St. Jude Auction Recap: Inside The Numbers

While Covid-19 made for a very unusual and subdued Minden-St. Jude Auction, the virus was unable to slow the fundraising efforts for the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. While on Sunday night, the auction appeared to be $47,540 off of last year’s record total. However, on Monday the winner of the Grand Prize, Patricia Powell, donated her $50,000 winnings to the auction. That donation erased the deficit from last year’s total and gave the 2021 auction a new grand total of $1,655,359, besting last year’s total by $2,460. The 2021 auction continued a streak of 10 straight to raise over $1 million. Since the first $1 million year in 2012, the auction has raised $13,463,467. With an even 10-year mark to divide by, the auction has averaged $1,346,346.70 over that period.

A few additional numbers:

• The auction has raised more in the last 10 years than the previous 35 years of the auction.
• It is hard to say what the actual “Per Capita” raised by Minden is anymore with the advent of the internet option to participate. However, if we were to take the current population on file with the Census of 12,272, that amount would be: $134.86 per capita for the city of Minden.
• Based on information from auction organizers, internet pledges made up half of the auction total, with over 7,500 orders placed online.
• Since 2015, over 42,000 orders have been placed online through the auction website: www.mindenstjude.com.
• Now, the number you all came here to see. How much has Minden raised since the beginning. With the $1,655,349 raised this year, the all-time total is: $23,266,314.

As always and especially during a pandemic with lots of restrictions, well done Minden!