How FFA chapters get auction items donated

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

Members do the asking

A chapter has something very few organizations have: solicitors who are the beneficiaries, who are trained in public speaking as part of the programme, and who own official dress.

A member walking into a feed store in a blue jacket, able to say what their SAE is and what the chapter is raising for, converts at a rate no adult committee reaches. It is also a career development exercise the programme would otherwise have to manufacture.

• Pair members — two students, not one, and not an adult doing the talking
• An adult drives and stays in the vehicle or at the door, per district policy
• Give each pair three named businesses and a one-page leave-behind
• Rehearse it once. Officers will do this well with fifteen minutes of preparation
• Members write the thank-you notes afterwards, by hand

The order

1. The alumni association or alumni list

The chapter's warmest audience, frequently running the businesses you are about to ask. See alumni and supporter outreach.

2. Agribusiness

Feed and seed, implement dealers, co-ops, elevators, veterinary practices, welding and equipment suppliers. Approach outside planting and harvest, ask for practical goods rather than certificates, and let the members ask.

3. Members' families and their operations

In a farming district these are businesses as well as families, and the chapter rarely asks them as such.

4. Banks, insurance and the county seat

The businesses that buy at the fair sale. In person; a letter is a weak instrument in a rural county.

5. Service clubs

Not only for donations — ask to present. Officers speaking about their SAE at a Rotary or Lions lunch reaches a room full of the businesses you would otherwise cold-call, and clubs are actively looking for speakers.

6. The school community

Staff, other programmes' families, the district's own suppliers where policy allows.

Timing follows the season

Asking an agribusiness during planting or harvest gets a distracted no from someone who would have said yes in February. Work the season your county actually keeps, and avoid contest season for the advisor's sake.

What to offer

The item listing, recognition at the event and in the county paper, a mention in the chapter's own channels, and a receipt from whichever entity actually receives — named accurately. Plus the handwritten note from a member, which is why these businesses give year after year.

General information, not legal or tax advice for your chapter. An FFA chapter sits inside a school district and under a national organization at the same time, and the rules differ by state association and district — your advisor, your principal or activities director, and your state association are the people who decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.