Giving Tuesday is widely recognized as the single most powerful day in the philanthropic calendar. For twenty-four hours, the world turns its attention to generosity, resulting in a massive influx of donations, social media buzz, and volunteer sign-ups. For many nonprofits, this day provides a critical injection of cash that helps close out the annual budget. However, there is a hidden opportunity within this frenzy that often goes overlooked. While securing one-time cash gifts is essential, engaging payroll givers on Giving Tuesday can transform a single day of generosity into a sustainable year-round revenue stream.
The challenge with Giving Tuesday is often the “sugar crash” that follows the initial rush. Donors give once and then disengage until the next holiday season. By shifting your strategy to focus on payroll giving (a mechanism in which employees donate a portion of their paycheck to your nonprofit automatically), you can turn that momentary enthusiasm into a long-term commitment. Payroll giving is one of the most underutilized forms of corporate philanthropy, yet it offers unmatched retention rates and financial predictability.
By implementing these strategies, you can use the visibility of Giving Tuesday not just to hit a daily fundraising goal, but to build a foundation of recurring revenue that supports your mission all year long.
The Strategic Value of Payroll Giving on Giving Tuesday
To effectively advocate for this funding stream, you must first understand why it is worth prioritizing during your busiest time of year. Payroll giving allows employees to donate to registered nonprofits directly from their salary, often on a pre-tax basis. This method transforms a donor’s relationship with your organization from transactional to relational.
Predictable, Recurring Income: While Giving Tuesday donations are often sporadic one-time gifts, payroll giving ensures a steady cash flow. This predictability improves financial planning and program continuity, allowing your nonprofit to rely on a consistent baseline of support rather than crossing your fingers for a successful holiday campaign.
Higher Donor Retention: One of the most compelling reasons to focus on engaging payroll givers on Giving Tuesday is retention. Payroll donors tend to donate longer than one-time or online givers. Because the deduction happens automatically and often pre-tax, the donor effectively “doesn’t miss” the money, making them less likely to cancel the recurring gift during belt-tightening periods.
Lower Administrative Overhead: Processing thousands of individual credit card transactions on Giving Tuesday incurs significant fees and administrative work. In contrast, payroll donations are managed through platforms or employers, reducing time and costs for your team. This efficiency allows you to direct more of the raised funds toward your actual mission.
Did You Know?Payroll giving offers a unique “win-win-win” scenario. Nonprofits gain lower administrative overhead and sustainable income; donors enjoy tax-efficient, effortless giving; and employers boost their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) profile and employee engagement.
Strategy 1: The “Set It and Forget It” Pitch
Giving Tuesday falls during a chaotic time of year. Between holiday shopping, end-of-year work deadlines, and family obligations, donors are often looking for simplicity. You can leverage this desire for convenience to pitch payroll giving.
Positioning Automation as a Benefit: Market payroll giving as the ultimate time-saver. Explain that by setting up a payroll deduction now, they can support their favorite cause all year long without having to remember to write a check or enter credit card information again. Key Message: “Make your Giving Tuesday impact last 365 days. Sign up for payroll giving today and support us automatically with every paycheck.”
The “Budget-Friendly” Angle: Small, regular deductions are easier for donors to manage than large one-off gifts. A donor might hesitate to give $250 on Giving Tuesday, but they might happily agree to a $10 deduction per paycheck. Over a year, that small deduction adds up to $260—a higher total value with less financial strain on the donor.
Strategy 2: Leveraging the Year-End Tax Incentive
Giving Tuesday is perfectly timed to capitalize on year-end tax planning. Donors are looking for ways to maximize their charitable deductions before December 31st.
Educating on Pre-Tax Benefits: Payroll donations are often deducted from the employee’s salary before tax is calculated. This means that a donation costs the employee less in real terms than a standard post-tax donation. Example: A $100 donation might only reduce their take-home pay by $70 (depending on their tax bracket), yet the nonprofit receives the full $100.
The “Give More for Less” Message: Use this tax efficiency as a core part of your Giving Tuesday messaging. “Did you know you can give more to [Nonprofit Name] without it costing you more? Payroll giving allows you to donate pre-tax, amplifying your impact instantly”.
Strategy 3: The Corporate Match Multiplier
Giving Tuesday is synonymous with matching challenges. Many nonprofits secure a matching grant from a major donor for the day. You can apply this same excitement to payroll giving by highlighting corporate matching gift programs.
