I know, I had the same problem but I found that I was spinning my wheels. Even the local stuff was difficult at the time but after the new year, for two weeks, all day and late nights I just sent as many as I could. You have a real tough time frame to work with. You might want to hit up any friends with local busineses too. Carry the letters around with you wherever you go. Will your organization be willing to move the event a month or so?
Tango ~ with our gala being in March, I feel like waiting until the new year might be too late, especially for bigger items like theme parks, flights, cruises, hotels,etc. We were able to obtain a lot of local stuff in the last few months before the auction but not many big ticket items.
Our auction is in March and last year I started in Nov/Dec and found that many places said they'd already reached their giving limit for events in March but I feel like it's too early to start asking for 2015.
I was thinking September is a good time since it's 6 months from the event.
The walk around raffles I mentioned prior are exactly that..we walked around the event selling raffle tickets. One of them was a Coach handbag raffle. We stuck a deck of cards to poster board with 2x tape and sold each card for $10 each. The buyer kept 1/2 of the card and the other half went into the drawing. The Coach bag was bought at the Coach online sale for $100 so we made $440 on that auction (we sold all 54 cards). We also sold conventional raffle tickets for a meat raffle. This year had a couple of nice technology items donated at the last minute (a Chromebook and Tablet). The Chromebook was raffled off by a Heads or Tails auction. Each participant paid $10 to participate and then held their "head" or their "tail" when the auctioneer flipped a coin..it was an elimination drawing. Get creative..we had A LOT of fun with these raffles.
To clarify a bit.....
The studio that donated has a connection with our school. The prior year they donated certificates for Belt Graduations which went like crazy, but this year they changed it up on us and donated twenty 1-month training sessions - but for new families only. That's what made it not as desirable I think (the new family part.) The value was $159 and we were doing a sign-up for $50 each
Our thank you letter includes a description of what they donated and the value - it does not say whether or not the item sold.
Thank you KarenVan and donationmatch for your input and ideas! Love how helpful this community is!
