Beginner’s guide to Corporate Matching Gifts

Steven Shattuck: All right, Hannah, my watch just struck one o’clock Eastern. Is it okay if I go ahead and kick us off here officially?

Hannah Silvers: Let’s get started.

Steven Shattuck: All right, cool. Well, welcome, everyone. Good afternoon if you’re on the East Coast, good morning if you are on the West Coast or somewhere in between. Thanks for being here for today’s Bloomerang webinar, Corporate Matching Gifts: The Beginner’s Essential Skills. My name is Steven Shattuck, and I am the chief engagement officer over here at Bloomerang, and I’ll be moderating today’s discussion, as always.

Just a couple of housekeeping items before we get going. We are recording this presentation, and we’ll be sending out that recording later this afternoon, as well as the slides, in case you didn’t already get those. So if you have to leave early, or maybe want to review the content, or there’s just some one piece of information that you didn’t quite get to jot down, don’t worry, we will get you all that good stuff.

As you’re listening today, please feel free to use the chat box right there on your webinar screen. We’re going to save some time at the end for Q&A, just as much time as we can before the 2:00 Eastern hour, so don’t be afraid, don’t be shy, don't sit on those hands. We’ve got an expert in matching gifts here with you today, eager to answer your questions, so send them as you listen. We’re going to try to save just as much time as we can to get to those. You can also tweet us @BloomerangTech or use the hashtag #Bloomerang. I’ll keep an eye on the Twitter feed there as well.

And if you have any trouble with the audio through your computer speakers, we find that the audio over the phone does a little bit better than the computer audio. So if you have a phone nearby, dial in. If you’re worried about bothering any co-workers around you, or it’s uncomfortable to dial in by phone, rather than giving up on us completely, that way you can listen along for the full hour. There’s a phone number you can dial into in the email from ReadyTalk that went out about an hour ago, at 12:00 Eastern today, so check that out if you have any technical issues with the audio.

Now, if this is your first webinar, I just want to say an extra-special welcome to all of you folks joining us for the first time on these Thursday webinars. It’s one of our favorite things we do here at Bloomerang. We bring on extra guests every week to talk about a topic that they are passionate about. In addition to that, we offer donor management software. That’s what Bloomerang is really all about. If you are interested in our offering or learning more about what our software can do for you, check out our website. You can watch a quick video demo of our software in action. Don’t do that now. Wait until this presentation is over, because we’ve got a really good one in store for you all.

We have an expert on matching gifts and matching gift programs from corporations. We’ve got Hannah Silvers joining us from Double the Donation. Hey Hannah, how’s it going?

Hannah Silvers: Hey, it’s going great. It’s a beautiful day in Atlanta, and I’m really excited.

Steven Shattuck: Yes, I’m jealous, because I love Atlanta and the weather here is not very good. And I’m very excited to have you. If you guys don’t know Hannah or Double the Donation, they are my go-to for all things matching gift. They are a leader in the sector, in my opinion, and definitely know what they’re talking about. She’s going to give you the lowdown on matching gifts in general, and she’s going to be here to answer your questions at the end as well. I would definitely check out Double the Donation, not just to maybe make them a vendor of yours, but they put out really good free resources: webinars, blog posts, great fundraising advice in general on the website. So I would definitely invite you to check them out after this presentation. But I’m not too familiar with matching gifts, so I’m going to be listening very closely to this one. So I’m going to hand it over. Hannah, take it away, my friend. Tell us all about corporate matching gifts.

Hannah Silvers: Excellent. Yes. Well, there will be a pop quiz at the end, but only for your Steven, is that okay?

Steven Shattuck: Okay, I’m ready.

Hannah Silvers: So first of all, thank you so much to the entire Bloomerang team, but especially to Steven for having me here. It’s really a pleasure to present and share this incredible information with all of you. Really, our goal for the day is for everyone to walk away feeling like experts on matching gifts at your organization, even if right now you don’t consider yourself much of an expert. We’re going to break it all down. We’ve got plenty of time. We’re going to start at the beginning with the basics, all the way from an overview of corporate philanthropy programs to the actual nitty-gritty mechanics of how they work. We’re going to get a little bit specific, and then we’re going to bring it back out and talk about how you can take what you’ve learned today and really go back after this webinar and implement some incredible tips and tricks in your own organization. So really, the idea is that you feel confident you can go back with the information you need to boost your matching gift revenue. So that’s the plan.

Before we jump into that, though, the obligatory “about me” and “about us” slides. Double the Donation is the leading provider of corporate matching gift and volunteer grant software to nonprofits, which can sound a bit complicated, but really all it means is that we do two things. First, we build and maintain a database of companies that offer corporate matching gift programs. Then we develop tools, and we work with partners, to ensure that nonprofits can access that information and present it to their donors in accessible and actionable ways. So our matching gift database tool plugs into your web pages or your donation forms, where donors can type the name of their employer into a search box and get all the information they need to start that matching gift process and get that revenue back to your organization. We also offer an enterprise platform that integrates directly into your donation forms and can automate some of that outreach that you might be doing manually.

If you want to hear more about the software, I’m not going to talk about it right now during our webinar unless you have specific questions, because today our goal is to get everybody familiar with the programs that our tools build off of and help you take advantage of. But if you want to learn more, by all means reach out to us. There will be plenty of ways to do that at the end of the presentation, or even just hannah@doublethedonation.com.

A tiny bit about me: my name is Hannah Silvers, as I was introduced. I’m a partnership manager for Double the Donation, which means that I work with our technical integration partners, but I also get to lead webinars like this one and other partnership and educational outreach programs. So this is the treat of my day for me, and I hope you can tell.

