Cowles parents), and tickets or experiences – one family donated a week at their lake home! We focus on putting the interesting “experience” things in the live auction (like a ride to school in a fire truck!), and bundle smaller items into themed baskets for the silent auction.
Attend – We have fabulous volunteers, we have piles of exciting donations, but our event can’t be a success without you there! Get a sitter (we have child care on site, but a “date night” socializing with other parents can be so much fun!), bring your favorite dish and some wine or beer to share, and get ready to shop! Invite your friends and family to come with you, ask other parents in your kids classes to come along too – the more the merrier, and the more good we do for Cowles!
For more information, contact auction chair Melissa Winters at 865-9086 or melowinters@gmail.com
