Standing Out in Fall (or Spring) Fundraising Season
By GiveGrove• 7 min read • Published 2026
Look at your own inbox in October and you'll get a pretty good sense of what your donors are up against. The fun run flyer comes home in a backpack, a gala invitation shows up the same week, and by Thanksgiving it feels like every organization in town is gearing up for GivingTuesday.
Spring isn't much quieter. Auction season, walk-a-thons and the end-of-school push all seem to land on the same handful of weekends.
People still want to help, but nobody can say yes to everything, so your supporters end up choosing. A few habits make it a lot more likely they'll choose you, and most of them come down to planning rather than budget.
1. Start with the calendar
Before anyone falls in love with a date, pull up every calendar you can get your hands on. The school calendar is the obvious one (homecoming, conferences, spring break, graduation), followed by the football schedule and whatever festivals and 5Ks your town has going. Holiday weekends are hard to fill, and so are the nights around Halloween, Easter, Passover and Mother's Day.
The calendar that's hardest to see belongs to other nonprofits, so call a couple of them and ask what they've booked. Most will be glad you did, since nobody wants to split the same donors on the same Saturday. Local businesses are good intel as well. The hardware store owner who donates a gift card every year hears from half the town and can usually tell you which weekends are spoken for.
Once you've picked a date, get it out there. A save-the-date about eight weeks ahead puts you on people's calendars before the next invitation shows up.
For an online auction, a week of bidding is usually plenty; much longer and interest tends to sag in the middle. Close it on a night when your crowd is likely to be home on the couch, not dressed up for someone else's gala.
2. One goal people can picture
"Support our school" is a hard ask to get excited about. Families hear it every year, and it doesn't tell anyone what their money will do. "Replace the 20-year-old playground by May" does, and so does "Fund 500 nights of shelter this winter."
So pick one goal. Give it a dollar figure and a deadline, and describe it well enough that people can imagine the day it's finished.
Gift amounts land better when they're attached to something real. A parent can picture "$50 buys a month of art supplies for one classroom." Nobody pictures anything when they read "$50 helps us reach our goal."
If you can, let one person tell the story. A two-minute video of a third grader explaining what the new playground would mean will stick with people long after they've forgotten your slide of statistics. Get permission first, obviously.
And keep everyone posted as the total climbs, in your emails and up on the screen at the event. GiveGrove's Fund-a-Need includes a goal thermometer that updates in real time, and there's something about watching it creep toward the top that gets people reaching for their phones.
3. Auction items with a story behind them
Nobody fights over a restaurant gift card. They will fight over lunch with Mr. Alvarez, the gym teacher every kid in the building loves. The items that get bid up are usually the ones only your community could offer, and you probably have more of those than you realize. A few ideas to borrow:
Principal for a day (fifth graders go wild for this one)
Front-row seats at graduation or the spring musical
Pizza with a favorite teacher or coach for the winner and three friends
A behind-the-scenes tour with your executive director
Dinner for eight, cooked in the winner's own kitchen by a local chef
A framed class art project, which can get parents bidding against each other in a hurry
Naming rights to a bench or a brick in the new walkway
Most of these cost nothing but somebody's time or know-how, so ask your board and volunteers what they could put up. You may be surprised who has a lake cabin.
It's also worth resisting the urge to accept every donation that comes in. A catalog of 150 baskets is a lot to scroll through, and the good stuff gets buried. A shorter list of standouts tends to draw more bids per item, and the smaller donations can be bundled into packages, like a date night with dinner, movie tickets and dessert.
And keep a range of prices. A couple of big-ticket items bring some drama to the night, but a grandparent with $40 to spend should find plenty worth bidding on.
4. Let people give from wherever they are
Some of your most loyal supporters will never make it to the gym on auction night. Think of the grandparents in Arizona, or the parents who work nights. Opening bidding online a few days early lets them join in, and it gives everyone a chance to scope out the good stuff before the doors open.
The live auction doesn't have to leave them out, either. GiveGrove runs alongside a Zoom, Facebook Live or YouTube stream with nothing to integrate, so Grandma can bid from Phoenix against the table right by the stage.
Not everyone in the room wants to bid on a phone, and that's fine. Volunteers can type in bids for them or assign paddle numbers, and those bids count just the same.
Then there's checkout. Nothing drains the mood faster than a line of tired guests waiting to pay for a gift basket. With GiveGrove, people pay for what they won from their phones as the night wraps up, so they head home when they're ready and your treasurer isn't chasing checks the following week.
Give the folks who'd rather not bid a way in. A Fund-a-Need moment lets someone put $100 toward the playground without winning a thing, and it only takes a few taps. Point every email and post to the same event page so nobody has to hunt for the right link.
Before any of it goes out, pull the page up on your own phone and try to buy something. If it annoys you, it's going to annoy Aunt Linda. (And if Aunt Linda still gets stuck on the big night, our team is on call for the whole event to help her out.)
5. Give every message a reason to exist
If every email you send says some version of "don't forget," people will quit opening them by the third one. Give each message something new instead, like a sneak peek at that lake cabin or a note that you're 70% of the way to the new playground.
The messages that really get read usually come from someone your supporters already know. Ask a handful of board members, room parents and coaches to pass the event along to their friends, and write the text and email for them. Most people will happily forward something that takes 30 seconds. Very few will write it themselves.
If you want to make a game of it, GiveGrove's peer-to-peer tools let classrooms or teams rally their own networks behind the goal. Second-grade parents get surprisingly motivated once the fourth-grade parents pull ahead.
Here's roughly how we'd space it all out:
About eight weeks before: the save-the-date, anywhere people will see it
Five weeks before: ticket sales open, along with the story behind your goal
Three weeks before: ambassadors get their ready-made messages
Two weeks before: one standout item a day on social media
A week before: the catalog opens so people can browse and plan their bids
The last 48 hours: a final reminder with the latest total
6. The thank-you is part of the fundraiser
After a big event everyone is wiped out, and the thank-you notes have a way of sliding to next week and then next month. It's worth fighting that. Across the sector, fewer than half of donors give again the following year, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's 2025 data. First-time donors, which describes a lot of the people who came as someone's guest, are the hardest to bring back.
Try to thank people within a couple of days, by name, and mention what they gave or won. It can be short. "Enjoy the lake cabin, and thank you for helping us build the playground" means more than a form letter that shows up three weeks later.
Share the final total within the week, along with what it will do. GiveGrove's reporting updates in real time, so you'll likely have the number before the last chairs are stacked.
Your sponsors and item donors deserve a public thank-you. Tag the local businesses on social media so their customers see it. They get asked for donations constantly, and a little recognition makes it easier to say yes to you next year.
While it's all still fresh, sit down with your committee for half an hour and jot down what sold, what flopped and what you'd do differently.
Then, months later, when the playground actually goes in, send pictures. Better yet, invite people to come see it. It's a good note to leave people on right before your next save-the-date arrives.
Where to start
If your fall event is only a few weeks off, this isn't the moment for an overhaul. Pick one piece to try and save the rest for spring. The follow-up plan is a good one to start with, since it costs nothing and people notice right away.
Thanks for trusting GiveGrove with your fundraisers!
The GiveGrove Team 🍋
A Code Works company
GiveGrove makes events and auctions for fundraising easy. Email info@givegrove.com for more info. Click here to sign up for our mailing list.
