How refugee services organizations get items donated

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

Lead with employers

The strongest and most distinctive ask. Businesses that hire refugees have solved a staffing problem, know their employees are stable and long-serving, and want more of it — which is a commercial conversation rather than a charitable one.

• Offer what they want: credential recognition help, language support, cultural orientation for managers
• Then ask for an item, a sponsorship and a match
• Ask them to speak to other employers, which carries weight the organization cannot
• And ask about their vendors and supply chain

The order

2. Congregations and co-sponsor groups

Frequently already supporting a specific household, organized, and holding their own networks. They will donate, host, promote and volunteer.

3. Established community businesses

Restaurants, grocers, salons, shops and services run by people who arrived years ago. Direct personal connection, and their premises are community noticeboards for promotion as well.

4. Universities, colleges and professional bodies

Courses, lectures, facilities and expertise — plus medical, legal and accounting professionals who volunteer and whose services are strong lots.

5. Volunteers

Unusually engaged, professionally varied, and the group who will also tell you what is wrong with your campaign material.

6. Ethnic and cultural associations

Approach as partners rather than as a resource — with something to offer, and with an understanding of the community's own priorities.

7. The wider community

Standard, and last — with the recognition that some businesses will decline for reasons that are about the politics rather than the ask.

Offer sponsors the option of anonymity

The point specific to this silo. A business that supports the work may face pressure for doing so publicly, and a recognition-only policy loses those donations.

Offer named and unnamed sponsorship as equal standard options, without asking why. It costs nothing and it gets gifts that would otherwise not happen.

Brief solicitors carefully

Half a page: what the organization does, what a provision unit costs, the programme proportion, that nothing identifying may be said about a client — including indirect detail — and a short factual response to a hostile question, so a volunteer is not improvising a political argument on a doorstep.

Timing

• Twelve weeks — protection review of all planned material; solicitor briefing written; translation planned
• Ten weeks — employers, led with what you can offer them
• Eight weeks — congregations, co-sponsor groups, universities
• Six weeks — established community businesses and associations
• Four weeks — volunteers, professionals, wider community
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every item and image checked for identifying detail, in every language published

Avoid the weeks around a hostile local or national incident, and be prepared to pause.

General information, not legal or protection advice for your organization. Client confidentiality where immigration status, asylum claims or family abroad are involved is a safety matter with legal dimensions — your legal and protection staff decide how any of this applies, and they should read anything public before it is published.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.