Raise More Money with Matching Gifts

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to giving double on Giving Tuesday, promoting employer matching gifts. We’re really excited as double the donation to be able to share some information about how to Read More

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to giving double on Giving Tuesday, promoting employer matching gifts. We’re really excited as double the donation to be able to share some information about how to incorporate corporate matching gifts into your GivingTuesday fundraising strategy. Right off the top, we want to extend a huge thank you to DonorPerfect for allowing us the opportunity to present this information and help you guys really make the most out of your Giving Tuesday fundraising efforts.

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Very quickly off the bat. My name is Hannah Silver’s, and I’ll be your presenter today, I’m our partnership manager at double the donation. If you ever have any questions or you want to get in contact with me or other members of the team, the easiest way is to email sales at double the donation.com. You can also go to our website, double a donation.com to the contact us tab and submit a ticket there.

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A little bit about us, we are the leading provider of corporate matching gift and volunteer grant tools to nonprofit and educational institutions alike.

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Here’s what we’re going to do today. First, we’re going to talk about why you might consider matching gifts as a significant avenue for your Giving Tuesday fundraising efforts. Then what we’re going to do is talk a little tiny bit about our 360 Match pro solution. And how it integrates with DonorPerfect systems, it is very easy and quick to set up. And we’ve seen a ton of success in the past from these types of integrations. So we’re very excited to share a little bit about this with you. And then of course at the end, we’re going to show you where you can get more information about the educational topics we’ve talked about as well as the product we’ve talked about, and how to get in contact with us if you have additional questions.

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Let’s just head on in.

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So I’m sure you guys are kind of basically aware of what matching gift programs are. But just to catch everyone up and make sure we’re on the same page. The concept of matching gift and volunteer grant programs are very simple. Companies with corporate social responsibility initiatives want to support the nonprofit causes that their employees support. So the easiest way for them to do this is to set up a matching gift or volunteer grant program, we’re going to focus on matching gifts today.

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A matching gift program is very simple. When an employee donates to a cause they care about, they can ask, and we’ll talk about how they do that their employer to match that gift hands matching gift program and send the same amount of money or perhaps even more back to the cause that they’re supporting. So it’s a very easy way for nonprofits to get even more value out of that initial interest. And that initial dedication that an employee of a matching gift company will have.

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So as you’re thinking about expanding your matching gift efforts, especially around giving Tuesday, there kind of five different components to keep in mind, every matching gift program is built a little bit differently, but they’re all going to touch on each of these five elements, these are all going to become very important. So let’s go through each of them individually, starting with nonprofit eligibility.

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This is really important to think of kind of first, because not all companies who establish matching gift programs are going to consider all nonprofit institutions eligible for matching gifts. In particular, so the kind of most common types of nonprofit institutions that are excluded from matching gift programs we find to be religious or political organizations. And that’s not a blanket statement. This is just kind of some generalizations that we’re able to share based on trends and conversations with our largest nonprofit clients. So this isn’t always going to be the case. But as you’re thinking about matching gift, matching gift initiatives in your particular case, you may want to take this into consideration if you are a religious institution or a politically oriented institution.

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It also goes the other way. So if you are an educational based nonprofit or an educational institution, then chances are very good that

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companies are going to match to your nonprofit organization.

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So it kind of goes both ways, but it’s something to consider.

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Second, let’s talk about match ratios. Not all matching gift programs will offer exact matches. So $100 gift becomes $100 matching gift from the company. Although many companies do operate at this one to one ratio, it’s about 91% of companies will offer that direct one to one match. About 5% of companies will actually match at a higher rate. So that could be either a two to one match, or a three to one match in specific cases, which is really exciting to find. About 4% of companies are going to match at a lower rate. So maybe half to one. It gets a little complicated, because sometimes match ratios can vary depending on donors employment status, or the kind of nonprofits that you

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receiving the funds or maybe some other kinds of

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characteristics of the initial gift.

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Which actually brings us to our third category. Some companies are only going to match gifts from full time employees. But this is actually really becoming more and more rare as corporate philanthropy programs are expanding and getting better over time. Most companies nowadays are also going to be able to match those part time employee donations as well. And some of the top programs, especially from bigger companies are going to match retirees or spouses or dependents of those employees. So even if you may be thinking about matching gifts, and you’re thinking about your donor base, and you’re thinking, wow, we have a lot of retirees, or we have a lot of young people, maybe those who are in school, never fear. Corporate Philanthropy programs are really expanding to include those kinds of donors because they recognize that not everyone is a full time employee. And they want to extend that benefit and the publicity of that benefit down to everyone.

