Silent auctions for civic organizations, set up in minutes

Nobody is going to tell you the rules

A Lions or Kiwanis club has an international organization, a district, a foundation and a hundred years of accumulated practice. An independent civic organization — a community improvement association, a village society, a betterment league — has a constitution somebody typed in 1978 and whatever the current treasurer remembers.

So the questions a parent body would answer have to be asked directly, and a surprising number of civic organizations do not know their own answers.

• Are we incorporated, and in what form
• Are we a charity, and if so under what classification — many civic and community organizations are not 501(c)(3), and donors assume they are
• Who may sign, and who is liable — an unincorporated association can expose its officers personally
• Do we have insurance for an event, and for volunteers
• What does our own constitution say about what we may fundraise for and how funds are held

One conversation with an accountant or an attorney answers all of it, and it is worth more than any fundraising advice on this page. A group that has run raffles for thirty years without knowing whether it is a charity is carrying a risk it has never looked at.

Then write it on the auction page in one sentence. Local businesses will file whatever they are given.

You can convene the town, which nobody else can

This is the compensating advantage and it is a real one. A national service club has a brand, a programme and a competitive relationship with the other clubs. An independent civic organization has none of that, which makes it the natural convener.

A single community auction run jointly by the civic organization, the two service clubs, the parks friends group and the library friends reaches every list in town, splits the work across five volunteer bases, and asks each business once instead of five times.

That last point is the argument that persuades the other groups: multi-organization events.

Most of what you fund belongs to somebody else

Civic organizations typically fund improvements to public things — a park bench, holiday lighting, a welcome sign, a bandstand, a mural, hanging baskets, a playground, a war memorial.

All of that is owned, permitted and maintained by a municipality, which brings approval, specification, ownership and maintenance questions that a group raising money for its own purposes never faces: working with the municipality.

Freedom of purpose, used badly

Having no national programme means the organization can fund anything — which in practice frequently means it funds a different thing every year, none of them memorably, and the town cannot say what it does.

Pick something and repeat it. A civic organization known for one thing — the hanging baskets, the holiday lights, the scholarship, the bandstand concerts — has a fundraising identity, and one known for general community betterment has a mission statement.

Working it out from a town

A small volunteer membership, and a project the whole community can see.

• Active members, times the businesses each personally knows
• Residents and businesses the project directly benefits — the street, the block, the park edge
• Other community organizations, if you run it jointly

The full method: how much can an organization raise?

When an auction is the wrong instrument

Before the status question is answered, because everything else depends on it. If a municipal project has not been approved, that comes first. And if the membership is eight people who already run the town festival, the answer is a joint auction with the other groups rather than another thing to staff.

Reaching a town

Channel order: members' own networks, which is most of it; residents on the streets the project affects; the other civic and service organizations, for reciprocal promotion; local businesses, especially those the project benefits; the municipality's own channels, where it will share; congregations, schools and the library; and local media, which covers town improvement readily.

One move worth building in: the project's own neighbours. People living on the street getting the trees, beside the park getting the equipment, or facing the building getting the mural benefit directly and specifically — and a leaflet on those streets is the highest-return hour in the campaign.

General mechanics: how to promote a silent auction and marketing templates.

Local politics will find you

Civic organizations sit close to municipal decisions, and town improvement is frequently contested — the mural nobody agreed on, the parking the businesses want, the development the residents do not.

• Decide at board level whether the organization advocates or partners; doing both is difficult
• Keep the auction out of any live dispute — donors are giving for the town
• Do not let a campaign become a proxy for a council election
• Where members hold or seek public office, keep that visibly separate from the organization's fundraising

That last point is worth stating. In a small town the same people serve on everything, and an auction that appears to fund a candidate's profile has cost the organization something it needs.

Where you sit among the other groups

For an organization with a national parent, an established cause and a district that can be asked, see Lions clubs and Kiwanis clubs — both of which face the same small-membership constraint and differ in what they can call on.

Where the organization exists specifically to support a park, the approval and maintenance questions are covered in more depth in silent auctions for parks friends groups.

General information, not legal or tax advice for your organization. Charitable status, incorporation and any agreement with a municipality are specific and consequential — an independent civic organization has no parent body to ask, which is exactly why this is worth one conversation with an adviser.

Twelve weeks, and the first four are paperwork

• Week 12 — settle incorporation, charitable status, signing authority, liability and insurance. There is no parent body to ask, which is why this is first
• Week 12 — municipal approval, specification, ownership and maintenance for any public-property project, in writing; displacement question asked
• Week 11 — if running jointly, the agreement signed: who receives, how proceeds divide, who pays costs, who owns the list
• Week 10 — relationship list built at a meeting and assigned; members contribute first
• Week 8 — businesses members know; businesses the project benefits
• Week 6 — own suppliers, other organizations, the municipality for permissions and town-connected lots
• Week 4 — wider community
• Week 2 — catalogue closed; every public-property item has written agreement

Three jobs, and the first has no template

• Status and structure — one person gets the answers an accountant or attorney would give, once, and writes them down permanently
• Municipal liaison — one named person, one channel, everything in writing, including the maintenance answer
• The relationship list — built at a meeting, assigned, recorded, and kept beyond the members who built it

Where these auctions go wrong

• Not knowing whether the organization is a charity, while donors assume it is
• Raising for a municipal project before it is approved, producing a cheque nobody can spend
• Funding an improvement nobody has budgeted to maintain, which then declines
• A verbal arrangement with the town that nobody can recall once the clerk retires
• Funding a different thing every year, so the town cannot say what the organization does
• Letting the auction become a proxy for a council dispute, or for a member's candidacy
• Eight members running a fifth event when a joint auction was available

What it costs, and the role only you can take

Volunteer hours and one adviser conversation, which is the cheapest thing on this page and the most overdue.

Worth putting to a board: having no national parent is a disadvantage on rules and grants, and an advantage on partnership. The same forty businesses in this town are being asked by eight organizations, each running its own event with overlapping volunteers — and the group with no brand to protect and no competitive relationship with anybody is the natural convener of the auction that replaces all of them.

After it closes

• Photograph the installed project and publish what it cost; that is next year's campaign
• Write the status answers into the organization's permanent records
• Get the municipal agreement signed as a one-page memorandum
• Where it ran jointly, agree the review date and repeat — the value compounds by year three
• Ask the municipality what is next on the list the budget will not reach