Hi, We start with our local stores, businesses, and companies. Our volunteers actually go personally to the establishments and ask them for a donation and give them a letter for their records. I find that when you ask in person it's harder for them to say no. I tried to make sure I asked at all of the places in which I shop, dine, or use their services. I have sent emails to museums, zoos, and shows in the city and have had good responses as well.
As for the low end items, another suggestion might be to set these up as a chinese auction. You sell tickets at 2 for $1 and the participants can place the tickets in a container for any item(s) that they are interested in. This way you may have 20 people interested in a $5 item but they only had to spend $1 to try to win it as a raffle. Draw the ticket at the end of the auction and the winner gets it. (make sure you use tickets with their names and phone numbers in case they don't stay till the end.) This also gives everyone a chance to participate in getting something at the auction. Let's face it not everyone has the money to bid against the participants who can splurge.
That is excellent advice about "bundleing up low end items...to carry that a bit further you could bundle up several food type items for a "variety pack" meal for a sleep over, or afternoon party - bundle small gift certificates that could be used as "prizes" for some kind of event - etc.
It was also excellent advice to consider using those lower value items as "special" teacher appreciation gifts. You might also consider this type of action for those silent auction items that do not get any bids...
We started from scratch last year (no records from previous officers). While we really relied on personal contact (i.e., volunteers dropping by businesses with flyer and talking to them), we did start a database by issuing an open records request to our State Comptroller of all businesses licensed for sales tax in a specific 5 zip code area. Within days, we had a list of (I think) 5000 area businesses. We did quite a bit of weeding, and picked about 400 top contenders for a mass mailing.
We started pretty late and ended up with about 100 items. Probably 40 of these were the classroom baskets, which (by far) were the most popular. One warning - we ended up with a bunch of small items ($15 manicure, Free appetizer, 1 free dinner at very inexpensive place, etc.) Frankly, these were more trouble than they were worth as people bid $1, $2... We appreciate anyone's generousity; however, next time (if we get a lot of these) we are either going to create a collection for people to bid on as a group or use them for teacher appreciation instead.
Hey! I like your sign on name!! That's cool! [img]smile.gif[/img]
I would try the archives on this one. There was a post last summer that had a huge response including one poster that listed ALL of their contacts and addresses! Printed out it was 3-4 pages! Anyway, start local with your favorite resturants, local businesses, the newspaper...even trades people (a handyman) may be willing to donate time! Check with the moms that also sell Tupperware, Discovery Toys, Mary Kay ETC!!!
Good luck! Hope this can give you a start!
I have been recruited by our PTO to help find companies who would like to contribute items to our annual Silent Auction. I feel at a loss to know what companies to contact or how to contact. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
