Wal Mart said no? They always give generously to us. Even before we figured out one of our moms was a regional manager. You may want to try them face to face. The ones I go to have this big promo thing on the wall by the customer service about they help communities. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Whoa! Zebco would be great. I'll hit up Bass Pro Shops too. Our county has a lake and two rivers(A National Park and State Park too. No hotels or Wal Marts though). We love to fish!

Oh yeah, these are ones that said no:
kodak film and cameras
toys r us
wal mart
crayola crayons
curcuit city
sears
snapper
john deere


I forgot I have letters to these to :
zebco
florida seminoles
pepsi
coke
local race tracks

Most of the places that I e-mailed gave me addresses or fax numbers to send a formal response to. I haven't gotten many responses yet because I only just sent out the letters or faxed them. These are the ones that I got positive response from in the last few weeks:
1) Ty, Inc. -- they sent 9 beanies]
2)Texas Roadhouse -- went online to find store nearest me and e-mailed them. they sent 2 dinner certificates.
3) World Wrestling Entertainment-- they sent 4 t-shirts, 8 autographed photos, 2 posters, 2 magazines, rubberband bracelets, and key chains.
4)Red Lobster--$15 gift card
These are the ones that I got the addresses from their customer service:
gibson/baldwin musical insturments
rose art
thomas kinkade foundation
old navy
nascar
coleman--they also have an online donation request
best buy
florida lotto
local radio stations
I will post it as I get things in, but most said it takes 4 to 6 weeks to reveiw a request.

I get most of my donations by promising advertising, the rest by my pitiful "please help my kids' school" look. LOL! I have had very few rejections during donation getting face to face. I did try the email approach one time, but only with a few businesses that were fairly local and I didn't have any luck. So how would you rate the sucess of your edonation request responses? That would save a few trees and stamp money. I'd like a little encouragement because this will be as time consuming as driving around for several days, I'd like to know my time and effort is worth it.

I don't know about the computer program, but I have spent all summer e-mailing businesses to find out if they would donate something to our school. I looked under the contact us section and e-mailed customer service. They either called, e-mailed me back or sent me an address and fax number to send a formal request to.
In my letter, I put who I am, my postion in the pto, what we are doing, why we need to raise the money where my school is located, date of event, and then I put "we know that you would like to help us and are hoping you can do so by donating _________.
Thank you for your time and any help that you can give us will be greatly appreciated." Then I sign my name, send it and pray for a postive response. Oh yeah, promise them advertising!!!! Tell them how you will do it- for example, I tell them that their business name will be on the raffle tickets and on a sign at the event.

Waaay back in high school we were shown the program that companies used for mass producing mail. It was on Basic or DOS or something like that. Is something like that on my computer right now?

I do have a sample letter someone gave me from here, now I need to make a letter head and get addresses and such. What else do I need to do? Usually we just go from business to business, we still plan on doing this but we want some fresh items to go along with our usual ones for our Basket Auction and Prize Walk.