How 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' families first

Eighty members means roughly eighty households, and most of them contain a business owner, a professional, an employer with a matching programme, or someone who would give a weekend at a holiday home to their child's chapter and has never been asked.

The mechanic that works: at a chapter meeting, ask every member to bring one specific thing from their family or their own employer, with a named deadline. One ask each, from someone who cannot easily say no to their own child, is a far more productive hour than a committee cold-calling the high street.

Then alumni

Alumni give the substantial lots — the holiday home, the club round, the professional service. Ask individually and name examples; an alumni newsletter saying "please donate" produces almost nothing, and a personal message naming a specific thing produces a surprising amount.

Rebuilding the list to make this possible is on alumni outreach.

The house corporation

The alumni board that owns the property has its own network, its own history with the chapter, and frequently better contact details than the undergraduates do. They are also the people who can approve a room for homecoming or a brick as a lot. Ask them as partners rather than as a permission step.

Then, and only then, the town

Restaurants and businesses near campus are asked by every chapter, every council and every student group, several times a term. Their yield per approach is the lowest available to you and it is where most chapters start.

If you do go, go with something to show: a live auction page with fifteen items already on it and a named philanthropy is a much better conversation than a clipboard.

What to offer, when you have no track record

A chapter asking a business for the first time has a credibility problem the business will not say out loud. Solve it by being specific and by showing evidence:

• The auction page, live, with items already on it
• Exactly who benefits, named — the philanthropy partner, or the chapter purpose
• The item listing with their name and a link
• A post to your channels and the alumni list when their item goes live
• A receipt from the correct entity, described accurately rather than assumed

Timing, around an academic year

• Eight weeks — approvals started; members' families asked at a chapter meeting
• Six weeks — alumni asked individually, with examples
• Five weeks — house corporation, on house items and their own network
• Four weeks — local business, with the page already live
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; insignia questions confirmed

Work back from a date that is not in exam period, recruitment, or the fortnight everyone is moving out. That is a narrower window than it sounds and it is worth putting on the chapter calendar a term ahead.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.