In regards to how far in advance to begin the donation requests our event is in december and I started in March, but keep in mind alot of corporate dsonation sites have a time frame as to when to send in for donation requests. I have a bunch of letters printed, signed and in envelopes to be mailed in sept for that reason I would suggest going to the websites of them and checking their corporation community donation requests and see what the time frame is for letters. I sent in my one for American Girl doll in march and just rec'd an approval last week and on a few they have approved us and noted they would send the items as it got closer to the event date. As for businesses around your area, I would sugges you start going around in the beginning of January letting them know you want to get the items together and make sure thank you letters are sent we are going to be going around to our local businesses in Oct/Nov for our Dec event. Good luck
wow $80,000 - I would love to see a list of your donors if your willing to share. Our event is in Oct and things are starting to come in.
We got the Disney passes and I agree the form was not too crazy. I read somewhere on here that a group asked why they were rejected and they fixed the problem and then received the tickets so maybe try that???
Well, First off, a big thanks to this board! We made approximately $80,000 (small preschool) at our event (live and silent auction along with raffles) and we got a lot of great ideas from this board.
As far as Disney, I don't think we did anything special. It's important that you have a 501(c)3 number that lines up with the name of your school. Other than that, we just noted our mission which was to help fund our financial aid program.
I did want to ask if anyone used vacations on consignment. I was a little weary of these but would love to hear other people's experiences to pass along to the new chairs.
Yeh the gift card from stop and shop are going to be wonderful they are very generous. Concering ebay, I went on and did a search for kids gift baskets and then went thru to see who had a business and just wrote to them expalining my organization, what we were raising money for and if they would be so kind to donate one or two - i also asked them to please include a business card/flyer or anything like that to promote their business in the basket so that the winners would know who donated and possibly buy from them in the future - free advertising on their part.
Also just got in the mail today a note from American Girl doll saying they are going to be sending me the 2011 Girl of the Year Doll Kanani along with the accompanying paperback book which is a value of $100.00 so I am super excited.
Hoping that all those letters I mailed out start to bring me in some good stuff for the auction - will keep everyone posted.
Just a quick update our event is in december but i got in the ail today from stop and shop 5 100.00 gift cards! So exciting and also got alot of yes from ebay sellers who make gift baskets, one came today a candy cake that thank godness is made with candies that will not melt or go bad but try contacting people like that as well as local businesses and corporations the possibilities are endless.
We got the nook by using some of the gift card amount we had earned from a Barnes & Noble bookfair we held in December. The ipad was donated by a parent and grandparent/school employee. Like I said, the raffles brought in extra money. We also sold some sponsorship ads in our catalog that brought in an additional $1200.
I agree with the recent posters. Scroll through this thread. There is lots of helpful information in all these pages.
