I am new to our PTO. I am looking for sample letters to mail out for Donations. Also Who and what are the best things to try to get donated. We usually do our auction in the fall. Also what are good donation to give as door prizes to teachers at our teacher appreciation? Thanks for the help. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The fewer people there are looking for donations, the more time you need. We did an auction with just 5 people looking for donations in a little longer time frame than January to March. We did pull it off but just barely. Not too many of us want to repeat that stessful experience. (Although we are anyway because we moved the auction to October this year.)
I posted something about Outback not too long ago. The local proprietor has children at our school and he told me that in September of 2004 he submits his budget for 2005 so, in some cases, I think it has to be submitted far in advance. He said Outback allocates alot of money for this type of thing.
Shelly
Outback has a lot of commitments and some of them are annually recurring. Definately ask them now. If you ask later, you may not get it free but for $5 a person (which is what we paid for the leader appreciation luncheon)
I asked them two months in advance and they already had three free ones lined up for the month we needed.
As for getting donations, it is never too early to start. however, you will need space to store everything until the auction. keep that in mind.
You want to get them out now. I'm getting ready to mail mine out next week. A lot of major buisnesses only have a limited amt of 'products' to give out, or only allow a certain amt of money to go out. If you wait for January you will get a lot of letters saying they have nothing left to donate.
I would suggest you get letters out in November. If you are trying to get any donations from companies that need to go through a corporate headquarters, it's not uncommon for them to take a good 8-10 weeks, if not longer. Also, some companies do budgets in the October-December timeframe for the next year, so they'll have your request in hand to factor in to their plans. By January, sometimes they are already committed for the year. And it's usually hard to get people's attention much past the first week of December through the rest of the month.
If you are mostly looking for support from small local companies, you'll probably be ok getting letters out in January, but it can't hurt to do it earlier.
