I have worked on our silent auction for the past 2 years so I will pass on the most important thing I learned. Ask every local business you can think of and do it in PERSON. You can even call and ask to speak to the person in charge of donations. Both work very well! I would estimate that 2/3 actually gave us something.
We also sent out letters but only received 2 or 3 donations out of the many sent.
Could someone tell me how to go about getting a big item donated to raffle for example four wheeler or trip. This our second year in doing a auction. Our school also does A 50/50 sell 6 for $5.00.