What we’re going to do today is split it up into three parts. We’re going to start with the basics of matching gifts: the different types of corporate philanthropy, how matching gifts fit into that bigger picture, and then some specifications, so that you really feel like the expert. Once we’ve got everyone on the same page and we’ve learned a little bit about the terminology, then we’re going to get into some essential skills to master matching gifts. We’re really going to focus on marketing, and we’ll explain why and how when we get there. At the end, once we’ve added all these tools to your toolbox, we’re going to break for Q&A with whatever time we have left. So please, I know Steven said this, but take advantage of that Q&A section on the side of your screen. Send us tons of questions, and we’ll get all of them either at the end or, if we don’t have time to get through them all, we’ll reach back out after the webinar to make sure we get those questions answered for you. All right, here we go. Everybody ready to dive in? Let’s do it.

It would be an understatement to say that there are a lot of different types of corporate philanthropy programs, but luckily you really don’t need to know about all of them, just the most popular ones. So what we’re going to do now is get some terminology and distinctions between how these programs work under our belt. First, by far, the most popular of all corporate philanthropy programs are matching gift programs, especially when you factor in companies that match those automatic payroll deductions, which is about two-thirds of employers in the U.S. at this point. So more than half of Fortune 500 companies offer matching gift programs, plus a litany of smaller companies, and a minimum of two billion dollars actually passes through them every year. We’re going to deal with matching gifts in a lot more depth later, so from here we’re just going to move on to get you familiar with these other types.

Volunteer grants are the next biggest form. When companies offer volunteer grants, what they’re doing is rewarding employees’ volunteer hours with financial contributions to the same nonprofit that the employees are volunteering for. Usually these work on what we call a threshold model, instead of an hour-to-dollar direct correlation. So, for example, an employee might volunteer for 20 hours or 40 hours with the same nonprofit in a year, and that might earn that nonprofit a $500 or $1,000 donation from the company. Volunteer grants are the second most popular form of corporate philanthropy. We find about 40% of Fortune 500 companies offer them, and especially lately we’ve seen team volunteering take off. A certain number of associates or employees from the same location or branch might go and volunteer together, and they might earn more money than they would have individually. This has become more popular even today; about 70%-ish of volunteer grant programs have this kind of stipulation for team volunteering.

So these are your two most popular and most widespread forms of corporate philanthropy programs today. We also have some of these other ones, which are a little bit less common but are incredibly valuable if you get a chance to take advantage of them. First, we’ve got employee grant stipends. They are less common, but they’re excellent to take advantage of. Some companies award grants outright to employees, who then pass along the grants to the nonprofit of their choice. I take it that most of y’all are familiar with the way that grants work. This is just maybe one step removed: it goes through the employee instead of straight from a foundation to the nonprofit.

These first three programs are all employee-initiated, meaning that the company sets the infrastructure and the employees choose to participate in the program. But that’s not always how it works. For instance, with community grants, nonprofits are the ones that initiate these by completing the application set up by companies. It’s a pretty traditional grant process, in the same way that you might apply for a grant from a foundation, except you’re applying for it from the company. And of course, you have volunteer support initiatives. These are kind of like volunteer grants, and these programs partner employees of companies directly with nonprofits to provide specialized volunteer support. That usually means some kind of skilled consulting or skilled service, for instance, accounting services, or special items especially around technology, so computers and infrastructure. These programs are becoming more and more popular every single year, especially in the past decade. Skills-based volunteering at this point accounts for a greater percentage of employee volunteer programs than unskilled, and that was the case for the first time in 2015. Also, by the way, the statistics on the slide are all coming from our own analysis at Double the Donation, through all of our partnerships with companies and with managers of these programs, as well as sources like America’s Charities and GuideStar.

So let’s dive into matching gifts. Here’s a very quick overview. Matching gifts are a kind of corporate philanthropy program in which companies pledge to donate the same amount of money to the same nonprofits that their employees do, so hence they are matching. Companies set aside portions of their budget specifically for this purpose, and all the employee has to do is fill out the necessary paperwork after making the donation to their favorite nonprofit.

Speaking of paperwork, matching gift programs always come with specifications that you need to be aware of if you’re looking to expand your own matching gift effort. This is important to remember because there are no standards set up for a matching gift program; every company gets to set their own specifications. So these are the top five specifications that a company might think about when they’re creating their programs, and some of them are really important for you to understand as you’re looking to make donors aware of the programs and seeing which companies you might want to be reaching out to specifically. And you'll understand why.

First, not all companies will actually match donations to all nonprofits. In particular, we find often that religious and political organizations can be ineligible to receive some corporate funds for a variety of reasons. Some companies will actually specifically match donations at a higher ratio, or for more employees, to particular nonprofits that they have a closer connection with. We see this a lot with educational nonprofits, and especially airlines tend to match at higher rates to educational-themed nonprofits or institutions. Most often though, speaking generally, most corporate programs will match donations to educational institutions like K–12 schools, school foundations, or universities, and also healthcare institutions, whether a hospital, a hospice care center, or specialty care centers, or environmental organizations. Organizations of all types .

Second, not all matching gift programs will offer exact matches. Although many companies match donations at a one-to-one ratio, about 91% of companies will directly match an exact donation at the exact amount. About 5% of companies match at higher rates, so maybe they double the donation, while about 4% will match at a lower rate, so they might match about half. It gets even more complicated because the match ratios can vary depending on the donor’s employment status or the kind of nonprofit that’s receiving the funds.

