How service dog organizations get items donated

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

The order

1. Puppy raisers, for promotion first

Skills, handmade work, photography, and above all their networks. Ask lightly and never as an obligation: the puppy raiser community.

2. Veterinary practices

They see the organization's dogs, they understand the work, and their clients are your bidders. Frequently the largest single donor category in the silo.

3. The pet industry

Groomers, boarding kennels, daycare, dog walkers, pet retailers, trainers, photographers who specialise in dogs. Every one has a commercial reason to reach an audience of committed dog people, which is exactly what your list is.

4. Breeders and breeding-stock hosts

Already inside the programme and rarely asked for anything beyond the dogs.

5. Service clubs

Several service organizations fund assistance dogs as a stated programme focus and actively look for projects with a named cost — a training stage is exactly that shape. Ask to present with a dog, properly handled.

6. Disability organizations and clinicians locally

Partners rather than donors mostly, but a promotion channel and a source of introductions.

7. The wider community

Restaurants, retail, experiences. Last, for filler.

Lead with the audience, because it is unusual

A service dog organization can offer a donating business something specific: access to a list of people who own dogs, spend money on dogs, and are emotionally invested in dogs. For a groomer or a pet retailer that is a better proposition than a logo on a banner, and few of them have been told it that way.

Brief solicitors on the dog rules

Anyone asking on the organization's behalf will be asked about the dogs, and may be offered an item that would involve one. Half a page: what may be offered involving a dog and under what conditions, what cannot be offered at all, and the language the organization uses about recipients and career changes.

Timing

• Ten weeks — raisers, for promotion and skills
• Eight weeks — veterinary practices and the pet industry
• Six weeks — service clubs, whose cycles are slow, and breeders
• Four weeks — community and gap-filling
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every dog item carries its handler, group size and conditions

Avoid the fortnight around a placement handover or a known loss in the raiser community.

General information, not legal or clinical advice for your organization. Access rules, recipient privacy and the language your own community prefers differ — your training leadership and the people you serve decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.