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Let’s talk about gift amounts and deadlines. Now, so this is kind of getting into the nitty gritty, every program will set a maximum and minimum donation amount that is eligible to be matched by the company. These parameters are really going to vary widely depending on the corporate program. Most often they’re going to depend on the size of the company and industry that the company is in that’s matching the gifts. But if we’re going to generalize which we can, for the purposes of this, most companies are going to set their minimums somewhere between one in $100 is a very, very common minimum donation amount is $25. Although about 93% of companies will set their minimums at $50 or below. So really accessible for even those small recurring donations to meet

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maximums for about 80% of companies are going to fall in the range between $500.10 $1,000. If we’re looking at the biggest programs for multinational corporations, those fortune 500 companies, those are going to come in at the much higher end of that spectrum, we end up seeing that $10,000 limit a lot in our research, especially with our larger nonprofit clients.

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So lastly, and this is very important, especially as we think about time based donation, fundraising initiatives, there’s always some sort of expiration date or deadline for matching gift requests to be submitted back to companies. Many companies are going to give their employees a certain amount of time after the initial donation was made to request that their gifts match, so perhaps 90 days or a year. But some companies are going to set specific dates every single year, that all requests have to be submitted by where that doesn’t have anything to do with when that initial donation was made. So many, many companies are actually setting those time sensitive requests at the end of the year.

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Because, of course it lines up with annual fundraising and because it’s easy for folks to to remember, some programs will set those kind of catch all program deadlines around April because of tax season, but most of them are going to be toward the end of the year to line up with that.

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This, of course sets a special timeliness and time sensitivity to matching gifts that are gathered around giving Tuesday given that we are coming up against a lot of those very common corporate deadlines. But of course, there are still some companies who are going to offer different types of deadlines, but the end of year is very common.

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So we’ve talked a lot and touched a bit about those requests and requirements. So really quickly, we’re going to break down the mechanics of this process.

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First, your donors making a contribution to your nonprofit very simple.

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If all of those eligibility requirements we talked about on the previous slide are met, that donor is going to submit a matching gift request to their company. This is what actually kicks off the matching gift process, not the initial donation, the fact that it was made, but that request has been submitted to the company. Nowadays, around 80% of the time, those necessary forms are actually electronic submission processes. So it used to be the donor would have to go to HR printout forms, fill them out and return them. Now it’s really really easy. It’s a couple minutes in an online portal, perhaps a benefits portal or an online employee portal.

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companies aren’t even taking electronically filled out PDFs anymore. So this is really great for your donors.

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So Third, once this process has been completed, the company receives the request. What they’re going to do is confirm that all of these eligibility requirements have been met. They may even reach out to your nonprofit to verify that that donation was made. If everything checks out, the company will simply send a check to your nonprofit and everything’s great.

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We find that the most common breakdown in this process is occurring at that second step. If donors don’t know that they need to fill out paperwork or they don’t know where to find the paperwork, they don’t know what existed they don’t even know if they’re eligible for matching gift programs. They

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can’t fill out their matching gift request and actually get the process started. And unfortunately, you as a nonprofit aren’t able to send paperwork to companies on the behalf of your donors, the donors have to do it. That’s why it’s really, really important for you to make sure that you and your donors know about the matching gift programs in general, have easy ways to check if they’re eligible to participate. And really easy ways to check how the process actually needs to be initiated on the donors. And within those time sensitive requirements.

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It becomes really important to know what kind of programs are out there.

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About 65% of fortune 500 companies have matching gift and volunteer grant programs in place. And they’re only getting more and more popular by the year. These appear only some of the companies that will match employees donations, the list really, really does go on and on.

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Something that we like to recommend, especially as it comes to a large, perhaps capital campaign or fundraising drive light Giving Tuesday, we like to recommend to search for some of these larger programs. For example, some of these that I’ve pulled out at the top, perhaps some larger programs, or larger companies that have HQ in your area if you’re a regionally based nonprofit. Or if you’re a larger nonprofit that operates nationally, perhaps where some of your larger nexuses of donors may be

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search for those companies see if they have matching gift programs and then extend kind of special notations or a special notifications to those donors to make sure that they know about these programs and know that they are in fact eligible.

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For example, General Electric, actually had the first ever corporate matching gift program it kicked off in 1954, it was called the GE Foundation’s corporate Alumni Program. And to this day, GE will match employee donations one to one to support that culture of charitable giving. The program is still ongoing. It’s the longest running charitable giving program in the country. And it’s raised more than $1.3 billion to date. Even a couple years ago, once we got the statistics in GE donated more than $36 million to all kinds of nonprofits that full time, part time retired employees, they get all get their donations matched at the same ratio, as long as the donations are over $25 and under 5000.

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So what I would recommend, as you’re going through it and looking at some of these big programs, and looking at which of your donors exist in those spaces, and who might be eligible, is checking out this URL that’s on the screen. So that’s doubled a donation.com/companies that donate to nonprofits, all hyphenated, that’s a really great way for you to look up some of these programs, we’ve pulled out kind of the largest in the country, the most charitable in the country, and it’s just a really great resource and a place to start. So that’s where I would recommend.

