Northern Alumni Auction raises around $15K

The Northern Alumni Foundation Chinese Auction raised funds for scholarships that will be given to Northern students.

Saturday, people filed into the Student Union Building at Montana State University-Northern to bid on items in the live, silent and Chinese auctions.

A Chinese auction is similar to a live auction, but the difference is to bid, you must give a dollar to a person holding up a numnered sign until the auctioneer says the number. When he says it, the sign goes down and the bidder must give the sign-holder another dollar to lift it back up. The last sign standing wins the bid, but any money given to a sign-holder goes to the auction.

Jim Bennett, the executive director of the alumni foundation at MSU-Northern, said the money goes directly to scholarships and most of the items up for auction were donated by the people of Havre and surrounding towns.

"It went pretty darn good," Bennett said. "We definitely surpassed our goals."

Bennett said this morning that the final numbers for the amount of money raised by the events and the official number of tickets sold to it were not fully counted, but they raised probably more than $15,000 and 225 to 250 people came.

Students of Northern also helped with the event. Twenty-five student athletes held the signs for the Chinese auction, and Bennett said the attendees of the auction had fun interacting with them.

"It was a great success," Bennett said. "We had a lot of fun and raised a lot of funds."

He added that the event would not have been so successful if it were not for the multitudes of volunteers they had helping with the event.