How much can a memorial fund raise with a silent auction?

Short answer: however many people the person's life touched, which a grieving family almost always underestimates.

Working it out from the circle of people who knew them

Not a donor list — everyone whose life the person touched, which a grieving family almost always underestimates.

• Colleagues and former colleagues, and their employer
• The clubs, teams, congregations and schools they belonged to
• Friends, neighbours, extended family, and the people they taught or served
• The cost of what the fund is for, if it has one

Do not put the family in charge of estimating this. They are the least able to see the whole circle right now, and the reach of a memorial fundraiser regularly surprises them.

What moves it

How wide the circle actually was

Colleagues, former colleagues, school and college friends, teams, congregations, clubs, neighbours, their own customers or students. Families consistently guess low, and the reach of a memorial fundraiser regularly surprises them.

Who is doing the asking

A friend or colleague coordinating reaches networks the immediate family does not have and cannot work through right now.

The date

An anniversary or birthday gives the campaign a natural, unforced reason to exist, and people are already thinking about the person that week.

Whether the purpose is clear

"A scholarship at the school where she taught" gives people something to picture. An unspecified fund does not, and it also makes the accounting harder later.

Setting a goal, or not

A memorial fund does not need one. Where the purpose has a cost — a scholarship, a bench, a piece of equipment for a ward, a season of a programme — publish it. Where it does not, run without a number rather than inventing one.

And report afterwards: the total, what it did, and a photograph of the thing it funded. Families find that report genuinely valuable, more than they expect to.

Goal and budget mechanics: fundraising goals and budget.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Whether contributions are deductible depends entirely on which entity receives them, and setting a memorial fund up correctly at the start is much easier than fixing it later — this is worth one conversation with an adviser or a community foundation.