Thank you for the list - see some I haven't seen before. I started working on our event in March - which will take place Sat., Nov. 23 - this will be our 26th annual Holiday Bazaar - with the 5th year with a silent auction. Only three of the places I applied indicated that I was applying too early - Panera - Stampin Up and Coach bags. I reapplied to Panera on Thurs. night and have my reply (bagles for a month for a year) the next day. I applied to Disney last night - and if it comes thru - will work on hotel stay there. I've received donations from Total Wine, Old Salem, Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, and Nascar Hall of Fame. I haven't started going door to door yet - as I can work on e-mails, faxes and letters at nightl Pleased with the response so far. We have 7 or 8 folks who work on getting the silent auction items. One of our older ladies suggested that we ask every member of our BAzaar group- (must be at least 25 to 30 total) to get one item each. We will throw that out to them at our next general meeting - hope it flies.
Just filled out this contact us form asking aboiut a donation for our event. I believe they followed up with an email requesting more info. Letter and 501c3
Thanks for everyone's tips and help. Our event is in 2 weeks in SoCal and I collected almost $12,000 in items for the silent auction and raffle. I was able to get about half of that last year before I found this board.
I think that's pretty good since I was basically doing it on my own. The other person who was going to help ended up not. I am hoping a few last minute items trickle in. I'm a bit disappointed in that I had over 300 donation requests that I didn't receive replies from - not even a no. I know a lot of them say they don't reply unless you have been approved or they are too busy to reply to every request to even give a no but it can be frustrating.