Third, some companies will only match gifts from full-time employees, but that’s becoming more rare as these programs get better over time. Most companies nowadays will also match part-time employee donations as well as donations from full-time employees. Some of the top programs in these bigger companies will also match for retirees, or even spouses or dependents of current or retired employees. So it just depends, usually on the size or maybe even the industry of the company that’s sponsoring the program.

Fourth, and this is very important, especially when you’re thinking about communicating this information to your donors and when you’re going to do it: every program sets a maximum and minimum donation amount that they will match. These parameters vary widely depending on the program, the size of the company, and the industry the company is in, although if we’re going to generalize, most companies will set their minimums between $1 and $100. We find a very common minimum donation amount of $25, but about 93% of companies will set their minimums at $50 or below. Maximums, for 80% of companies, fall anywhere in the range between $500 and $10,000, but if we’re looking at the biggest programs of these multinational corporations, Fortune 500 companies will come at the higher end of that spectrum. We do see the $10,000 number a lot in our research.

Fifth, this is very important. If you take away nothing else from this slide, please take this one: there are always some sort of expiration dates or deadlines for matching gift requests to be submitted to companies. Many companies will give their employees a certain amount of time after that initial donation was made to request that their gift be matched. That could be anything from a quarter to an entire year, to a specific number of days even. But some companies will set specific dates every single year by which all requests have to be submitted, and it doesn’t have anything to do with when the initial donation was made. We often find that this time is either around the end of the calendar year or the end of tax season.

We talked a bit about requests and submitting requests and requirements, so let’s break down the mechanics of the process. Your donor first makes a contribution to your nonprofit, and that donation has to be made before the process can begin. Then, if we meet all of these eligibility requirements that we were talking about on the previous slide, the donor will submit a matching gift request to their company. Most often nowadays, about 80% of the time, the necessary forms are an electronic submission process. It used to be that the donor would go to HR to get some printed-out forms, fill them out, and return them, but now most times companies aren’t even taking electronically fillable PDFs anymore; it’s an online portal. Third, once the company receives that request, they’re going to check all those eligibility requirements again and then reach out to your nonprofit to verify that that original donation was made. And then, if it all checks out, number four, the company sends the check to your nonprofit.

We find the most common breakdown in this process, by far, is at this second step, because everything else at this point is pretty automated. If donors don’t know about the paperwork, or don’t know where to find it, or don’t know how to fill it out, or don’t even know if they’re eligible or if the company offers a program, they can’t fill it out, and they can’t get this process started. The trick is that nonprofits cannot submit paperwork to companies on behalf of the donors. The donors are the ones that need to do so. That’s why it’s so important for you, as a nonprofit, to take the agency and make sure that you’re communicating to your donors not only that these programs exist, but how they can check if their company offers one, and if the donor and their donation are eligible to participate and have the gift matched.

So it becomes really important to know what kind of programs are out there, just to be aware, for your own sake, about who offers them and how they work. Luckily, we find about 65% of Fortune 500 companies have these programs in place, and they’re just getting more popular by the year. These are just some of the companies that match employee donations, and the list really goes on and on. Chances are you have donors in your database that work for these companies. So what I’ve done here is pull out five of the top programs, for a few different reasons: they touch on different elements of the matching gift process, and the scope of the industry, and where we’re at at the moment. I’m going to go through this pretty quickly just to give you a sense of how a lot of these programs work and what the requirements are like. But if you want to know more about them, I would highly encourage you to save this URL. We have a URL on our website where we have collected more than 50 of the most popular matching gift programs in the country and linked to all of the requirements. This is a really great way to get started if you really are a true beginner at matching gifts, just to get a feel for how the programs work. The statistics can mean a lot and they’re really helpful when you’re getting started, but it is really helpful to actually see how the programs themselves are structured. I’ll have the URL up again later, so feel free, if you don’t get it now, you’ll get it later in the presentation as well.

Right now, let’s talk a little bit about these programs. Here’s a fun bit of trivia: General Electric created the first-ever corporate matching gift program, in 1954. It was the GE Foundation’s Corporate Alumni Program. What it did was match employee donations one-to-one to support a culture of charitable giving, and that program is still ongoing today as the longest-running charitable giving program in the country. It has raised more than $1.3 billion to date. In 2017, GE donated more than $36 million to all kinds of nonprofits through matching gifts alone. Full-time, part-time, and retired employees get their donations matched one-to-one as long as the donations fall over $25, that common minimum, and under $5,000, that lower end of the maximum spectrum.

BP offers an incredibly wide range of employee giving programs, especially when it comes to volunteer grants. They also offer those employee grants that we were talking about earlier. But really, what shines about BP’s program is their matching gifts. They match minimum donation amounts of that common $25 and maximum donation amounts of $5,000 on a one-to-one ratio. But those donations don’t have to come straight from the employee themselves to qualify for matching. If a BP employee participates in some kind of peer-to-peer campaign in which they’re raising money from their families and friends, BP will match those donations as well. That’s a great thing to know if you have employees in your database who work for BP, especially if your nonprofit engages in social fundraising.

Now let’s use Gap: Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athletica, the entire parent corporation. Those employees are eligible to have their gifts matched one-to-one if they work full-time, part-time, or are retired. What’s interesting about this program is that the maximum gift amount changes depending on the employee’s position within the company. Part-time employees will be towards the low end of the spectrum, at a $1,000 maximum donation that can be matched, while senior vice presidents can match up to $10,000. Gap also offers those individual and team volunteer grants, which are really important. Individuals may earn $150 for every 15 hours of volunteering, while teams of three or more from the same store can earn $250 for 25 hours of collective volunteering. And even better, nonprofits with a Gap employee on the board can earn between $1,000 and $10,000 as an outright grant. So definitely go check out the Gap program and learn more about it at that URL, because there are a lot of interesting elements there that a lot of other, smaller companies are looking to emulate.

