How preschools get auction items donated

For letter structure, follow-up cadence and tracking, see how to get silent auction donations and the donation request letter template.

Ask what people do, once

A preschool has forty households and a form at enrolment that asks for an emergency contact and nothing else. Almost none of them have ever been asked what they do for a living.

Add one optional line to the enrolment or the start-of-year form: is there anything you or your employer could contribute to school fundraising? Then read the answers. Most schools discover a photographer, a dentist, a builder and someone whose employer matches donations, and none of it required an ask.

The order

1. The classrooms

The keepsakes are made here and they are the catalogue's spine. Start twelve weeks out — a quilt takes a term and a canvas needs a day when every child is present.

2. Parents, individually

One specific ask each, not three. A professional service, an employer match, a holiday home, a skill. Ask by name rather than in the newsletter; a general request to a parent body produces a general result.

3. Grandparents

Not only as bidders. Grandparents are frequently retired professionals with time, skills and networks, and asking them is the last thing anybody thinks of.

4. Alumni families

Parents whose children moved on to kindergarten. They still feel warmly about the school and the school usually lost their address the summer they left. Fix that this year for next.

5. Family-facing local businesses

Soft play, party venues, children's photographers, swim schools, family restaurants. Your audience is exactly their market — say that in the ask, because it is the offer.

6. The wider high street

Last, for filler.

Do not put this on the teachers

The single most important point for a preschool. Teachers are responsible for the keepsakes being made, which is a classroom activity children enjoy — and that is where their involvement ends.

Procurement, listing, promotion and checkout are a parent committee's job. A preschool that runs its auction on teachers' evenings has funded the playground with something more valuable than money.

What to offer

The item listing, a mention in the school newsletter — which for a family-facing business is a genuine placement — recognition at the event, and a receipt from the correct entity, described accurately rather than assumed.

Timing

• Twelve weeks — keepsakes begin in the classrooms
• Eight weeks — parents individually, grandparents through parents
• Six weeks — alumni families and family-facing businesses
• Four weeks — high street gap-filling
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; keepsakes photographed and framed

Avoid the fortnight around any other school fundraiser, and avoid the first three weeks of term, when parents are absorbing fees, uniforms and a new routine.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.