How mental health organizations get items donated

For letter structure and follow-up, see how to get silent auction donations and the donation request letter template.

Employers first, and lead with what you give

Workplace mental health is a live corporate priority with budget attached. An organization approaching a company with training to offer is in a different conversation from one asking for a raffle prize.

• Offer the training or policy review first
• Then ask for an item, a match on funds raised, and the internal channel
• Ask for all three in one meeting; most companies give at least two
• Approach two months before an awareness month, when their plans are being made

Then the rest of the list

2. Clinicians, GPs and therapists

They refer to you, they know the waiting times, and they are almost never asked for anything else. Keep the ask clean of anything resembling a referral arrangement.

3. Schools and colleges

Where you deliver programmes, the school is a partner with its own community and channels. Ask them to share the auction and to introduce local businesses.

4. Service clubs and congregations

Both fund concrete provision with a named cost, which is what your sponsorship tier already is. Ask to present as well as to donate.

5. Volunteers, staff and peer supporters

Carefully with the last group — ask about skills and businesses, not about their own experience, and make declining invisible.

6. The community

Restaurants, retail, wellness, experiences. Standard, and last.

Give solicitors the words

Anyone asking on your behalf will be asked about the people you serve, and a volunteer without prepared language will improvise a story to make the ask land — which is exactly how a disclosure escapes.

Write half a page before anybody approaches anybody: what the organization does, what the auction funds and its cost, what may be said about the people served (nothing identifying), and how to redirect a conversation that turns personal.

And prepare for disclosure in the room

A solicitor asking a local business about mental health will sometimes be told something personal by the person across the desk. It is not a problem, it is what the subject does — but a volunteer should know to listen, not to counsel, and to have the crisis line and the service details to hand.

What to offer

The item listing, a mention to the supporter list, recognition at the event, a receipt — and for employers, the training, which is the real currency.

General information, not clinical, legal or safeguarding advice for your organization. Disclosure, confidentiality and crisis-response obligations are fact-specific — your clinical leadership and counsel decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.