The Auction has started: Our auction has finally started, and it has been very successful so far. We started it on Wednesday and have been advertising it everyday from the NPBid Twitter account and Mr. Large telling all of the staff members in the CSCSHC corporation. We are still trying to get the word out there about this so that we can get more bids. The Start: The start of the auction started off very quick, as within the first two hours, we had over 40 bids. We had to keep up with all of the bids, which means updating all of the prices on the spreadsheet and the form, so we were all very busy. We had our starting bids fairly low so that people would bid more on our items. We didn't know if this would work effectively, but it worked very well. All of our starting bids added up was around $120, which we thought wouldn't be bad. We knew that not all of the items would sell, so we hoped for the best. Within the first three days, we have made over $210! It was a big surprise for all of us as we didn't think our items would have such high bids, but it happened anyway. We are hopeful our bids will keep increasing so we can make more money for Riley. Here is what the website looks like at the moment - Advertising: We had to get the word about this website out fairly quickly and had to get it out in a very effective way. We are using the old NPBay Twitter account and we transformed it into our NPBid website's account. We tweeted out about this the day before it was open, and had several ads with pictures on them to show what items we had. Mr. Large also helped us by sending our ads out to everyone in the district. Even though we have to continue to advertise our website, we have done good so far. Below is one of the ads we made - What's Next: We have to continue to advertise and update the website for the following week and make sure everything is running smoothly. We also need to keep getting the word out about this. We are confident that this website will turn out to be a big success.
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Finishing the Website: Over the past few weeks, we've been trying to finish up putting together our website. It's been tough to try to take good pictures of all of our times with our phones, but we managed to get all of the pictures and into the google spreadsheet. We have it laid out so that the customer can see the name of the item, the current price, and the link to bid on it very clearly and easily click through what they want. We tried to make the website very simple so that everyone would be able to use it very easily. How It's Going to Work: Coming into this project, we knew that making the website was going to be a challenge for us, so we had to brainstorm to think of ways to make a website, or something close to it. As you've seen, we ended up making a Google spreadsheet with all of our items on it and having links to bid on all of them. Once you click the link. that takes you to a Google Forms page that we made, which shows you the current price and picture of the items, as well as asking for personal information. Even though this method is unusual, we think that it can be very effective. As you can see below, there are screenshots from what the spreadsheet looks like and then what one of the forms that you bid with looks like. What's Next for NPBid: We are close to finishing the project, as our auction is finally about to begin. If we kept doing this project after all of the items are sold, then we would need to find new donations to sell. If our items don't sell, we need to find a way to sell them, whether that's through more advertising for the website or trying to get more people using it. We aren't sure what's going to happen next with this project, but whatever happens, we will be ready for it.
Recently: Over the past few months, we have been focusing our efforts on our BreakoutBox Project and have but our NPBid project on hold. Recently, however, we have put our focus back on NPBid and what we can do to make the project running again. We have finally made a workable website and workable bidding options that we think will be very easy to use for everyone, including us. We still have't published the auction, as we are still working on adding items, but we are confident that in a week or two it will be operating effectively. The Website: All year we have been thinking about what to do for the website. It has been a tricky situation all year, as most websites require you to pay money in order to use the websites. After taking a break from the project, we came back refreshed with great ideas. First off, we decided to not use a traditional website, rather use something else that could work better. We made a google spreadsheet will all of our items on it. We then made google forums sheet so that people can fill it out in order to bid for items. We can then keep track of the responses on the forum sheets, and we intend on updating the current bids at least twice a day, if not more. Below is what our website will look like - What's Next for NPBid: We still need to keep making inventory and updating items, as well as taking pictures of all of the items. It will be easy work, just takes up a lot of time. Next, we have to find a way to get the link out to the spreadsheet to everyone in the community effectively. We have thought about putting it in the school announcements and facebook pages for new pal parents. Finally, we are going to have to keep track of bids throughout the day, not just during the class. That will be a challenge, as we are always going to have to stay on top of the bids all day, but we think we are very capable of doing it. Overall, we are very excited to get this project going again.
Trying to get Grants: Recently, we have tried to receive more grants from large companies. We reached out to Build-A-Bear for a request of about 20 bears. We were hoping to get these bears so that we could give them to the kids at Riley when we deliver the check to them. We were disappointed, but we knew that it was a reach. We also requested a grant from Kroger, but yet again, we were denied a grant request. We are still trying to get more grants and donations from large companies. Also, we have requested a grant from Target. We went to the store ourselves and handed in all of the paperwork. We haven't heard back yet, but hopefully we will receive good news. NPBid's impact: Our previous partnership with Guedel Apparel ended, but we have seen our hard work being represented in our community. Recently, our football team went to the state title game for 5A. We saw our gear that we sold on many fans throughout the stadium. On the intro video, we saw our head coach, Kyle Ralph, was wearing our shirts. It was really cool to see our project impact and represent our community so well. What's Next: Our project has hit a bit of a hard spot, where we don't have much to do. We are waiting until after Christmas to make the website, so we are still asking for grants. In the mean time, we are starting a new project, called the BreakoutBox. This is a game for elementary kids where they can learn clues in order to unlock locks and boxes, so that at the end they unlock a box to win a prize. It is a fun game for the kids because it is very educational, teaches teamwork, and it just fun for them to play. We aren't sure when we are going to start that project, but we know we are going to start it soon.
