How Lions clubs get items donated

For letter structure and follow-up, see how to get silent auction donations and the donation request letter template. For a service club the letter matters less than who delivers it.

The order

1. The members

Skills, services, properties, hosting and handmade goods, asked for directly at a meeting. Members contribute before anybody solicits outside.

2. Businesses members personally know

Assigned one to a member, tracked on one list, and worked through relationships rather than letters: member solicitation.

3. The club's own suppliers

The venue, the caterer, the printer, the insurer, the trophy shop. Commercial relationships with the club that are almost never asked.

4. Vision and hearing professionals

Optometrists, opticians and audiologists, who frequently already work with the club and whose donated examination or frame allowance fits the campaign exactly.

5. Other service clubs

Reciprocal donation and promotion, at no cost to anybody.

6. Past attendees of the club's events

Where the club has captured them — which is the argument for the sign-up sheet at the pancake breakfast.

7. The wider community

Standard, and last.

Give every solicitor the half page

What the club funded last year with figures, that members pay the club's own costs, what this auction funds and what one unit costs, that nothing identifying may be said about a recipient, and whether donations are deductible — accurately.

Ask for the same things every year

A service club's advantage compounds. A business that donated last year donates again when asked by the same member at the same time of year — and the ask gets easier every cycle.

Which is another argument for writing the list down: the compounding only works if somebody remembers who gave what.

Timing

• Ten weeks — the relationship list built at a meeting and assigned; members' own contributions collected
• Eight weeks — businesses members know, worked through assignments
• Six weeks — the club's suppliers, vision and hearing professionals, other clubs
• Four weeks — past attendees and community
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every item's recipient-privacy check done

Place it away from the club's own major events, which are already staffed by the same people.

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.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.