Automated Donation Matching Program

Is Your School Leaving Corporate Matching Gift Money on the Table?

Billions in corporate matching funds go unclaimed each year, but there’s an easy fix.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Corporate matching gift programs are a valuable source of fundraising revenue that are literally free for the taking. Yet, all too often, these programs get overlooked by nonprofits, including educational institutions.

Our partners at Double the Donation report that an incredible $4-7 billion in corporate matching gifts go unclaimed each year. That’s lost money that could have been making a meaningful difference but instead sits idly by in corporate coffers patiently waiting to be collected by savvy non-profits in the know.

The good news is that these days finding and calling dibs on those matching dollars is as easy as clicking the Let’s Check! button. In this short post, we’ll quickly run down the basics of automated gift matching and show you how your school can start turning every match-eligible dollar donated into two.

Corporate matching gift programs are more prevalent than you think

You may be surprised to learn just how many businesses are willing to get behind the causes that matter most to their workforce. Nearly two-thirds of all Fortune 500 companies offer a donation matching program, and so do many smaller companies. In fact, it’s estimated that anywhere from 15-19 million individuals currently work for a company with a donation matching program.

So, why do precious matching funds go unclaimed? Part of the problem has to do with awareness. Often, employees either:

• Don’t know that their company has a donation matching program; or
• Don’t understand how to take advantage of corporate matching.

Double the Donation reports that a whopping 78 percent of match-eligible donors have no idea whether their employer offers a donation matching program. We need to fix that. Nobody appreciates the power of education more (or wields that power better) than schools—so teaching your donors about corporate matching opportunities should be priority number one.

Why it’s important to drive awareness about corporate matching

According to data aggregated by the marketing agency Nonprofits Source, mentioning “matching gifts” in fundraising appeals results in a 71 percent increase in the response rate, and a 51 percent increase in the average donation amount. So, simply educating donors about the mere existence of corporate matching gift programs may be enough to not only nudge a person to give, but to also give a little extra—and that’s before they even activate the matching gift process.

Furthermore, 84 percent of people surveyed said they’re more likely to donate to a cause if they know a donation matching program is offered. The lesson learned here is that educating prospective donors about matching gifts is a powerful motivating force—one advancement teams can’t afford to ignore. So, if you have a process in place to identify corporate matching opportunities, tell everyone. Highlight it in your fundraising outreach, feature it prominently on your website, and share the good news on social media.

Now, if you don’t already have a process for capturing matching funds in place, or the process you do have is manual and time-consuming, it’s time to add automation to your online giving forms.

GiveCampus makes it easy for donors and schools to take advantage of corporate matching programs— automatically

Adding an embedded matching gift search tool to your online donation form is the easiest way for you and your donors to instantly identify corporate matching opportunities and get the claim process rolling while it’s still top of mind.

GiveCampus seamlessly integrates with 360MatchPro, a gift-matching tool created by Double the Donation that enables donors to see if their gift is match-eligible simply by entering their company name on the confirmation form and clicking the Let’s check! button.

This is powerful because even if a donor has never heard of a donation matching program before, they’ll learn about it on the Thank you/confirmation page and be presented with an easy way to potentially double their impact.

Here’s how it works:

The GiveCampus integration with 360MatchPro enables you to:

1. Instantly identify corporate matching opportunities, so you know which donations are eligible.
2. Send the right matching gift information to the right donors at the right time, based on what you know about them.
3. Provide you and your advancement team with actionable insights, so you can focus on your top matching gift revenue opportunities.

Embedding this simple tool into your online giving form will help your institution maximize the amount of money you raise from corporate matching gift programs with a minimal amount of ongoing effort.

Imagine identifying an additional $40,000 in matching gift revenue—Marietta College did just that through automation

Watch “Maximize Corporate Matching” on Demand

If you’d like to learn more about how automated gift matching works on the GiveCampus platform, you can now view the webinar that we co-hosted with our partners from Double the Donation, on demand. Watch Maximize Corporate Matching now.