As many of you know, quilts rarely make what they should when give to auctions. Here are a couple of ways we have found to make closer to their value for good causes.
1) Raffle, don't auction, the quilt. Around here, people will part with $1 or $5 for a chance to win a quilt, but won't pay $500 at an auction.
2) This is a new one. Our community had a fund raiser for a woman with cancer. Our guild donated a quilt. It had 60 white cornerstones between the blocks. Each of those was sold for $10, and people wrote messages and/or their names in the blocks. The quilt was give to the woman to have with her in the hospital while she's having treatments, and it raised some money to help with expenses.
Hope these ideas help with your fund raising activities.