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Fundraising Tuesday: How to Solicit Auction Items for Your Upcoming Event

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A guest post from Kelly Velasquez-Hague at OneCause

In order for your auction to be a success, you need exciting items. Determining which items to procure and how to solicit them can be challenging, even for the experienced fundraiser. You should include a variety of items in your auction that engage audiences and encourage them to bid. The main questions are: Which items will resonate? And where can I get them?

Let’s start with the first – what items should I put in my auction?

This all depends on your nonprofit’s mission and audience. Nonprofits and donors are all different, but they share a common passion for making the world better through your cause. So to determine the best items, ask yourself:

  • Popular: Are they popular with consumers? If shoppers like them, your donors will too.
  • Unique: Are they one-of-a-kind? Specialty items and experiences resonate well.
  • Rare: Are they hard to get? Rare or hot market items fare well in any auction!
  • Mission Focused: Do they connect to your mission or offer opportunities to engage with your cause? Mission related items or experiences can be a big hit.

Whatever you choose, your items should inspire multiple bids, create excitement, and entice donors to engage in your fundraiser.

Now, for the question of where do I get my items?

To maximize revenue and minimize expenses, your nonprofit will have to get creative when it comes to procuring in-kind donations.

We recommend the following best practices to help you and your team solicit items that are guaranteed to motivate donors and help you drive auction success:

  • Form an item procurement team.
  • Consider your audience.
  • Brainstorm item ideas.
  • Write donation request letters.

Whether you’re hosting a silent auction, a live auction, or an online fundraiser, these best practices can mean the difference between hitting your goals and falling flat. Let’s dive in.

Form an item procurement team.

The item procurement process has multiple moving parts, so we recommend dispersing responsibilities across a team. Create an item procurement committee that will work together to solicit the best items for your charity auction. This allows you to cast the widest net and resources to secure the best items with little to no cost.

When building your item procurement team, look for the following individuals:

  • Staff members
  • Devoted supporters
  • Community or board members with social connections
  • Creative individuals (artists, entertainers, designers, etc).
  • Corporate supporters who’ve donated in the past

Taking the time to select people who are passionate, connected, and creative ensures will give you the widest reach and diverse interests needed to assemble an amazing auction!

Consider your audience.

Your audience’s interests and demographics will largely determine what types of items or packages people will be interested in purchasing, whether that’s a local dining experience, nonprofit merchandise, or even a day spent playing with puppies if you’re an animal welfare organization.

If you’ve hosted an auction in the past, review past performance data to understand which items people liked best. Consider which items received the most bids, which items received the least bids, and the average bidding amount. This helps you zero in on the types of items your audience engaged with as well as their price range, and your auction non-performers (so you don’t spend time procuring them again) .

Besides data from past events, ask around! Talk to your top supporters and browse other local charity auctions. Getting first-hand knowledge on what’s hot and what’s not can help you tailor your auction to the trending needs and wants of your donors. We guarantee, put what they want, what they like, what they can’t easily get in your auction, and you will reap fundraising success!

Brainstorm item ideas.

According to the OneCause guide to charity auction items, the most popular items tend to fall into these categories:

  • Classic auction items, like gift baskets, certificates, and memorabilia.
  • Auction Wow Factors, travel packages, unique dining experiences, or VIP seats at the next big sporting event.
  • Auction baskets, bundled items that together create fun and package value.
  • One of a kind art, which can perform incredibly well in school auctions or for causes where hand-made items are highly valued.

Include a variety of items and spread them out across categories. Expanding your item selection can help your nonprofit appeal to different donor interests and budgets, further maximizing bids.

Write donation request letters.

Once you’ve made a wish list of your ideal item selection, you’re ready to begin the outreach process for support. Requesting sponsor or in-kind donations is essential to any fundraiser auction, as it will be too costly for your organization to buy all the auction items.

A great way to receive support for your auction fundraiser is by researching businesses with corporate philanthropy programs. According to Re:Charity, corporate charity comes in many forms, including in-kind donations and sponsorships.

For example, your nonprofit can ask a restaurant to provide a free dining experience that you can auction off in exchange for marketing at your future events. Alternatively, your organization can request funding for costly event expenses like catering or venue expenses.

Your nonprofit can also reach out to supporters who may have access to items you need or are willing to donate funds. You’ll need to craft an effective donation request letter. Your letter should be personalized to the recipient, provide a clear call to action listing the items you are looking for or the financial support you need, and explain the impact of their contribution and how the auction’s results will help power your nonprofit’s mission.

To make your donation request more effective, add storytelling elements that demonstrate the tangible impact your nonprofit has on the community. For instance, you can describe a constituent your nonprofit helped or a recent project you completed and how this was made possible through donor support. Use vivid detail and emotional appeal to encourage your recipient to take action.

Kelly Velasquez-Hague brings over 20 years of fundraising, nonprofit management, and sales/marketing experience to her role as the Director of Content Marketing for OneCause.

As a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Kelly manages all of the company’s content strategy and execution. She is passionate about empowering great missions and loves that her current role allows her to continue to help nonprofits reach new donors and raise more funds for their cause.

Fundraising Tuesday: Is More Mail Better?

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My family was standing around the kitchen table, which was covered with mail. My mother picked up one envelope as if it were a holy object. She handed it to me.

