Matching gift data management
Tim Sarrantonio
Generosity Experience Design | Empowering nonprofits to build a community of generosity
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Earlier this week I posed a question to both LinkedIn and our Connected Fundraising Community about the ethics of launching a public match campaign when you haven't lined up the donor yet.
I wasn't surprised by the strong results for the "this is unethical" question, but I wanted to unpack how this is a bit thornier than folks may first think. I won't debate the ethics on this but instead, want to dive into why I feel this is made harder by some poor data entry on matching gifts that may lead to frustration that leads to lapses in ethical judgment.
Yet, matching gift campaigns can be an extraordinary mechanism toward driving interest, excitement, and new funds toward a nonprofit's bottom line. There have even been studies on the powerful impact that matching gifts open up, such as this research done by J-PAL North America.
What are the different types of matching gifts/grants/campaigns?
There are different types of matches that a nonprofit can execute on in their fundraising strategy. Generally, the idea is a simple one though - an individual or organization sets up a way that if a donor contributes to the nonprofit and does it in a way where it is connected to to the matching opportunity, then a second gift will be pledged to the nonprofit.
Here's a simple flow chart to explain the basics:
This is much deeper though, so here are just a few of the primary examples of how matches get executed in our sector:
How to track matching gifts?
The tracking of matching gifts is going to be tricky since it involves a third party beyond your organization's donors. And there may not be a direct relationship between the donor giving to you and the matching gift that comes in (more on that in a second).
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For simplicity, let's focus in on what your CRM likely gives you as two primary tools to execute proper tracking of matching gifts:
Some databases may have both of these, some of them may only have soft credits. If your CRM doesn't have either for these options, then it gets a lot harder to focus accurately on what the gift may be attributed to unless you have other third party attribution fields.
Matching Gift Pledge Management is specifically designed for this type of gift. It ultimately shouldn't matter if the match pledge is being done by an individual donor or organization since the data is focused on getting and then "paying down" the pledge. It sets up a standard pledge but flags it uniquely as a matching gift. It then should be able to be tied to a specific campaign for deeper analysis and segmentation.
Other platforms may push to utilize soft credits as their primary way to track this. Soft credits are attribution tools where you can say that someone has been given recognition for a gift that has come in but they might not have directly done a gift yet. I will need a host newsletter just dedicated to soft credits so we won't get into the nuances today.
Here's a roundup of what the some of the more popular service providers do when it comes to matching gifts and pledges specifically:
However, most of these are centered on the corporate matching that businesses do when an employee makes a gift, and outside of some automation when it comes to a service like Double the Donation they are still going to be manually managed when the money actually comes in.
Making the distinction between corporate and individual
There is a major opportunity to think through how match campaigns can be opened up where more individuals feel that they can initiate something without too many administrative steps. I think what this all demonstrates is that much of the ethical issues that come from locking up a surefire pledge come from the uncertainty on the role and purpose of matching gifts in a campaign and the proper tracking.
There needs to be a clear distinction between Corporate Social Responsibility matching pledges and the individuals who are stepping up and putting forward their own challenge match.
I'll end today linking to a great blog that our partners at Double the Donation put together that I was proud to supply a tiny piece about, which is some of the wonkiness that comes with the corporate matching process.
Our fundraising data reports that in 2020 alone, 10.8% of nonprofits had incorrectly attributed a gift to either Benevity or YourCause, rather than mark the donations from these platforms as corporate matches. And of nonprofits falling into this category, nearly 87% tracked more Benevity and YourCause revenue than they did matching gifts —meaning they have significantly more untracked matches than tracked.