How much can an international aid organization raise with an auction?

Short answer: your existing supporters, plus whichever affinity communities you actually reached.

Working it out with no local constituency

There is no neighbourhood, no local beneficiary and no business that gains from the work — the audience has to be assembled.

• Existing supporters, who are frequently well travelled and professionally varied
• Diaspora and connected communities, reachable through associations and places of worship
• Former staff, volunteers and visitors to the programmes
• The local cost of a programme unit: a teacher's month, a term of school fees, a well repaired

The fourth input is the argument rather than the arithmetic. Local costs are frequently small enough that a donor assumes they have misread them, and that reaction does more than any appeal language.

What moves it

Diaspora and connected communities

The most motivated and least contacted audience available, reachable through community associations, places of worship and cultural organizations.

Specificity about cost

A teacher's monthly salary, a term of school fees, a well repaired. Local costs are small enough to surprise a donor, and that surprise is the argument.

Whether the overhead question was answered

It is asked harder here than anywhere. An organization that answers with figures before being asked removes the objection.

Artisan goods in the catalogue

Genuinely unlike anything else available, and the reason people browse an international catalogue at all: artisan goods.

Setting the goal

Name the unit in local terms with the real local cost, and report against it with photographs of work rather than of need. Say where the money was spent and with whom — naming a local partner organization is more credible than naming a country.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.

General information, not legal advice for your organization. Sanctions screening, export and import rules for goods, and the regulatory framework for cross-border grantmaking are technical and consequential — your counsel decides how any of this applies.