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This statistic may be a tiny bit surprising, given what we’ve just seen about how corporate philanthropy programs are becoming more popular. But according to our analysis, somewhere between four and $7 billion in matching gift revenue is left on the table every year. And that’s shocking. I mean, 65% of fortune 500 companies and tons of smaller ones offering these really charitable programs 15 to 19 million individuals in the US workforce alone who are eligible from them. Or for them, this statistic isn’t coming because corporations don’t want to support philanthropy or that enough donors are eligible or those donors don’t want to make their gifts count for more. It’s simply because donors don’t know that matching gifts are an option, and they don’t know how to take advantage of them.

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So really, the best and quickest way to address this gap and matching gifts is to address that gap in knowledge. It’s important to make sure your donors have a resource to see if they’re eligible for matching gifts or if they have program requirements, but also have the next steps right in front of them. So it’s easy for them to get that matching gift request.

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Let’s dive into a little bit about GivingTuesday. In particular, we’ve touched on it along the way. We’ve talked about the timeliness, why matching gifts are great for big fundraising drives, because it allows you to do some nationwide statistics really focus and target your messaging. But let’s talk a little bit more.

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Of course, Giving Tuesday is a worldwide movement. There’s tons of publicity, there’s tons of initiative and inertia that goes along with this day. Which means that there’s a ton of noise surrounding your ask. I mean, charitable donors are charitable all over the place, they may be looking for lots of places to give and to make a difference. And that’s amazing. But it means that it takes a lot more effort to think of how you in particular are going to make the most of it and how you in particular are going to stand out.

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That’s where matching gifts can really come in handy and really be a powerful source of that additional fundraising power that you’re going to need to make Giving Tuesday this really big initiative for your nonprofit.

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Let’s look at it in two different ways.

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First matching gifts will actually increase the number of gifts that you receive in general. So not the matching gifts that come in from the company not counting those. But those initial donations. This may be a little bit surprising, but I’m going to show you some statistics in the next slide that we’ve gathered over the years that will support this, and we’ll talk about exactly why that happens.

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But of course, the second box here, matching gifts can actually increase the impact of each gift, it seems, it seems simple. And it seems kind of common sense that a matching gift would, of course, increase the impact.

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But think about it, the impact of matching gifts is exponential. So I as a donor, make a $100 gift, and I realized that that was actually able to count for 200.

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The next time that I make a gift, I’m gonna make sure that I submit to get my gift matched yet again. And so for the rest of time that I’m donating to your nonprofit, I’m going to make sure I go through this process because that felt amazing. And it was able to really increase my impact without taking any more out of my own savings.

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Let’s talk about some statistics.

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It turns out that 84% of donors are more likely to donate in the first place if their gifts are eligible to be matched. So this is why it’s really important to promote matching gifts in the donation process itself. So including some matching gift search tools or information about matching gifts, including some links to resources and way to figure out if they are eligible.

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We like to recommend that you include this on a waste to give page as well as throughout the donation process itself. So on your confirmation screen, or even in the actual donation process.

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This is kind of a psychological statistic, it hits at the fact that all donors want to give more, they want to support your cause. That’s why they’re out here in the first place, but many of them can’t afford to support you as much as they would like to. So realizing that this gift can actually make so much more of a difference. It really encourages folks to go through with it instead of thinking I can only contribute so much is it really make a difference to say yes, it can make an outsized difference. So that’s where the 84% comes from.

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We also find that if you mentioned corporate matching in your fundraising appeals, you’ll receive on average 71% more donors responding with a donation, and a 51% increase in the amount of this donation. These statistics in particular, I think, are really impactful because they really don’t have anything to do with eligibility. Unlike the first one. Just match in mentioning matching gifts can have that incredible impact on your donations. It makes folks think about that outsized impact that their gifts can actually have.

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These are the kinds of fastbacks that are really helpful in thinking about how matching gifts not only increased the impact of each gift, but can actually increase that overall amount and the overall feeling of donating and what that can actually bring to your nonprofit on Giving Tuesday.

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So how do you do that? Well, we’ve mentioned a little bit of marketing, matching gifts on ways to get paid throughout the donation process. Let’s focus a little bit on that second piece. There’s a lot you’re doing on Giving Tuesday. So we want to make sure that we’re able to offer some kind of automated and surefire way to get information about matching gifts in front of your donors in ways it’s really actionable and closes that awareness gap.

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Here’s how it works. If you’re using DonorPerfect, it’s a really easy three step process. Once a donation from Giving Tuesday is entered into DonorPerfect CRM, that donation record is also going to be passed into 360. Match row. This is of course, if you’ve established this connection, and we’ll show you how to do that.

