How much can a Lions club raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: the number of active members times the businesses each personally knows, plus whatever the club has published about its own work.

Working it out from members' own relationships

A service club's reach is not a mailing list — it is the number of businesses each member personally knows.

• Active members, times the businesses each can genuinely approach
• Past attendees of the club's other events, if anybody captured them
• Other service clubs and civic organizations locally, which reciprocate
• The cost of one service: an eye examination and glasses, a hearing aid, a screening

Then add the input that is not a number: whether the club has said that members pay its own costs so public donations go to service. That is true, it is unusual, and clubs say it to each other constantly and to the public almost never.

What moves it

Members working their own contacts

Not a mailing list — thirty years of individual relationships, which is the club's entire advantage: member solicitation.

Saying where the money goes

The activities fund claim, stated plainly, converts businesses who assume overhead eats most donations.

A named service as the goal

Eye examinations, glasses, a hearing aid, a screening. Small, exact and unarguable — and the club can say the whole amount goes there.

The club's own event attendees

Hundreds of people a year at breakfasts, races and booths, almost none captured.

Setting the goal

Name a number of services rather than a dollar total — "forty eye examinations and glasses" — publish what one costs, and report in the same unit. It is the clearest goal structure a service club can use and it needs no story about anybody.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.

General information, not legal or tax advice for your club. Account separation rules, charitable status and the use of the association's name and emblem come from your own constitution and your district — check both before fundraising.