How to Get Silent Auction Items
Soliciting Donations is Easier than You Think
Silent Auction donations can come from many sources – for ideas, see the article series beginning with Types of Auction Items. Once you identify your targets, you'll compile a master target list.
Creating Your Target Solicitation List
When researching your target donors, you'll be gathering or determining the following information on each potential donor:
- All Contact Information – Address, phone, fax, website and email (general or for contact below)
- Most Appropriate Contact – Find this either through web research or contacting the donor. The best match is someone with a community relations title (for large businesses or sports teams, for example). Someone in marketing would also be a good match. Your fallback is always the owner or manager. If the business is a chain or part of a larger corporate entity, get the corporate information too, as you should solicit both. Try hard to get a name and title – only as a last resort should you address your solicitation to "owner" or "general manager."
- Requested Donation – It's important to figure out what you want from a potential donor. You might say, "Whatever they want to give me!" But in truth, you'll get better donations and better response if you ask for something concrete. There are a couple reasons for this – asking for a specific donation makes your solicitation more personal and less of a blanket broadcast (and as a result, less likely to be ignored). Also, if you are approaching donors who are not silent auction "veterans," they might pass over your request if they are not clear on exactly what you are asking them for or how they would participate. There will be a standard place in your letter and/or fax cover where you'll insert this request. If you know the business well, you might be more specific, but if you lack that information here are some standard requests. Ask hotels for a 3-day, 2-night stay, ask restaurants for dinner for two, ask retail merchants for a gift certificate or store merchandise, ask service providers for a gift certificate for X service. Entertainment varies, but is generally tickets, admissions, tokens, ride passes, etc.
Making the Silent Auction Solicitation
Once your target list is complete, you're ready to plan your solicitation. Solicitations can be delivered in-person, by mail, by fax or some combination. Mail is easy and formal, but work and paper intensive, and expensive. Email is free and quick, but is easy for donors to ignore and can be blocked by spam filters. In person solicitations are very effective, especially if delivered by known patrons of a business – this should definitely be a supplemental strategy, and yields higher value donations than blanket letters, but is generally limited to local donors, requires volunteers and is time consuming.
Fax may be the best choice – it uses paper, but if computer faxing, only on the receiving end. It's free if using a line with unlimited long distance, or at least cheap since most donors are local anyway. It's worth investing in broadcast faxing software with a mail merge to fax option -- then you can link your master list, drop in contact info and donation request and fax away! Faxes are generally noticed and get routed to the right person. A fax cover also serves a sort of a "solicitation summary." In office communications, faxes are less ignorable than email and higher priority than snail mail.
Once you plan how you will send, it's time to write your letter. For tips on planning and writing a successful solicitation letter see the article – Writing a Silent Auction Donation Solicitation.
Fax is a Great Way to Solicit Silent Auction Items
|
Fax is a Great Way to Solicit Silent Auction Items
|
What do you think about this article?
Comments
More in Business & Finance
Latest Articles