How community foundations get items donated

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

Say the grant clause before you ask anybody

The rule that makes everything else acceptable. Publish, in writing and in every solicitation to a grantee or applicant, that donating an item or attending has no bearing on any grant decision.

Without it, every ask a foundation makes of an organization in its area carries an implication it did not intend.

The order

1. The board

A community foundation board is typically the county's business, legal and civic leadership. Three named contacts each, assigned and tracked — and they contribute before they solicit.

2. Professional advisors

Attorneys, accountants and wealth managers in the foundation's network. High-value professional services, and the ask keeps a pipeline relationship warm that otherwise only surfaces around estate planning.

3. Fund advisors

They cannot bid, but they can donate items, underwrite, match and give — and asking them for an item is one of the routes that works: DAF holders and auctions.

4. Corporate partners and banks

Financial institutions in particular have a direct relationship with a community foundation and community reinvestment interests.

5. Grantees, carefully

For experiences and their own supporters' networks rather than for goods — with the grant clause stated and a genuinely free ability to decline.

6. Businesses across every town

The foundation's breadth is the advantage. Work the whole service area rather than the town the office is in, which is the failure a county-wide organization reliably makes.

7. Institutions

Colleges, hospitals, museums and utilities, which have community relations budgets and unusual access to offer.

Ask once, for everybody

A foundation's strongest pitch to a business is that this is one request supporting many organizations — rather than the eighth separate ask this quarter from charities it cannot distinguish between.

Lead with that. It converts, and it is the reason a showcase format is worth building.

Brief solicitors

Half a page: what the foundation is and why an intermediary, what this campaign funds, the grant-independence clause, that fund distributions cannot buy items, and the give-without-bidding option.

Timing

• Twelve weeks — grant clause published; matching pool asked of two or three fund advisors; local nonprofit calendar checked so the date does not collide with a grantee's own event
• Ten weeks — board assignments; professional advisor network
• Eight weeks — fund advisors, corporate partners and financial institutions
• Six weeks — grantees, for experiences, with the clause restated
• Four weeks — businesses town by town across the service area
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; the DAF position and the give-without-bidding option visible on every page

General information, not legal or tax advice. The rules governing donor-advised funds, incidental benefits and fiscal sponsorship are technical and carry penalties — your own counsel and your fund advisors' advisers decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.