How much can a homeless shelter raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: how specific the goal was, and whether volunteers were on the list.

Revenue across shelters and housing services

Working it out from volunteers and congregations

A shelter's warmest audience is people who have been inside the building.

• Volunteers from the last two years, with permission recorded
• Congregations and faith partners, counted as households rather than organizations
• Employers who run drives or send volunteer teams
• An average winning bid for a community audience giving to concrete provision

Then check the calendar. Whatever the arithmetic says, an auction sharing a window with a winter appeal, a giving day and a drive will not achieve it.

What moves it

How concrete the goal was

This matters more here than almost anywhere, because the alternative — a story — is off the table. A named piece of provision with a real price is doing the work the story would have done.

Whether volunteers were asked

The warmest and least-asked group a shelter has. They have been inside the building.

Sponsorship items in the catalogue

A night, a week, a winter. The unit converts an abstraction into a purchase. See night sponsorship.

Distance from your own winter appeal

December carries an appeal, a giving day and usually a drive. An auction inside that window is competing with three campaigns you are also running.

Setting the goal

Work from one operational purchase or a defined number of nights, publish the figure, and report what it funded with a photograph of the equipment or the space — never of a person. A shelter that shows the laundry it bought has reported completely without identifying anybody.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.