It was my college acceptance letter to Yale.

I was a high-school senior, and here I was, not only going to be among the first generation in my family to go to college, but accepted to an Ivy League school. I had also applied to Princeton (which turned me down), Boston University (accepted me), and three local universities in my home town of Pittsburgh. But Yale was my top choice.

I was smug. I made a great show of reading the Yale acceptance letter: once, twice. I folded it and looked up. “Well,” I said, “I guess we could have just applied to the one place, and saved all those other application fees.”

My mother nearly chased me out of the room!

Do you ever get that same feeling: that you could send out fewer letters and raise just as much money for your nonprofit? Does that feeling make sense? Or is it just like the immature way a high school senior thinks?

To answer, let’s look at what donors actually do with your mail.

One Donor’s Perspective on the Mail

I am not your typical donor. I saved all the fundraising appeals that my wife and I received in the first ten months of 2022, from January through October. There were 122 pieces of mail. A dozen a month. One every few days, from over 50 different organizations.

By far, the most typical number of mailings any organization sent was either 1 or 2. on the other hand, there were half a dozen organizations that mailed to us 5 or 6 times, or even more. Planned Parenthood alone sent 16 appeals, plus 2 newsletters!

So, you are wondering, do the Fischmans give to the groups that mail them most often or the ones that mail least often?

The answer is yes. We give to both.

What makes us give?

Looking at our donations over time, the number of mailings has no correlation at all with whether or not we gave, nor how much. It seems as if we give to groups that:

  • Express our values. Progressive and Jewish groups are high on the list.
  • Represent people we care about. Immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, low-income people…we know these folks, or are related to them, or have been there ourselves.
  • Have a local connection. We give to Greater Boston PFLAG over and above donations to national groups like GLSEN or the Task Force.
  • Are run by people we know. Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, I’m looking at you!
  • Employed us or were our clients.

Now, this is 65-year-old donor behavior, not 35-year-old. Our family has had decades of donations to decide on already. For the most part, we go down our list and give to a lot of the same groups each year, adding some that have caught our attention.

Rarely do we drop a nonprofit from our list–whether they mail us once or sixteen times!

Is More Mail Better? Your Donors May Vary

If all donors were like Rona and me, sending one or two letters during the first ten months of the year would be ideal. But they’re not.

You can’t judge your donors by us–or by your own pattern of giving. Just as your board is not your audience when you communicate, you and the insiders at your organization are no indication of what your donors actually need, in order to become loyal donors.

The research says that most nonprofits (especially small nonprofits) do not ask often enough. Once a year is pitiful. Twice a year is leaving money on the table.

It's worthwhile for most nonprofits to send out appeal letters three or four times a year. Share on X

Those appeal letters should not be your only communications! Whether it’s by email, social media, text, phone, or in person, you should be thanking your donors and sharing valuable information and compelling stories all the time. 80% of your communications should be providing value to your supporters. 10% of them should ask your supporters for time. That will set up the remaining 10%, when you ask for money, to succeed.

But would your nonprofit be better off with three, four, or sixteen letters? It all depends on:

  • Your audience
  • Your budget
  • The amount you need to raise
  • The staff you can devote to fundraising and communications

At least, try adding ONE MORE fundraising appeal next year and see what happens.

It’s worth the “application fees.” And who knows, your extra fundraising letter might be just the one you need!

Fundraising Tuesday: Mike Pence Shows What NOT to Do

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Pence mailing

When you're raising money, you must know your audience. Share on X Mike Pence, the former Vice President, didn’t know me at all.

Okay, I’ll admit he knew me well enough to know that I’m an inveterate reader, with close to 2000 reviews on Goodreads. (Or maybe, he just got lucky.)

But when Pence sent me a letter in the mail and the envelope said, “I signed a copy of my new book just for you!”, he lost me. Why?

I’m the kind of voter who hardly ever voted Republican before Trump, and never since.

I thought Pence was a nonentity before becoming Veep and a bootlicker during his term of office.

The only good thing Pence did as Vice President–refusing to collaborate with the seditious conspiracy to eliminate rule by the people in the U.S. and install an unelected President–was his simple duty. Anything else would been a crime.

You don’t have to agree with me (although I hope you do!). What you should see is that sending this mailing to me showed me:

  1. He didn’t know me.
  2. He lied when he implied he did.
  3. He was wasting money by targeting an audience he was never going to reach.

Is Your Nonprofit Making Mike Pence’s Marketing Mistakes?

You may have many mailing addresses in your database or CRM. Great! But what do you know about the people at those addresses?

  • Are you calling them by the right name?
  • Are you writing to them about something that would interest them, not your Board or your program staff?
  • Have you segmented your list so that different groups hear about different topics?
  • Are you adding names only with permission? When people ask to be removed from your list, do you comply?

Please don’t make the Mike Pence mistakes. Yes, I do mean “Don’t support Trump” or the movement to end democracy in this country–I’m not going to lie!

But even if you and I completely disagree on politics, we can agree that wasting your nonprofit’s money on mailings to the wrong people is a mistake, a bad idea, a step in the wrong direction. If you believe your organization is doing good work, ruining your reputation like this is a sin.

So Help Me God.

 

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