well our auction is on the 20th. I have worked hard on getting donations and I think I've
collected $7000 worth of stuff. I thought I had a lot more then that so now I'm kinda bummed since you obviously don't receive that much back.
the committee (not me) decided to only have 10 items on the live auction so it won't go on to long. They say people want to go home to go to bed, I say have a lot more.
Also we sent out over 600 invitations and only 52 have RSVP back. Do people just don't respond back or just show up? Very frustrating because we need to know how much food to order.
Does anyone have ideas on how to get the responses. I think they are advertising ok.
Re. Cabot Cheese basket - Cabot sent alot of delicious cheeses, a cutting board and a cheese slicer in a zippered pack along with various brochures, kid's coloring pages, and Cabot tattoos. They also sent a colored cardboard display with a picture of everything in the cheese basket and the value. Since our event was over several hours we kept the cheese in the refrigerator and the cardboard display was perfect.
All,
What a site and what a great bunch of folks united for the common good. I have run a fundraiser for 22 years in support of The Muscular Dystrophy Association. I have utilized the ideas and recommendations on this site for the last 2 years. Here are some of the Yes Businesses that I would like to share:
Most Local Golf Courses Provide Gift Certificates and they have a solid value
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Bowl America
Dover Downs Casino
Costco (I send to all in my area and pool the gift cards and use them to "Buy" an auction item
Target (Same as Costco)
CVS
Embassy Suites (Local Affiliate)
Bonefish Restaurant
Home Depot (I ended up going to the local store and used the gift card to buy merchandise for an auction basket and the store manager provided a few items too. Face to face pays dividends).
Local Dinner Theaters
Wintergreen Resort
Newseum (Washington DC)
Cracker Barrel Restaurant
Spy Museum (Washington DC)
Arnold Palmer Golf
Cheesecake Factory
I also wrote to local colleges for game passes and received Football and Basketball Tickets
I am looking for gift basket ideas so I read this site daily. To all of you, best of luck and what you do is so important to our communities across this great land.
Glad to help! I always wonder if people try that before they come here and ask for a list of places that donate. It makes me feel better to know that people are willing to do the work, they just don't know how to do it. I think that helping each other with ideas of places to try is super helpful, but if you give out a specific contact's information, they are going to get bombarded and may not be able to help out anyone. I just sat down and googled different things, like Susan suggested - "gift card donations," charity donations," etc. and also switched search engines - Bing, Google, Yahoo... lots of good stuff.
You can google a lot of things i.e. "hotel donation request," "gift card donation request," "museum donation request," "wine donation request" and throw in state, city or area of city too. I've gotten dozens of different hits that way. Use yahoo or other search engines like dogpile. You get different hits.
I wish I had thought to simply google "Florida donation request" months ago! I just did and found many places I hadn't submitted requests to. I found a lot of places I had never heard of. My event is at the end of the month so it's too late to make requests now, but I will definitely do that next year.