IBM specifies a few specific types of nonprofits that it will match donations to: educational institutions, hospitals and other healthcare, and cultural and environmental organizations. So it’s one of those that won’t match to the entire broad spectrum of 501(c)(3) organizations. Current employees will have their donations matched one-to-one, while all retired employees are eligible for a half-to-one match. So that’s where we see the employment status affecting the matching. As with many of these other companies that we’ve talked about, they have their minimum-to-maximum set at $25 to $5,000. IBM also has a volunteer grant program for individuals and teams, and teams can earn up to $7,500 in IBM equipment grants for organizations where they collectively volunteer for a certain amount of hours. So it’s a combination of some volunteering as well as those volunteer support programs we were speaking about earlier.

Last one for this slide: American Express matches active employee donations between $25 and $8,000, and their standard match ratio may be one-to-one, but they can bump that to two-to-one, a double match, for the first thousand dollars of their donations if they sit on nonprofit boards and volunteer from 1 to 50 hours a year. It seems like those may be some specific circumstances, but really any employee at American Express can take advantage of that two-to-one match ratio if they volunteer for 25 hours.

Is your head spinning yet? There are a lot of qualifications here that we’ve talked about, but that’s why it’s so important to know where you can get this information, and this free resource on our website is one really great place to start. Of course, you can also use our matching gift search tool, because that gives you access to our entire database of 20,000 companies that match donations, including parent companies, major subsidiaries, and spelling variations.

This statistic may be a bit surprising given what we’ve just seen about how corporate philanthropy programs are becoming more popular and better and more widespread, but according to our analysis, anywhere from four to seven billion dollars in matching gift revenue is left on the table every year. And it’s not because corporations don’t want to support philanthropies; we’ve seen how many programs there are already. And it’s not because donors don’t want their gifts to count for more. You all know that’s not true. Simply, donors don’t know that this is an option. So really, the best and quickest way to address the gap in matching is to address the gap in knowledge. What’s really important is making sure that your donors not only have a resource to check if they’re eligible or if they meet program requirements, but also have the next steps directly in front of them so that it’s easy for them.

As it turns out, there are also some additional benefits to matching gift marketing besides just the increased revenue that you can collect through the program. These are some really fun statistics that I like to share, because they show how impactful the idea of matching gifts can be. It turns out that 84% of donors are more likely to donate in the first place if their gifts are eligible to be matched. And if you mention corporate matching in your fundraising appeals, it receives, on average, 71% more donors responding and a 51% increase in the amount of those donations. Those last two statistics in particular I think are very impactful, because they don’t really have anything to do with eligibility. Even just mentioning matching gifts can have an incredible impact on your donations.

So now let’s talk about a few of the best ways that you can get that match and get information in front of your donors. We’re going to talk about how to grow your program and keep yourself on track, and we’re going to see some examples from real Double the Donation clients and talk through why they work and how you can go back and implement them.

First, of course, the most obvious and effective place to house matching gift information is on your donation form. If donors are already there, it means they already want to support your cause, and they may be willing to take the next step and take a little bit of time. It usually takes about five minutes, on average, to fill out those online forms and submit them to their company. The example we have here is from Second Harvest Heartland. They’re using our 360MatchPro enterprise platform, which is why you see on the screenshot of the phone screen on the left, we have an integrated search field within the donation form.

What’s important to note is that the matching information presented is clear and simple. We’re using direct instructions that tell the donor exactly what to do, “Search for your company below,” and exactly what will happen and what to expect next: “You will get what you need on the confirmation page.” The reason we recommend this kind of very simple, very direct, clean, pared-down language on the donation form is because we don’t want to create friction within the donation process. We’re encouraging them. Maybe they want to bump up the amount of their gift, maybe that’s what they want, maybe they were just thinking about donating but weren't sure. So we want to take advantage of the effect that matching gift information can have, but we also want them to complete their donation and do what it is they came to the form to do. By keeping things simple and direct and clean, we’re not creating that friction. Also, on that bigger screen that you see behind the phone screen, they’ve included this matching gift information elsewhere on their website, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that in the next few slides.

Of course, after you have made a donation, you also want to make sure that your donors know that they can now take the next step, because it does take a next step after a donation to get the whole process started. Putting matching gift information on that confirmation screen is the best way to make sure that you catch your donors when they’re still thinking about their donation and the reason that they donated in the first place, because it could have been anything. It could have been inspired by a news story or by a friend. But the memory and the impact won’t last forever, so if you wait too long to ask them to match their gift, you don’t get to tag on to that emotional reason.

The Piedmont Foundation, which is a historical client of ours (they’ve been a client for a long time and have done incredible work with Double the Donation), they're doing a few things really well here. First, they’re using very common terminology instead of specialized terms. They’re saying “Make your donation go twice as far” instead of “Participate in your employer’s corporate philanthropy program.” That’s because donors who have never even heard of corporate philanthropy might simply click off if they see unfamiliar terminology. Instead, we’re using something that everyone can understand and everyone wants to do: I want to make my donation go twice as far. I may not have heard of matching gifts, but now I’m going to be shown how to actually do that, which is pretty incredible.

Also, because we have more room on the confirmation screen than we do on a donation form, we can include a concise explanation of what these matching gift programs are, and we can allude to the actual process: “Did you know companies will match donations? To see if they’ll match yours and to get to the forms that you need to fill out, check your company below.” So we’re telling them a little bit about what they can expect once they start this process. It also provides them with a way to get more information without sending them back to their company. Instead of saying “Go check with HR” or “Go check with your employer to see if they will match your donations,” which they may or may not do, we’re giving them a way to check right now, really quickly, by using the database search tool directly on the screen.

