How arts organizations get items donated

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

Start with access, not with artists

The order that protects the artistic community. Before asking anybody to give up a work, build the catalogue out of what the organization can offer at no cost to anybody: rehearsals, technical runs, studio visits, hangs, walkthroughs, the building, the season.

A catalogue that already contains a dozen access lots needs far fewer donated works — which means asking fewer artists, less often, for better pieces.

Then the order

2. The board

Arts boards are unusually well connected and frequently joined expecting to open doors. Three named contacts each, assigned and tracked, and they should donate before they ask.

3. Artists, carefully

With the deduction explained, a reserve offered, exposure and the buyer's contact in return, and a record of who was asked last year: asking artists.

4. Galleries, dealers and collectors

A collector donating a work is in a different position from its maker and can frequently give more comfortably. Galleries donate work, framing, and sometimes space — and they know which artists can afford to be asked.

5. Arts-adjacent businesses

Framers, printers, art suppliers, instrument dealers, photographers, restaurants near the venue. Their customers are your audience.

6. Subscribers and patrons

A long-standing subscriber list contains professionals, holiday homes, businesses and collections, and is almost never asked for anything but a renewal.

7. Other arts organizations

Reciprocal tickets and access across the region's companies, museums and galleries. Costs nothing and improves every catalogue.

Keep a record of who gave what, and when

The specific discipline this silo needs. An organization that cannot say which artists it asked last year will ask the same generous fifteen again — and they will keep saying yes until they stop, without explaining why.

Brief solicitors on the artist question

Half a page: what the organization can offer an artist in return, that the deduction is materials-cost and should be explained rather than glossed, that a reserve is available, and that declining is free of consequence.

Timing

• Twelve weeks — access lots agreed with artistic and production staff; the record of last year's artists reviewed
• Ten weeks — board assignments; galleries and collectors
• Eight weeks — artists, with lead time for anybody making something
• Six weeks — arts businesses, subscribers, other organizations
• Four weeks — gap-filling; photography of every work done properly
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; reserves set with each artist; every label carries full catalogue information

Avoid production and hanging weeks entirely, in both directions — the staff who would solicit are the staff mounting the show.

General information, not legal or tax advice. The treatment of an artist's donation of their own work differs from a collector's donation of the same piece, and appraisal and substantiation rules are technical — artists and donors should take their own advice.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.