Double the Recurring Impact: Many companies match payroll gifts, doubling the value of contributions. This is a powerful incentive. If a donor signs up for a $20 monthly deduction, and their employer matches it, they are effectively generating $480 a year for your cause.
Promoting the “Double Match”: If you have a Giving Tuesday match secured, ask your sponsor if it can apply to the annualized value of new payroll sign-ups. Pitch: “Sign up for payroll giving today! Our Giving Tuesday sponsor will match your first year of donations, AND your employer might match them too. That’s a triple impact!”
Quick Tip: Use a matching gift search tool on your dedicated Giving Tuesday landing page. This allows donors to instantly check if their employer offers payroll giving or matching gifts, removing the guesswork and driving immediate action.
Strategy 4: Streamlining the Enrollment Process
The biggest barrier to engaging payroll givers on Giving Tuesday is friction. If the process is confusing, donors will abandon it for a simple one-time credit card donation. You must make enrollment as seamless as possible.
Provide Direct Links: Many companies manage their payroll giving through third-party platforms like Benevity, Blackbaud, or CyberGrants. Wherever possible, provide direct links to your organization’s profile within these portals.
Create a “How-To” Guide: Create a simple, downloadable PDF or a dedicated web page that walks donors through the enrollment process for major local employers. List the steps clearly: Log in to your HR portal > Select “Charitable Giving” > Search for [Nonprofit Name] > Enter your deduction amount > Click Submit.
Capture Data Upfront: Include an optional “Employer” field on your Giving Tuesday donation forms. This allows you to screen your donors using employer appends and identify those who work for companies with payroll giving programs. You can then send targeted follow-up emails with specific instructions for their company.
Templates for Giving Tuesday Outreach
To help you execute these strategies, here are ready-to-use templates designed to convert Giving Tuesday excitement into payroll giving enrollment.
Website Blurb: The Landing Page Hook
Header: Make Your Giving Tuesday Last All Year Body: Thank you for visiting us this Giving Tuesday! You have the power to make a difference that lasts beyond today. By signing up for payroll giving, you can support our mission automatically with every paycheck. It is tax-efficient, budget-friendly, and often matched by employers. Call to Action: Check if your employer offers payroll giving and sign up in minutes! [Insert Search Widget]
Email Template: The Morning Appeal
Subject: Don’t just give today; give forever (automatically!) Body:
Dear [Donor Name],
Happy Giving Tuesday! Today, millions of people are coming together to support the causes they love. We are so grateful you are part of our community. This year, we are inviting you to make a different kind of gift. Instead of a one-time donation, consider signing up for payroll giving. It allows you to donate a small amount from each paycheck, providing us with the steady support we need to plan for the future.
Payroll giving is…
Easy: No credit cards to update.
Smart: Donations are often pre-tax.
Powerful: Small gifts add up to massive impact.
Check your eligibility here: [Link to Double the Donation Search Tool]
Thank you for helping us build a sustainable future.
Social Media Post: The “Set and Forget”
“Happy #GivingTuesday! 💙 Want to support [Nonprofit Name] without having to remember to donate? Sign up for payroll giving! 💼 It’s the set-it-and-forget-it way to change the world. 🌍 Check if your company participates: [Link] #PayrollGiving #SustainableImpact”
Social Media Post: The Tax Tip
“Did you know payroll giving can lower your taxes? 📉 By donating directly from your paycheck, you often give pre-tax dollars, making your donation go further for you AND us. 💸 Make the smart move this #GivingTuesday. [Link] #TaxTips #CorporateGiving”
Best Practices for Retaining Payroll Givers
Once you have successfully engaged payroll givers on Giving Tuesday, the work isn’t over. You must steward these donors to ensure they remain enrolled.
The “Invisible Donor” Acknowledgement: Because payroll deductions happen automatically, donors often forget they are giving. Combat this by sending a specialized welcome series immediately after they sign up. Acknowledge the unique nature of their gift and thank them for becoming a sustaining partner.
Regular Impact Reporting: Since these donors don’t receive a monthly transaction receipt, you must proactively remind them of their impact. Send quarterly updates specifically for payroll donors. Show them exactly what their sustained support is achieving, such as “Your payroll gifts funded 500 meals this quarter”.