Following the Piedmont Foundation, let’s go into confirmation emails. Donors are already looking for receipts to land in their inbox, which they’re going to keep, so it’s a good place to include a little bit of information about matching gifts. Something that’s important to remember when sending matching gift emails is that you’re asking donors to complete more steps than they initially intended to do. They think that once they hit donate, their job is done. They’ve supported your organization. They’re not expecting to then have to go to their company’s intranet, log in, and submit a form, even though it only takes, again, on average about five minutes to do so. To increase your chances of success, follow some of those basic practices of donor stewardship: show them that you appreciate their support, and explain the impact that this one extra small step can have. So we’re addressing them by name, we’re using common terminology like we talked about earlier, and we’re making a direct click ask to them.

Something else to think about when we’re talking about emails is that donors are kind of used to online shopping, and they may get a lot of receipts from different places, webinars if they’ve attended, or resources they’ve signed up to receive. Sometimes emails that look like automatic confirmation emails have a higher archive or deletion rate, because they think, “If I need that later for my tax records, I can go find it.” So sometimes it helps, instead of automatically sending the email directly after, to wait a little bit and send a separate email that is specifically asking them to take the matching gift step, instead of incorporating it with the receipt of the actual donation. If you want to take advantage of that, you can definitely do it manually. Our enterprise platform, 360MatchPro, will automate that entire process for you, and if you want to hear more about that, I’m more than happy to talk about it during the question phase. So that’s just something to keep in mind when it comes to emails: if you’re asking them to take a next step, you want to make sure you’re presenting it somewhere where they’ll see it and where it’s actionable.

Of course, all of these examples so far have put the matching gift information in the path of donors who are already in the donation process, but you can’t just focus on them, especially if you’re looking to take advantage of some of those statistics from earlier about encouraging higher donation rates and amounts. So you have to aim a little bit higher up the funnel, and the way that we recommend doing this is by dedicating a page on your website to matching gifts. That gives you a chance to share information with interested parties before the donation process. Here’s an example from the University of Pikeville. They’ve dedicated an entire page to matching gifts on their website, and they link to it on the side of their giving page, which is where people will go when they want to hear about ways to give. This is really useful because it gives you one URL to link directly to for more information, because we want to keep our emails short and our donation forms very clean and streamlined. Having one branded web page with all the essential information in one place is really helpful to link out to.

I don’t know if you can see this, it’s a little small, but I’ll read it to you: there’s a phrase that reads, “You may be able to double or even triple the impact of your gift,” and then they go on to specifically explain the impact that a gift can have. That’s really important to do when you have a little bit more room, like you do on a completely separate web page where you’re not worried about streamlining the donation process. The idea is to really closely tie the impact of that additional, incremental matching gift revenue with the direct outcome that they were looking for when they decided to donate in the first place. This website makes things seem really easy, with the line “by simply completing a matching gift form online or on paper,” and then they’ve got, again, a way to get additional information. Again, we are asking donors to take an extra step than they initially intended, so by making it sound really easy and simple, and something they can do all online without even going to their HR department, that makes it seem like something they want to do as well.

We’ll talk a little bit about timing, because, as we know, inundating donors in emails or webpages with matching gift information, just like any other kind of information, doesn’t pay off. You really have to choose your timing well. So we’re going to focus here on delivering information that is directly actionable. Automated emails that go out right after a donation serve two main purposes. First, there’s that emotional response that we talked about earlier. You’re asking your donors to take further action even after they thought they were done, so you need to make sure you’re asking when they’re still thinking about the reason that drove them to that donation form in the first place. It’s just being considerate of the fact that they’re putting in more time. Second, automatic emails give your donors time to submit their matching gift requests to their employer before any of those employer-set deadlines. It’s really important to think about that and to emphasize it, like in this example that we see here: emphasize the timing so that they understand why you’re reaching out to them about matching gifts at this exact moment. That’s going to be a lot more impactful than just a monthly automated email that says, “By the way, have you donated in the past however long? You should totally get your gift matched,” without emphasizing why the actual timing of right now is very important.

Also, again, it is important to think about how you’re delivering that information after a donation is made, because if you’re going to put matching gift information in automated emails directly after the donation, they have a much higher chance of being archived or deleted. So, again, think about waiting a little bit of time and dedicating an entirely separate email specifically to matching gifts, so it doesn’t look like a receipt or something that should be archived and only pulled out later when they need to double-check it to submit their taxes or do their accounting.

Let’s talk about the second bullet point. Especially if you find that a significant portion of your donor base is employed by the same company, you should focus your matching gift marketing efforts around that company’s deadline. If you’re using a sophisticated donor management software like Bloomerang, you can definitely track these things and run searches and run reports and find out where your donors are working. It’s incredibly important information to have, and I would highly recommend that you at least start gathering it if you haven’t yet. That’s definitely a takeaway from this presentation.

And of course, third, many companies and individuals are thinking about their charitable donations around the end of the calendar year or the fiscal year, when they’re looking at their budgets, and also at the beginning of tax season, when they focus on those deductions and budgeting for the next year. So if you’re going to plan your matching gift marketing around a particular time of year, I would recommend November, December, January. Even though a lot of emails are going out at those times, it is actionable, and as we see here, you can actually use that timing to your advantage and encourage donors to see the timing as a reason why they should go and take those five minutes to submit that form. But also, focusing on April is a great time to send information when you’re emphasizing the timeliness of taxes or accounting or budgeting as well.

