How To Solve Common Matching Gift Challenges
65% of Fortune 500 Companies offer corporate matching gift programs and about 10% of the US workforce is eligible for corporate matching gifts. Yet $4-7 billion in potential corporate matching gift revenue goes unclaimed annually and the average fundraising institution receives just 1.31% of individual contributions in corporate matching gifts.
This means that you might be able to exceed your annual fundraising target with a little extra effort in donor relationship management. But claiming matching gifts must become a crucial fundraising tactic.
Because not all employers offer matching gift programs and many donors who are eligible for matching gifts don't know what the process will entail. In fact, according to Double the Donation, 78% of match-eligible donors aren't aware that their employer offers a matching gift program and only 7% of match-eligible donors submit a matching gift request. Also, you'll need to gather and measure a lot of data from many sources.
In this blog post, we'll discuss these issues and show you how to solve them.
1. Most Donors Don't Know That They're Eligible
Do you know that 84% of donors say they're more likely to donate if their gift will be matched? And one-third of donors are likely to give a larger gift if matching will be applied to their donation.
But 78% of donors don't know about the existence of matching gift programs within their company. And this hurts fundraising.
Solving this problem is not as simple as asking donors to submit requests for their gifts to be matched.
This is because many match-eligible donors are unfamiliar with the process. They won't know where to start, which departments they should consult and how long the process might take. Some might be concerned that their employers won't have matching gift programs. All these concerns are valid because not all organizations match employee donations. And those that do have restrictions.
In most cases, these restrictions cover certain types of nonprofits, the ratio of corporate gifts per employee donation, types of employees, the gifts amount and time frames for when donations can no longer be matched. Because of these restrictions, it isn't smart to expect donors to find all these answers themselves. The process might be slow, discouraging and confusing.
You must help them discover whether their employer offers a donation matching program, if they are eligible and answers to related questions.
But you don't need to hire a research team to unearth matching gift information about a donor's employer. With reliable matching gift software, you can solve this problem effortlessly. Learn more about how to use good software for claiming matching gifts in our free webinar.
2. Analyzing Data Can Become Complicated
Finding, measuring, and interpreting data from multiple sources is integral to claiming corporate matching gifts. Because you must advertise and market your matching gifts campaign. You'll need matching gift program data on donors and their employers when planning an effective fundraising and marketing plan.
But it can quickly become a massive library. After all, you'll need lots of information on your donor, his online and offline behavior, his employer, the organization's size, its matching gifts program, etc. That you'll also be using multiple sources to get the information - like your website analytics, social media analytics, live auction, etc. - complicates this further.
But since data affects high-level marketing and fundraising decisions, you must find a way to handle this quickly and in real-time. Or your efforts will be slow and ineffective.
Letting online fundraising programs collect and analyze your data is the best option. Since they're custom-made for Nonprofits, you'll find them easy to use. Reliable software for gathering and analyzing data is DoubletheDonation's 360MatchPro which can be integrated with Arreva's All-in-One, Fundraising, and Donor Relationship Management Software, ExceedFurther.
