Mentoring organization auction item ideas that actually sell

For the general list, see our 100+ silent auction item ideas. A mentoring catalogue is built entirely from adults and abstractions, which sounds like a problem and is not — the sponsorship unit is unusually strong.

Sponsorship, which carries it

• A full match: screening, training, matching and a year of support
• A mentor's background check and onboarding
• A training cohort place
• A year of activity costs for one match
• A match support worker's caseload for a month
• The waiting list assessment for one child

The match is the headline unit and it needs its terms stated: match sponsorship.

What the organization can offer, adults only

• Mentor training delivered to a company's staff as professional development
• A safeguarding or youth-engagement session for another organization
• An executive director's morning consulting on a company's volunteering programme
• A speaker for a business breakfast, a service club or a congregation
• Naming a training cohort, a fund or a programme — never a child or a match

The training item is the one to build. Mentoring organizations are genuinely expert at recruiting, screening and supporting volunteers, and companies pay consultants for exactly that.

From mentors and supporters

• Professional services from mentors, who skew toward employed professionals
• Employer-matched donations, which mentors can often unlock
• Skills and experiences: a coaching session, a portfolio review, a mock interview
• A weekend at a supporter's place, a dinner, a class

Ordinary lots

Restaurants, retail, experiences, wellness. There is no need for a mentoring catalogue to be thematic and trying to make it so tends to shrink it.

What safeguarding rules out entirely

• Any item creating contact between a winner and a mentee, supervised or not
• A place as a mentor, or priority in screening
• Event access where children are present for anyone unscreened
• Photographs, names or identifying detail of a mentee — including a first name plus a town, or an age plus a school
• Anything implying influence over matching
• A mentor's story told in a way that identifies which child they mentor

These are not judgement calls to weigh against revenue. An organization whose entire model rests on screened, supervised contact cannot sell an exception to it, and the reputational exposure of trying is out of all proportion to any lot.

General information, not safeguarding or legal advice for your organization. Youth protection obligations depend on your affiliation, your funding and your state — your own safeguarding lead decides how any of this applies.