How alumni associations get items donated

For letter structure and follow-up, see how to get silent auction donations and the donation request letter template.

Advancement first, with a plan

Before anything: what the association may do, whom it may contact, when, and how the campaign fits the annual fund's calendar. Arrive with a proposal and an offer to carry advancement's own message, not with a request.

Then the institution's access lots

The catalogue's distinctive category, and it comes from departments rather than donors.

• Facilities and residence life — a hall room, a dining hall dinner, a venue
• Buildings and grounds — tower, roof, tunnels, and building fabric when a project is scheduled
• The archivist — reproduction rights, agreed once and reused
• Athletics and compliance — seats, tours, anything involving student-athletes
• Faculty and deans, asked individually and never through their supervisor
• The president's or head's office, for the one lot that outsells everything

Ask facilities to hold material when a demolition or renovation is scheduled. Nobody ever does, and a pallet of old bleacher seats is several years of auction lots.

Then alumni-owned businesses

The largest supply and the one most associations barely touch. An institution's graduates own businesses in every category and region, and the pitch is one nobody else can make.

• Search the alumni directory by industry rather than by year
• Ask class committees and chapters who among their year owns what
• Approach as their school, not as a charity — the connection is the whole ask
• Offer their business a mention to the alumni audience, which is a genuine placement
• Start with hospitality: restaurants, hotels, wineries, breweries, cabins

And the reunion classes

A class clearing out lofts before a reunion produces memorabilia, and a class committee already exists to ask. Offer the archivist first refusal on anything significant, then auction the rest.

Chapters and affinity groups

Regional chapters supply local lots the central association would never find, and affinity groups — band, team, paper, department — supply items and an audience reachable without the main list.

Brief solicitors on the marks

Half a page: what the association is, which entity receives, that the institution's marks require licensing, that archive material is not available, and that nothing touching admissions may be offered or implied.

Timing

• Twelve weeks — advancement agreement; entity and list permissions settled
• Ten weeks — institutional access lots, department by department; archivist reproduction rights agreed
• Eight weeks — alumni-owned businesses, worked by industry
• Six weeks — reunion classes, chapters, affinity groups
• Four weeks — gap-filling and local business near campus
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every access lot scoped and every marks question answered

Work around the academic calendar and the annual fund. Term-time access lots need term time; the annual fund's peak weeks are advancement's, not yours.

General information, not legal advice for your association. Whether you are an independent organization or part of the institution changes who receipts, who owns the alumni data and who may use the marks — the advancement office and your own counsel decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.