How Ys get auction items donated

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

Start with your own departments

Aquatics, fitness, sports, camp, childcare and facilities can supply most of the catalogue between them, and none of it requires a letter.

• Aquatics: pool parties, lesson blocks, lane time — with the ratios and scheduling they decide
• Fitness: personal training, studio hire, programme design
• Sports: court time, clinics, tournament slots
• Camp: a weekend on the property out of season, a camp place
• Facilities: what can actually be booked, when, and what it costs to open

Do this first because it changes what you need to solicit. A Y that lists twelve facility items has a catalogue before it has asked a single business.

Then the order

2. The board and campaign volunteers

Business-heavy, already committed, and frequently the same people who solicit for the annual campaign. Give them named businesses rather than a general request, and coordinate so a business is not approached for both in the same month.

3. Corporate membership partners

Companies with corporate membership arrangements have a relationship and a reason. Ask for an item, a match, and the internal channel to their staff — who are frequently members already.

4. Programme families, by programme

Camp families, swim families, sports families. Ask each for something connected to what they use, and ask what they do professionally — a Y's programme rosters are large and nobody reads them as a directory.

5. Health, fitness and sports businesses

Aligned, and their customers are your members. Physiotherapists, sports retail, nutritionists, studios that are not direct competitors.

6. The community

Restaurants, retail, family experiences. Standard, and last.

Do not compete with the annual campaign for the same business

A Y's campaign volunteers are soliciting local businesses at the same time of year. Run one list across both, or sequence them deliberately — a business asked for a campaign gift and an auction item by two different volunteers in a fortnight will remember the Y as disorganised rather than as either.

What to offer

The item listing, a mention to a membership file of local families, recognition in the building and at the event, and a receipt. For a health or fitness business, the membership mention is a genuine placement to their exact target market.

Timing

• Ten weeks — internal departments, with operations sign-off on every facility item
• Eight weeks — board and corporate partners, coordinated with the campaign's list
• Six weeks — programme families, segmented
• Four weeks — aligned businesses and community
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every facility item carries its date window, capacity and staffing

General information, not legal advice for your association. Affiliate obligations, brand standards and — for a YWCA — the constraints attached to domestic violence services differ. Your CEO and your national organization decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.