Donating Items to Your Silent Auction Using the Donation Form

The Silent Auction Donation Form makes it easy for organizations to collect auction items directly from donors while keeping full control over which items appear in your event.

What Is the Auction Item Donation Form?

The Auction Item Donation Form allows donors to submit auction items for your review. Items submitted through the form will automatically appear in your Auction Builder in draft mode. This helps streamline item collection while ensuring you decide what goes live in your auction.

How to Enable and Share the Form

1. Go to your Silent Auction settings.

2. Toggle on Enable Auctions.

3. In the Auction Item Donation Form section, toggle the form on.

4. Publish Changes.

5. Copy the form link and share it with donors.

You can paste the link into emails, social media posts, or on your fundraiser page to encourage participation.

What Donors Can Submit

Donors will be asked to provide the following information:

Contact Details

• Donor Name (required)

• Donor Email Address (required)

• Donor Phone Number (required)

Optional Sponsor Information

• Sponsor Name

• Sponsor Website

• Sponsor Description

• Sponsor Logo (1 image max)

Auction Item Details

• Item Name (required)

• Quantity (required) - if more than one, duplicates will be created in the Builder

• Monetary Value (required)

• Item Description (required)

• Item Images (up to 10 images allowed)

• Item documents (1 document allowed)

Donors can submit multiple items in a single form submission.

What Happens After Submission?

• The item will appear in your Builder as a draft item, labeled as a donated item.

• Donated items are marked as invalid by default (e.g. missing bid increment or listing number). This ensures you must review and complete the listing before it goes live.

• Donor contact details are included in the item settings (for internal use only and can be edited by your team).

• If sponsor fields are filled out, a sponsor record is created and linked to the item.

• Once all of the applicable fields are filled out, you will click Validate Donated Item to finalize the item. 

Things to Keep in Mind

• You will not be notified via email when a new submission has been completed.

• Donors cannot link their item to an existing item or sponsor already set up in your Builder.

• The form is disabled by default. You’ll need to manually turn it on to start collecting submissions.

• There is no deadline setting built into the form, but you can use Trellis’ Messaging Tool to send deadline reminders or cut-off dates to your donors.

• At this time, you are not able to customize what is asked in the submission form.