So that is all I have. Thank you so much for joining us. I’ve been seeing so many questions come in, so I really hope I can get to as many of them as possible. I really hope you learned a lot, and I’m more than happy to speak individually, go back to any of the slides that you want to learn more about, or speak a little bit more about something, maybe the software or things that we didn’t get to in the presentation. Also, this link in the middle, this URL, is the site that I was talking about earlier. As you’re asking questions and going through, please feel free to navigate to that website and double-check, get a feel for how these programs typically work, and get an idea of the 50 most popular companies out there that offer the programs. So, Steven, I see we’ve got a ton of questions. Which ones are standing out?

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, we got some good ones. But first, Hannah, thanks for giving us the lowdown. I definitely learned a lot. It was cool to hear about those companies, GE, Gap, and all the history of matching gifts. I told you it was always going to be a good one. So yeah, we got a lot of questions, and I’m going to combine some similar questions here. A lot of people are asking Hannah, and it probably won’t surprise you, that people are wondering about acknowledging the corporation. Is that something that you recommend people should do? You know, writing thank-you notes to somebody at GE for matching their donor’s gift. Is that a common practice? If so, how do you go about doing that?

Hannah Silvers: I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all. Maybe it’s my Southern, Atlanta self coming out, but I think that a show of appreciation, a handwritten letter or an email, is never going to go to waste. A lot of times these programs are automated, or they might be managed by a third party, such as CyberGrants or Benevity, or software programs or platforms out there that manage matching gift programs for companies. So even though the companies themselves might be setting up the program, they might be contracting out the work of sending the donations back and forth and going through the approval process to someone else. So yes, you should definitely send a gentle thank-you. But because the program is automated most of the time and the program requirements are set, I don’t see it affecting your chances of getting a donation match, if that’s kind of what people are getting at.

But it does definitely build a bit of goodwill between your organization and that company, especially if it might be a slightly smaller company, because they might be looking at their budget for next year and thinking, “Well, how many matching gifts did we actually send out? Do our employees actually use this benefit?” Because that’s how it seems, as an employee benefit. And then I think maybe they’d think, “We don’t need this program.” So the more that they can hear from the employees themselves, and from the organizations that benefit from it, how amazing the programs are, you might be able to encourage them to maybe even expand their program next year, or develop an even closer relationship. Maybe they might sponsor your next run, walk, or ride or something like that. So I don’t think a bit of thanks and acknowledgment and consideration will ever go to waste.

Steven Shattuck: So, thank-you letters. That’s your homework, everyone. Go home and write a thank-you letter to everyone who has matched a gift to you in the past year. That’s great advice. I never considered looking at the size of the company, because it might be hard to thank someone at GE, but it may not be hard to thank someone at the corner pizza shop, or an insurance company, or wherever it is. That makes a lot of sense.

Hannah Silvers: I would also add, very quickly, that you can also publicly acknowledge companies that match. An individual, private note is something very special and very impactful, especially when it’s directed to someone in charge of giving, or someone on the CSR team at a corporation. But one of the main reasons why corporate philanthropy programs like matching gifts and volunteer grant programs are so popular now is because companies are really seeing the value in corporate social responsibility, and the publicity value and the outward image that being acknowledged as a charitable company can have for them. They do tie it to revenue. More customers will shop at, or more clients will respond to, companies that they think take care of their communities. So acknowledge them publicly as well, and then they’ll see that as an investment in their own future.

Steven Shattuck: That makes sense. As someone who works for a for-profit, I can attest to the fact that we love it when people acknowledge us, probably on social media or some other online thing, especially if it’s a nonprofit. So don’t be afraid to do that, because they’ll really be overjoyed. Along the same lines, Hannah, what should you do, if anything, differently for the donor? They go through all this trouble. They search for their employer, they submit all that matching gift info. It seems like maybe that person should be given special attention for doing so, versus someone who just makes a one-off gift and doesn’t go through all that trouble. I’m kind of thinking from my donor management background here: that seems like a pretty high engagement. Is that a fair thing to say?

Hannah Silvers: Absolutely. There are, I think, examples of this on our website, which we’ve just redesigned, doublethedonation.com. But we definitely encourage sending a message to donors when the matching gift revenue comes back in. It’s nice for them to see the full circle, because they don’t want to just send off a form and then forget about it. That’s not good for them or for you. When you get the matched funds back from the corporation, which some companies send out on a rolling basis, maybe every time one comes in they’ll fulfill it, but most companies will do it quarterly or biannually or semi-annually, whenever that matching fund comes back in, and it will be tied to the donation, then reach back out. Let the donor know that it has come in, thank them for their support, and tell them to look for a special ribbon that they can wear at your next in-person event, or look for a special badge on their online profile, whatever it may be. Those little acknowledgments encourage them to go through the same process the next time and to share the information with others.

I didn’t talk about social media marketing during this particular presentation, but we do talk about that with a lot of our clients, and it’s something that a lot of the organizations we work with will do. Whenever they get a matching donation back from a company, they announce it on their Twitter or on their Facebook page, and they may even tag their donors if that’s how their own strategy works, just saying, “Thank you so much to Johanna, who donated, and GE, who was able to match it.” It’s a good way to show not only that everything went as planned but also that you really appreciate it.

I love these questions. Usually I get much more technical questions, but I’m loving this. I think it speaks to the Bloomerang audience, that they’re so thoughtful. I love it.

Steven Shattuck: They're one it. And we’ve got some cool comments here. One listener says, “We also acknowledge the companies that do employee matching gifts on our honor roll of giving in a special section,” so I assume that’s maybe an annual report type thing. And Cindy here is saying she’s often heard that corporations like photos, like a lock photo of the group to where their matches go. So yeah, definitely we’ve got some people who have done some of the things you’ve said, Hannah, and gotten good results.

