When a company offers to sponsor your support group

Run a health community for long enough and the emails start arriving. A supplement brand would love to partner with your group. A private clinic wants to host a webinar. A drug company asks whether it can survey your members, or offers to cover your hosting costs. Some of these are well meant. All of them deserve a careful look, because what they really want is your members' trust.

Questions I ask before replying

• What exactly do they want in return: visibility, data, access to members, or just their name on a page?
• Would members be surprised or upset to find out about the arrangement?
• Does the sponsor make or sell anything members of this group might be advised to take or avoid?
• Could we walk away next year without the group falling over?

Lines we don't cross

No sponsor gets member data, contact details or private posts, and no sponsor sees or approves what members write. We don't take money from companies selling products related to the condition the group is about. And nobody pays to post in the feed, however nicely the post is written.

What can work

Small, no-strings support from organisations with no stake in members' treatment decisions: a hospital foundation covering hosting costs, or a patient charity lending a room for an in-person meetup. Even then, we say so openly in the group description, so members know who helps keep the lights on.

I'm not against money. Communities cost something to run, and unpaid volunteers burn out. But a support group's value rests on members believing nobody is selling to them. Once that belief goes, it's very hard to win back.