When it comes to online fundraising, nonprofits need to communicate a lot to supporters. From upcoming events to advocacy campaigns to recurring gift opportunities, it can be hard to find time to sit down and develop a marketing strategy for any specific fundraising strategy.
Fortunately for nonprofits looking to promote matching gifts, this guide is here to help develop your strategy for you! We’ll look at a few ways nonprofits can spread the word about corporate giving and encourage their supporters to double some of their donors’ gifts for free.
1. Create a “Ways to Give” page.
If you want to promote matching gifts, you should have easy-to-access information that curious supporters can refer to. That’s why your website needs a Ways to Give page!
A Ways to Give page hosts information about all the ways donors can support your nonprofit. For example, in addition to matching gifts, your Ways About page might feature information about:
- In-kind donations
- Recurring gifts
- Planned gifts
- Car donations
- Stock donations
For the matching gift section of this page, add an explanation of what matching gifts are, how they help your nonprofit, and the steps supporters can take to get their donations matched. To make this information easy to consume, consider creating a short matching gift video that walks through the process.
Additionally, if your nonprofit invests in matching gift software, your Ways to Give page is a great place to add a matching gift eligibility search tool. That way, supporters can check out their employers’ matching gift requirements and start the match request process immediately after learning about matching gifts.
2. Promote matching gifts regularly.
With your Ways to Give and matching gift search tool set up, supporters can easily start the matching gift process whenever they want. However, this doesn’t mean that matching gifts are a set-it-and-forget-it type of fundraiser. Instead, your nonprofit should actively tell new donors about matching gifts and remind current ones to complete their matching gift applications.
To ensure that all of your supporters see your matching gift marketing messages, try taking a multi-channel communication approach. But rather than picking a few communication platforms out of a hat to market on, let’s take a look at the approach recommended in 360MatchPro’s multi-channel fundraising guide:
- Set goals. What do you hope to accomplish through a multi-channel communication strategy? In this case, nonprofits might set goals related to increasing matching gift revenue by 50% or increasing the total number of matching gifts received annually by 30%. Ensure this goal is specific, measurable, and has a deadline so you can assess your progress.
- Identify your audience. To choose the right marketing channels, analyze the donor profiles of your average match-eligible donor. Use this information to construct donor personas, which are hypothetical representations of large groups of donors. After all, it’s easier to market to one person rather than a crowd. Be sure to include demographic information, contact preferences, giving history, income levels, and matching gift program guidelines.
- Choose a mix of channels. With the information you’ve gathered on your donors, determine which communication channels they use the most and focus your attention on those. Pay attention to their preferred communication channels and the platforms they’ve previously used to interact with your nonprofit.
- Create a unified message. Your messages should be adapted for each marketing channel, but make sure that they all paint one, cohesive picture of your nonprofit and the matching gifts process. For instance, you might post your matching gift video to Instagram and share matching gift impact statistics on Facebook.
- Allocate your budget appropriately. Multi-channel marketing strategies are effective, but they can get expensive, especially if you plan to use paid ads. Set a budget based on how much matching gift revenue you expect to receive to make sure your nonprofit comes out ahead.
This approach is useful for regular matching gift marketing and if you ever want to launch a dedicated matching gift campaign. These can be helpful to do every so often to incite interest among new donors who haven’t seen your regular reminders about matching gifts.
3. Provide social proof.
Many of your donors are likely unfamiliar with matching gifts and may question whether it’s something they want to get involved with. While they might trust your nonprofit, they’ll trust the concept of matching gifts even more if you can provide social proof.
Social proof is essentially an example of someone else doing whatever action you want to encourage others to take. In this case, matching gift social proof might look like:
- Storytelling. Rather than simply telling supporters how important matching gifts are, show them by telling a story about matching gifts! This might be a story about how your nonprofit was able to accomplish more with additional matching gift revenue or how a donor was able to give more to a cause they have a personal connection with thanks to matching gifts.
- User-generated content. One marketing trend nonprofits have been taking advantage of recently is user-generated content. Rather than your nonprofit producing all of your matching gift content, some of your supporters might post about matching gifts themselves! Along with saving your marketing team time, user-generated content is seen as genuine and reliable. You can encourage user-generated content by adding social media share buttons to your donation page and or adding an option to give in someone else’s name.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising. Get your supporters in on the fundraising action by hosting a peer-to-peer campaign with matching gift opportunities. In this campaign, supporters will fundraise on your behalf. Encourage them to include matching gift opportunities as part of their fundraising appeals to friends and family.
If just your nonprofit says matching gifts are great, supporters may not be so sure. But if they hear it from everyone, then it might be worth looking into! This is simple logic, but it can go far when promoting any under-discussed fundraising method, like matching gifts.
4. Sharing matching gift statistics.
After gaining initial interest in your cause, many supporters then look to facts and statistics to confirm their decision to give. This means finding and sharing powerful matching gift statistics! These can come from your nonprofit’s own matching gift programs or reports on the state of philanthropy.
To help you get started, here are a few corporate giving statistics sourced by Double the Donation:
- More than 26 million individuals work for companies with matching gift programs.
- An additional $4-$7 billion in matching gift funds is estimated to go unclaimed per year.
- The average matched gift is between 1.5 and 2X the size of the average unmatched gift.
- 91% of companies match donations at a 1:1 ratio, but 5% match at a higher rate such as 2:1 or 3:1.
- 85% of the top matching gift companies also offer volunteer grant programs.
Statistics like these show donors that matching gift programs are widespread, which might make them curious enough to check out their own matching gift eligibility!
Matching gifts are an easy way to earn more for your cause without asking supporters to spend more. All you have to do is market it! Conduct audience research, optimize your website, and prepare your marketing materials to start promoting matching gifts.