Hannah Silvers: Y'all are experts already.

Steven Shattuck: More questions here. For companies that provide grants and matching gifts, do you find that one follows the other? The question here is that the listener is saying they’ve received a grant, but it looks like they also have a connection to the employees. Do you think the company would do both? I guess the question is, if a corporation gives a grant, would they also do matching, or maybe it goes the other way first? Have you seen that? Is that fair to say, in any way?

Hannah Silvers: Yes, actually, and I think especially for larger corporations that’s often the case, because once they’ve invested in corporate social responsibility as a philosophy and they’ve started corporate philanthropy program, it’s like, “Well, why not add something else on?” So there’s a bit of velocity, a momentum, that comes along with these programs.

Often the easiest programs for companies to set up will be matching gift programs, because they just have to set the application and the eligibility requirements, and then it’s the employee that does the work. They are the ones that submit the application, and then all the company has to do is approve it and write the check. So those often come first.

For grants, there are a lot of models out there for building grant applications and for processing and accepting them, so those do tend to be more common. Matching gift programs and volunteer grant programs have really taken off. But if we’re talking about where companies start most often, it goes to those, just because of the simplicity of setting them up. Then we move into those skills-based, team volunteering things that we talked about before, which take a bit more coordination from the company themselves to organize a group of employees to go work somewhere. They have to work it into their project management, so it does get a bit more complicated. But yes, it is incredibly common for companies to have more than one type of corporate philanthropy program that they offer.

Steven Shattuck: Your comments about the smaller businesses being maybe easier to thank, or the people you should thank, got me thinking about businesses local to the nonprofit, in the same area. Would you recommend that fundraisers spend time and effort reaching out to the businesses in their community and encouraging them to start matching gift programs? Or would you rather say, “Well, the ones that are going to do it are going to do it”? Is that a good use of our time? What do you think about that? Should nonprofits be encouraging the corporations around them?

Hannah Silvers: I love this question. Absolutely, because that’s how a lot of smaller companies get started with matching: they realize that their employees want it. Because it is an investment of time, and even though they see the benefit of it, they see benefits to a lot of different things they could be doing to improve their company. So knowing that it’s something that their employees want, and that it’s something that will benefit a local organization, whatever it may be, that’s an incredibly valuable place to start, and to show them that it is wanted. We see that all the time. That’s how a lot of smaller organizations get started. So if you have a local company in mind, definitely reach out to them, anyone within their company. But also, if you have a lot of donors who already work for a local company, send specialized messages out to them, or acknowledge them at a future fundraising event, or whatever it may be, because hearing from the organization itself does mean a lot, because it’s an individual outreach, saying, “Hey, maybe you should start doing this. We would love to get matched donations.” But coming from the actual employees who work there, that carries so much weight, especially when there’s more than one of them and they’re all saying, “This is something that we really want, and this particular nonprofit, let’s be sure that they are eligible to receive your funds when you start.” I can’t overstate how impactful that is and how much impact it has on a company looking to make its employees happy. It makes them stick around. So yes, absolutely, reach out to your local companies and encourage them to start programs.

Steven Shattuck: Maybe you could start with the companies you already have a relationship with, like maybe current sponsors.

Hannah Silvers: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Shattuck: Okay, cool. So let’s say, I’ve got a donor database type question for you, because that’s kind of my thing, as you know. Let’s say you’ve got a donor who has given to you annually for the last five years, like clockwork, and every time they’ve given they’ve also submitted the matching gift. And then suddenly, maybe in the sixth year, they give, but the matching gift hasn’t come in. Do you think you should bring that up to the donor, or is that maybe a little taboo, to say, “Hey, you’ve been getting a matching gift, and we did notice it this year”? Or do you think that’s kind of an icky thing to do, to bring that up to a longtime, loyal matching gift type of person?

Hannah Silvers: Well, as you understand, those relationships with donors are so important, and often you can judge if it’s someone that you have a relationship with. You might be able to say, “Hey, we’ve appreciated your support through all these years. We were just wondering if something within your company’s program changed.” It doesn’t have to be something where you ask them, “Hey, did you not take the extra five minutes to help me out here?” It doesn’t hurt anything like that at all. But sometimes it could be that they’ve moved on to a different company, or the company’s programs changed, or maybe they gave a little bit less this year and they don’t meet requirements anymore, or whatever it may be. That’s also important information for you to know. So that would be my recommendation for going about something like that. But I think it’s absolutely reasonable to reach out and try to figure out what’s going on, because if that’s something that you’ve been relying on for revenue, which matching gifts can be, they don’t have to be just extra bonus money that sometimes shows up. So it’s perfectly within your rights to ask, just to make sure everything is okay. And then you might have other donors that work for that company that you’re about to find out are ineligible, if they didn’t increase their gifts by five dollars, or if they didn’t submit their request earlier this year, they might miss a deadline. So knowing that information is never going to hurt, and I don’t think that a donor who has donated for six years and loyally submitted their matching gift requests would be offended if you simply asked if something outside of your control is keeping you from doing this thing that we really appreciate you doing. So I don't think so at all.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, cool. Just tread lightly, right? As with all things. But it’s probably not their fault.

Hannah Silvers: Probably not their fault.

Steven Shattuck: I know you touched on this a little bit, Hannah, but we’ve got a couple of questions here about seasonality, best time of year. You talked about how the automated emails go out after an online form, but let’s say you want to be proactive about sending a letter or some print material in the mail. Is there a good time of year? Is year-end the best time of year? It seems like that’s when some of the donations come in, obviously. That’s also what people are really thinking about. Maybe in that November-December appeal you should be talking about matching gifts the most? What do you think?

