Disaster relief auction item ideas that actually sell

For the general list, see our 100+ silent auction item ideas. The distinctive categories here are relief sponsorship and preparedness — and there is one category to refuse.

Relief unit sponsorship

• A family's temporary housing for a week or a month
• A debris removal crew for a day
• A case manager's hours, which is the service donors least understand and most fund once explained
• Roof tarps, tools, a chainsaw crew's equipment
• A rebuilt well, a repaired roof, a replaced furnace
• A month of a mobile kitchen or a distribution point
• Mental health support hours, which the recovery phase needs and nobody funds

The case management item is worth building. Donors imagine relief as supplies, and learning that the durable work is a person helping a household navigate insurance, aid applications and rebuilding changes what they fund.

Preparedness, which sells and does good

• A household go-bag, assembled properly
• A generator, a water filter, a weather radio
• A first aid and trauma kit with training
• A home emergency plan consultation
• Defensible space or flood mitigation assessment for a property
• CPR and emergency response training for a business's staff

This is the category that does double duty. Every preparedness lot sold puts equipment in a household that may need it, which is the organization's mission delivered through the auction rather than funded by it.

Ordinary donated lots

Restaurants, retail, experiences, professional services, travel. Most of the catalogue, from businesses that want to help and have goods rather than cash.

From the affected area, carefully

• Goods from businesses in the damaged area, which sends money straight back
• Work by artists from the community
• A future stay or visit, once the area reopens, which supports recovery tourism

This is a good category and it needs care: a business that has just lost its premises should not be asked for a donation. Ask the ones that survived, and frame it as promotion for them rather than charity from them.

What not to accept

• Relief supplies as auction items, which confuses what the auction is
• Unsolicited goods for the response — say so publicly, warmly and with the reason
• Anything requiring storage or logistics the organization is currently using for the response
• Perishables or anything needing handling in a week when the organization has none spare
• Items from a business that is itself a beneficiary

And what must never be in the catalogue

• Any affected person's name, photograph or circumstances without consent to that specific public use
• Images of people in distress, in the catalogue or the campaign
• Anything implying priority in assistance, at any price
• Property, salvage or material from the disaster area
• Anything that would put a bidder in contact with affected households

The salvage point is worth stating. Objects from a disaster scene appear with surprising frequency, offered as poignant, and selling them is selling somebody's loss.

General information, not legal advice for your organization. Restricted gifts create binding obligations and the treatment of a surplus is fact-specific — your counsel decides how any of this applies, and the wording used at solicitation is what governs.