The ways companies give includes:

• Support in kind, such as their products, materials or old office equipment so for example a timber yard might donate wood for an adventure playground. Some groups get free or subsidised office accommodation or printing services.
• Advice and support. Local firms such as solicitors, accountants or architects may offer their services for free.
• Contacts. The help of senior business people can be very important in fundraising from others in the local business community.
• Employee secondment/volunteering. Companies may second staff to help local groups or organise voluntary activities with their staff, including fundraising. This may require extra work for your group in managing the people.
• Allowing access to employees to encourage payroll giving - where staff donate through their pay check and which carries tax benefits.

There are organisations that place volunteers with professional experience in voluntary and community organisations. For example:

• Pro-Help is a professional advice and support service for local community groups and voluntary organisations. It operates through 33 ProHelp groups in city, urban and rural locations across the country. Members include solicitors, accountants, surveyors, architects, public relations, marketing and management consultants who undertake one-off projects. Each ProHelp group is a local network of professional firms who often work collaboratively on larger projects.
• Law Works is the operating name of the Solicitors Pro Bono Group - an independent charity which aims to support, promote, encourage and increase the delivery of free legal advice to individuals and communities in need.
• REACH recruits and supports people with managerial, technical and professional expertise and places them in part-time, unpaid roles in voluntary organisations that need their help. They place people in organisations near where they live, anywhere in the UK. There are no age limits and there is no charge for the service.

• In Kind Direct is a charity which distributes new goods donated by some of Britain’s best-known manufacturers and retailers to hundreds of voluntary organisations working at home and abroad.

If you are seeking sponsorship, you need to be clear about what you are offering in return. This is a business transaction and it forms a contract. Unlike a donation it counts as taxable and VATable income. The Charity Commission has information about sponsorship on their website that can help to identify what is actually involved.

Payroll Giving offers charities a way to combine fundraising with building a relationship with their donors, and with the corporate community. What's more it provides a regular source of income that can be relied upon in a way that one-off donations cannot - month in month out. There are some 22 million people paid through PAYE who could be using the scheme. The potential for donations is huge and is an approach that might be suitable for generating corporate funds for some third sector organisations.

A range of bodies exist to help to promote the role of companies in the community such as Business in the Community (BITC) which promotes the role that responsible companies play in improving society. BITC has recently incorporated the work of Business Community Connections to increase the impact that businesses have in the community.

Ensure that you tailor your approach and don’t simply rely on circular letters addressed ‘Dear sir/madam’ as these will end up in the bin. By doing your homework and making a telephone call you can establish whether the company supports or is interested in particular causes. Companies will want to know what they are getting out of it – you should think about what might be in it for them before you make an approach.