Hannah Silvers: Yes, yes. But of course, you’re going to hear that from everyone in every sector of fundraising, which means that donors are inundated in November and December. But it’s when they’re thinking about it, and it’s when they’re planning, and it’s when they’re budgeting, and importantly, it’s when a lot of companies are setting their deadlines. That’s a really impactful way to begin a conversation about matching gifts. They may think, “Oh, I have plenty of time, I’ll be fine, I can submit it tomorrow.” But if you say, “Hey, a bunch of corporate deadlines are coming up. Have you submitted?” that sense of timeliness and urgency can encourage donors to really go in and not miss the deadline. So yes, although you’re probably focusing on a million things at the end of the year, so I [inaudible] stress you out about it, of course. But because of those corporate deadlines, there is a good reason why you would be reaching out at the end of the year. I would also really encourage that ongoing outreach that’s timed around when they make the donation, because more companies than not will give a certain amount of time after the donation and not time it around the end of the year. But that’s a marginal difference, so heads up, I suppose. But yes, the end of the year is when most companies that set deadlines are going to set them, either then or in April.

Steven Shattuck: Okay, yeah. We got a lot of questions here. We’ll try to get to all the questions here, but definitely reach out to Hannah. She’s a wealth of knowledge, obviously. But a couple more in here. What percentage of people do you think are eligible in a typical donor database? Say they’ve got a thousand people in there. Five percent of those people could probably be doing a matching gift to their employer? Is it 50 percent? What’s kind of the average, if that data even exists?

Hannah Silvers: Yes, it does. We talked about the number of big corporations that offer these programs, so I won’t touch on that again. But between 15 and 19 million individuals in the U.S. workforce are eligible for corporate matching gift programs. Not all corporate philanthropy programs broadly, but specifically matching gifts. That brings us to about 10% of the U.S. workforce. But it does sort of depend on the area of the country, perhaps depending on what companies are around. A major city will have a much higher density of eligible donors, simply because the corporations that are there are bigger and tend to have more robust programs. So it does slightly depend on the area that you’re in, if you’re a more geographically local nonprofit, but overall we find about 10%.

And then when we look through all those eligibility requirements that we were talking about earlier, maximums and minimums, not every single donation, even if the donor works for a company that offers a program, which is what that 15-to-19 million number is, not all of those donations themselves will actually be eligible. It’s very difficult to generalize because there are so many different programs, but really, on average, about 8 percent of online donations will be eligible for the programs that they’re eligible for. So not 8 percent of the 10 percent, but 8 percent overall, ish. You hesitate to give exact numbers, but that’s where the averages tend to lie.  Every single program is different, so it’s kind of hard. But what we’ve seen through our own analysis, and pulling from a bunch of other trusted sources, as well as what we tend to find working, of course, with our business partners and corporate partners and software provider partners, is that we try to get as exact as we can for you all, but there’s always so much you can do.

Steven Shattuck: Well, those are pretty good numbers. I mean, that’s not nothing if you’ve got a large percentage of your gifts coming online, especially eight percent of a big number is still a pretty big number. So I love it.

Hannah Silvers: Exactly.

Steven Shattuck: Wow, this is cool. This is free money, so definitely get started. Any last piece of advice for folks, Hannah, before we close things up?

Hannah Silvers: I would say you’ve had amazing questions, and such kind questions as well. I love this audience, y’all are amazing. But definitely reach out if I can answer any other questions that you may have. And if we didn’t get to some of the questions that were submitted, then I’ll definitely, or my team will, be reaching out to answer those for you, so don’t worry about that at all. We are always here to help. There are a ton of free resources on our website as well, and if you want to learn more about anything that we do, just head on over there. We also do daily demos of our software tools, so if you’re thinking that you might want to implement some of the tools that give your donors a way to check their eligibility really quickly, or even automate some of this process so you don’t have to do it manually, definitely sign up for one of those demos, and we’d be more than happy to talk you through it and see what plan might be right for your organization. But also, thank you. Thank you for attending, thank you for your attention, and thank you to Bloomerang for having me.

Steven Shattuck: Yeah, it’s fun, and definitely check out that website. Lots of good stuff there. They’re my go-to for sure for all this matching gift stuff. So thanks for being here, all of you folks, for listening today. We had almost 300 people listen live, so we appreciate it. You take time out of your day, and I know it’s a busy time of year. You’re probably getting ready for year-end, and maybe your fall [inaudible]. So thank you for being there. It was a lot of fun to have you. We will get you the slides and the recording today, in case you want to revisit any of the content or maybe share with a colleague or a boss or whatever. Just be on the lookout for an email from me.

We’ve got a great webinar coming up one week from today. We’ve got Brady Josephson from NextAfter, who has been spending the last year doing research on recurring gifts and monthly giving, and has got some really cool data to unveil in this webinar. So if you have a monthly gift program, or if you don’t have a monthly gift program, either way, check this one out. You’re going to learn a lot, for sure. I’ve seen the data. It’s some juicy stuff. So be here one week from today. That’s Thursday, 1:00 p.m. Eastern, fully free, just like this one. And if you’re not interested in recurring giving, although I don’t know why you wouldn’t be, but if you’re not, that’s okay. There are lots of other webinars you can check out on our schedule. We’ve got some great ones through the end of the year. We’ll see you again some other Thursday. So we will call it a day there. Like I said, look for an email from me with all those great resources, and hopefully we’ll see you next week. So have a good rest of your Thursday, have a good weekend, have a safe weekend, and we will talk to you again soon. Bye now.