Ending Guedel's Project: From my last blog post, I talked about how we hoped profits would reach around $200. I was wrong, however, as we received over $350 for Riley Children's Hospital! We were very surprised with how much we got, and were very gracious to Mr. Guedel for letting us team up with him. A fellow NPBidder and I had to pick up all the orders from Mr. Guedel's work. It was our job to handout these orders. We did it during and after school until around 3:30, and then we went to the elementary schools to drop off orders to teachers and staff there. This partnership ended up being a huge success, and we are planning on doing something similar again in the future. Here are our final results from the partnership: Getting Grants: Since the Guedel partnership has ended, we have been reaching out to organizations for grants. Recently, we reached out to Meijer in hopes of a donations. We had to write a donation request letter, along with other information, and send it to the corporate office at Meijer. We asked for $100-400, in hopes they will be able to donate something to us. Below is a picture of us handing in the grant at Meijer. What is next: We have a lot of work to do for the future. We are going to keep contacting businesses and organizations in hopes of donations. We also are going to set up the website very soon. After the website is set up, we think the project won't feel as busy, but we will still always have work to do.
Recently: NPBid has recently gained a lot of traction with the project. We have gained connections with the Indiana Pacers, Dick's Sporting Goods, Team Image, and Guedel Apparel. Our items include items such as a Pacer's jersey, some amazing New Palestine athletic gear from Team Image, and many clothing items from Dick's Sporting Goods. We are also progressing in our talks with such UIndy (University of Indianapolis), Ball State, and Hanover University. We are still emailing athletic directors and university counselors, asking them to help us with this project. Guedel Apparel: Over the past week, my group and I received a unique opportunity to have a partnership with Guedel Apparel this week. I called Mr. Guedel last week to ask if he would be able to help donate to our cause, but instead, he gave us an even better deal. He said for the week of 10/15/18 - 10/22/18 we could receive 15% of the sales on his online store. This was an amazing opportunity for us and Guedel Apparel, because in the past three days the company has made over $1,000, so we would get around $150 for our project! He even made us a promotional ad for us to display to get the word out! By the end of the week, we are hoping to have made around $200 from Guedel Apparel. These are our sales as of 10/17/18: And this was the ad he created for us to promote: Dick's Sporting Goods: When we were brainstorming companies to try to call, we deiced to try to reach out to Dick's Sporting Goods, since there was a store close to us. We thought it would be a long shot for us to receive anything, but they actually helped us greatly. After going through the corporate office, we received a $100 grant from Dick's for us to use for the project. We went to the store and bought 9 items for our project! Below is a picture of our group (far left) holding our grant check. Pacers: Throughout the entirety of our NPBid project, I have been talking to Kyle Kroll, who works for the Indiana Pacers, and he has been helping us with our project. He told us about events that the Pacer's had and that we should go to them to try and receive donations. Matthew True and I went to the Pacer's Fan Jam, an event they have every year which is just a scrimmage, and we met up with Kyle there. He led us to a secret Pacer's garage sale, which had a lot of awesome gear. He ended up giving us 4 Pacers t-shirts, a book about the Pacer's History, and an old Roy Hibbert jersey. This was our first break in the project where we were able to get donations. He is still helping us currently with the project, and he has been a huge help.
Currently: We currently are still reaching out to colleges and organizations about donations, but we are currently at around 26 total items. We are still working on creating a website for the project, which has been our biggest challenge so far. We also activated the NPBid Twitter account, which has given us a lot of traffic and interest. History: The NPBid project was a project that wasn't originally our idea. In 2015, a group at New Palestine did a similar project called NPBay, which is very similar to our project. They ended the project after 2015, but we decided to bring it back and try to be more successful than NPBay. Our project is similar because we have an auction website, similar to NPBay, but we are donating all of our proceeds to Riley Children's Hospital.
How the project works: This project has many moving parts and is complicated at first, but it gets easier after everything is set up. First off, we created a contact spreadsheet, and started calling local stores and colleges to see if they would be willing to donate items. Then, we would take the donated items and sell them on our auction website. Finally, we would collect all the proceeds and donate them to Riley at the end of the year. How we came up with the idea: We came up with the idea after brainstorming for many weeks, and we decided to choose it because we intend to major in business in college. We also picked this project because we are all good with numbers and want to manage a business in the future, and we figured this project would be a good introduction to how to manage a business. Finally, we wanted to find a way to help children in need, and we decided Riley would be a great place to serve. This project let us donate all of our proceeds to Riley, which made this project much more fun. Pitch Day: Pitch Day was the day where we had to present our project idea to the administrative staff. In our presentation, we had to be very specific, since we were presenting in front of the administrative staff, and we included things such as why we did this project, how we are going to do it, mentors we have for this project, and when we are going to do it. We all had to dress nicely and look presentable to the staff, and had to practice our presentation. They staff also asked questions about the project, and gave very helpful advice on how we could improve it. Where we currently are with the project: We are still currently contacting business and colleges about donations, but we already have items to sell! Team Image offered to donate clothing for us to you, and we also have clothing from previous years that didn't sell. We are going to sell these items while we are still contacting organizations. We are trying to figure out the best way to create the website, but we are close to creating it. |
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