Winter campaign timing

Winter is when people think about homelessness without being prompted, when the press covers it, and when giving peaks. It is also when a shelter is at capacity, when staff are managing cold-weather protocols, and when every hour of administrative time is already committed.

Those two facts pull in opposite directions and most shelters resolve it by default rather than by decision.

Count what is already in the window

A typical shelter's November to January carries: a winter appeal, a giving day push, a coat or blanket drive, a gift or toy programme, an end-of-year tax-year appeal, and often a carol service or community event.

That is five or six asks into substantially the same households and the same congregations. An auction is the seventh, and it will not be the one that wins.

Three workable shapes

Move it out entirely. Run the auction in spring or early autumn, when it is the only thing you are asking for and staff have capacity to run it properly. Most shelters that try this find the moved auction does better than the crowded one did, for the obvious reason.

Fold it into the winter appeal rather than beside it. One campaign, one message, with the auction as the participatory element — the appeal asks for a gift, the auction gives people something to do. This works when they share a goal and a name, and fails when they are run by two people who do not talk.

Run it in late January or February. The need is still visible, the December noise has gone, and nobody else is asking. It is the most under-used window in the sector's calendar and it costs nothing to move into.

If it must be December

• Give it the shortest window that works — a week, closing before the final appeal push
• Use the appeal's existing material rather than making new material
• Make the catalogue giftable, since a bidder may be buying a present
• State delivery honestly on every item; nothing frustrates a December bidder more
• Do not compete with your own giving day — sequence them a fortnight apart

Protect the operation

The judgement that matters is not fundraising, it is staffing. If the people who would run the auction are the same people running overnight cover in a cold snap, the auction loses and it should.

Decide in advance who runs it and confirm they are not on the operational rota for that period. If nobody clears that test, move the campaign rather than running it badly — an auction abandoned halfway costs more than one never started.

Write the calendar down

One page with every seasonal ask, its window and its audience, kept year to year. It is the most reusable thing this page can leave you with, and it is what prevents next year's team rebuilding the same crowded December from nothing.

Setting the goal: how much can a shelter raise.