What to ask a local business for, Besides a Check.

The owner of a hardware store, restaurant, or accounting practice hears requests for donations constantly. Most of those requests are for money, and most small businesses have little to spare. A nonprofit that arrives with a narrow, practical ask often gets a better answer and starts a longer relationship.

Goods and services

An in-kind gift can be worth more to a small organization than cash of the same value, because it replaces a budget line. A print shop can produce event materials. A restaurant can cater a volunteer training. A contractor can repair a ramp. When you accept in-kind gifts, send a receipt that describes what was given without assigning it a value. The rules for acknowledging non-cash gifts are specific.

Professional expertise

Accountants, lawyers, designers, and IT consultants can donate a few hours of expertise that a new nonprofit could not otherwise afford. The request works best when it is bounded. Ask for a review of your chart of accounts, a one-hour consultation on a lease, or help setting up email. Note that the value of donated services is generally not deductible for the professional, so you are asking for generosity, not offering a tax benefit.

Space

A meeting room once a month, a storefront window for a collection drive, or a parking lot for a Saturday event solves problems that are expensive to solve with money.

Employees

Employers of any size can encourage staff to volunteer. Larger local employers may have formal matching gift programs, which double employee donations, or volunteer grant programs, which pay a set amount to a nonprofit for each hour an employee volunteers. Ask the human resources office whether such programs exist. Many go unused because employees do not know about them.

Access

A business owner who believes in the work can introduce the organization to customers, suppliers, and peers. A table at a chamber of commerce breakfast or an introduction to a bank's community relations officer can matter more than a gift.

How to ask

Keep the request short and specific. Explain what the organization does in two sentences, what you need, why this business is the right one to ask, and how you will recognize the help. Offer an acknowledgment that stays within sponsorship rules, such as a thank-you on your website or at an event. Follow up afterward with what the gift made possible. That report is the most important part of the relationship.