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Once that transaction record has entered 360 Match Pro, the system is going to automatically sort donors into the appropriate automated email stream. That means if they are eligible for matching gifts, they’re going to receive as this third step, all of the forms, instructions and guidelines they need to go through and submit their matching gift request. It’s also going to include that really important information about timing. So do they need to submit their matching gift request by the end of the year? Or do they have a couple of months? Who do they need to send it to you and how all of that information is automatically provided to them.

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And then, of course, if we’re not sure yet, if they’re eligible for matching gifts, we’re gonna give them tons of opportunity to go in and identify.

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So what you guys are actually able to do is save plenty of time because the system is doing this automatically. You’re going to increase that incremental revenue and you’re also going to get some really important insight into where your donors work. And that’s really useful for a number of reasons, especially in large fundraising drives.

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Activating this integration is really, really easy. All you have to do is once you have a 360 match pro account

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Log into your account, go to settings and integrations. And then find the DonorPerfect card, input your DonorPerfect API key, which you can receive from your DonorPerfect team and hit any great. It’s that easy. It takes a few seconds. And once you’ve done it, every transaction will flow through DonorPerfect CRM into 360. Match from Easy peasy. And then your donors get all the information they need.

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Let me show you an example of 360 Match pro in action.

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So when a donor uses a corporate email address to donate, we’re going to be able to automatically tell you where they work. So for example, look at this top donation here. Don donor gave $100. And he has the email address of Don donor at home depot.com. So that looks incredible, that’s able to tell us automatically where he works, were able to find that he works with a Home Depot, we know everything about his corporate matching gift program.

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This means that we’re going to send him all the information he needs to then go in and submit his matching gift request to the Home Depot and get that all filled out.

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So here we go.

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This status here means we have sent him all the information he needs. And we’re simply waiting on him to take that next step.

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The emails that go out are branded to your organization, they’re going to contain important information about the donation, we’re going to personalize those emails so that it’s very clear that it’s coming just to him. And we’re directing him most importantly, to his next step. So the very next step in the email is going to send him directly to Home Depot’s matching gift program. Here it’s one of the 80% of programs that’s online. So one click and he’s there. Second click, he’s going to let us know that he has submitted his matching gift request. We’re going to note that for you guys so that you can follow him through the system. And then when we refresh 360 Match bro, we’re able to see that his status for Don donor who works at Home Depot has changed to match submit it

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really easy, making sure that we’re getting the proper information in the proper hands.

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But what if, as in 95% of cases, a donor uses a personal email address, or you don’t have their employer on file.

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That’s when we’re going to look at what happens when a donor uses a personal email address to donate.

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So let’s look at Sally donor who donated $100. She’s using a personal email address, so we don’t know where she works yet.

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The email that she receives from 360 Match Pro is going to look a little bit different.

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Instead of

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excuse me, instead of directing her directly to her corporate matching gift program, because we don’t know which one she’s eligible for yet, we’re going to prompt her directly from her email inbox to check if your company will match her donation.

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So when she does that,

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we’re going to send her to a very simple matching gift Company Search tool. Once she searches, as we see here,

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her company name in the tool, this can go directly to your matching gift page on your website. She’s gonna get all the information she needs very easy Lee laid out and of course most importantly directing her to her matching gift program online portal.

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When we go back to 360 Match Pro, we’re able to see the in real time from that email alone, we’re able to tie this back to Sally and tell you where she works.

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And then of course, what Sally goes back into her email, she’s able to take the same step as dondon. Let us know that she’s submitted her matching gift request. And we’ve noticed this and this appears back to you see you know exactly where Sally is in her process.

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Think about the volume of gifts that you process every Giving Tuesday, and how much time it would take for you to research or follow up with every single match eligible donor. Figure out the ones who are match eligible. If you don’t know yet figure out what all those program components are figure out where they need to go to submit their matching gift request on high volume giving days like giving Tuesday, your team doesn’t have time for that. So what we’re able to do is identify even more match opportunities than you had before. And we’re able to automatically follow up with them custom branded coming directly from your domain to make sure that they’re actually pushed to submit those matching gift requests.

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Let us know how we can help. We would love to hear from you. So again, you can find this at double the donation.com you can contact us by heading to our contact tab. And of course if you’d like to learn a little bit more how to integrate that 360 Match pro solution with DonorPerfect

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You can head to our public support base. I’ve put the link here. But of course, if you go to support dot w a donation.com and search DonorPerfect in the search bar, you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for. So let us know how we can help. We’d love to make. We’d love to make Giving Tuesday the absolute best experience that it can be for you guys. So thank you again to DonorPerfect for allowing us to come in and share this information with you. We really enjoyed it and we’re looking forward to a successful giving day for everyone. Thank you guys

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