I have my letter written and all my addresses entered into a database and I was going to print them all out today until I read this from Mandi,

Overall we found a personal e-mail to the business with the official letter attached was more effective than mailing unless the business specifically required the request mailed to them.

This is great news since it will save letterhead and stamp cost...and time, but I have a couple of questions. Did you attach the letter as a .jpg with the letterhead or just add the letter into the actual email text? If you attached the letter, what did you put in the text? "Please see attached"? Im also curious what you put as the subject line for the email...just 'donation request'?

Thank you,

Amie

Leah,
We started keeping track of who we heard back from but when we really go going with our requests, we quickly learned that many companies would just send an item and never let you know. Many waited right up almost until the time of our event to mail a donation. Several committed and when a donation had not been received close to our event, we sent e-mail reminders that really worked. And of course, several who sent something within a few days. It just really depended......we were successful in securing over 250 items including ones specific to our school from staff and teachers. It was a lot of work and we started collecting last October.

Overall we found a personal e-mail to the business with the official letter attached was more effective than mailing unless the business specifically required the request mailed to them.

Now that the bidding has begun, it's interesting to see which ones really are the most popular. Restaurants overall as a category have been bid on the most. Of course some of the bigger ticket items such as airline tickets and golf course rounds are big. Our school class pottery sold for way over their value due to their uniqueness last year and we expect the same again this year. This is an online auction that we do that runs for 3 weeks and winds up with a gala.

I picked up an AMAZING basket of goodies donated by my local Whole Foods Market...

Just got a really nice donation from Karen Foster Scrapbooking....

If you check out the Bidding for Good through cmarket online website and look for current auctions in your state, you might get good leads on some of the local businesses that have donated to other organizations.

We just received a few more from online sites from just sending e-mails:

Your True Nature
Cupcake Crazy (actual website is cupacake)
Inspired By Nature