Milestone Recognition: Recognize the longevity of their support. When a donor hits their one-year anniversary of payroll giving, celebrate it. “Happy Anniversary! You have been supporting us through your paycheck for one year. Thank you for sticking with us.” This recognition reinforces their decision and reduces churn.
Quick Tip: Implement a “Corporate Champion” program. Encourage your new payroll donors to share their Giving Tuesday decision with colleagues. Peer validation is a powerful tool for driving further enrollment within a specific company.
Wrapping Up & Next Steps
Engaging payroll givers on Giving Tuesday is a strategic move that pays dividends long after the holiday season ends. By shifting your focus from one-time transactions to recurring payroll deductions, you build a foundation of financial stability that allows your nonprofit to dream bigger and plan further ahead.
To get started, audit your Giving Tuesday campaign materials. Are you mentioning payroll giving? Do you have a search tool available for donors to check their eligibility? By integrating these messages and tools, you can turn the year’s biggest giving day into a catalyst for sustainable growth.
Ready to take your corporate fundraising to the next level? Request a demo with Double the Donation to see how our automation tools can help you identify eligible donors, promote payroll giving, and maximize your revenue with minimal effort.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DTD_Engaging-Payroll-Givers-on-Giving-Tuesday-A-Nonprofit-Guide_Feature.png6001600Sydney Fayehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngSydney Faye2025-12-15 19:58:542025-12-15 19:58:54Engaging Payroll Givers on Giving Tuesday: A Nonprofit Guide
Securing a reliable stream of unrestricted revenue is the “holy grail” for nonprofit development teams. While major gifts and grants provide significant influxes of capital, they often lack the consistency required for long-term operational stability. This is where payroll giving emerges as a transformative solution. Often overshadowed by its more famous cousin, matching gifts, payroll giving is a powerful mechanism that allows employees to donate to charities directly from their salary, often on a pre-tax basis. It is a gateway to predictable, recurring income that builds a foundation of financial security for your organization.
Despite the clear financial advantages, many nonprofits struggle to capitalize on this opportunity. The barrier is rarely a lack of donor interest; rather, it is the friction associated with the process. Donors often do not know if they are eligible, or they find the enrollment process through their corporate portals too cumbersome to navigate. To unlock this potential, organizations must adopt specific payroll giving best practices that prioritize user experience and education. By making it effortless for supporters to determine their eligibility and providing them with direct pathways to enroll, you can turn passive interest into active, long-term support.
Success in payroll giving does not happen by accident. It requires a deliberate strategy to remove barriers and guide donors from intent to action. By implementing these best practices, you can integrate payroll giving into your core fundraising efforts and secure a steady flow of support that grows with every paycheck.
Understanding the Strategic Value of Payroll Giving
Before executing a campaign, it is vital to understand why payroll giving is worth the investment. At its core, payroll giving is a “set and forget” donation method. Once an employee opts in, the donation is deducted automatically from their salary during each pay cycle. This automation eliminates the need for monthly credit card entries or manual check writing, drastically reducing the friction that leads to donor churn.
Predictable Revenue Streams: For nonprofits, the primary benefit is the creation of a consistent cash flow. Unlike sporadic one-time gifts, payroll donations provide a steady baseline of income that allows for better financial planning and program continuity. This predictability is essential for budgeting and scaling operations with confidence.
Higher Donor Retention: Payroll donors tend to donate for longer periods than those who give via other channels. Because the deduction happens automatically and often pre-tax, the donor effectively “doesn’t miss” the money, making them less likely to cancel the recurring gift during belt-tightening periods. This leads to significantly higher lifetime value (LTV) for each supporter acquired through this channel.
Tax Efficiency for Donors: It is important to articulate the financial benefits to the donor as well. Donations made through payroll giving are often deducted from gross pay before tax is calculated. This tax-efficient giving method means that a donation costs the employee less in real terms than a standard post-tax donation, allowing them to give more to your cause without significantly impacting their take-home pay.
Did You Know?Payroll giving offers a unique “win-win-win” scenario. Nonprofits gain lower administrative overhead and sustainable income; donors enjoy tax-efficient, effortless giving; and employers boost their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) profile and employee engagement.
Best Practice 1: Determine Eligibility with Precision
The first major hurdle in payroll giving is awareness. Many supporters simply do not know that their employer offers a giving program. To overcome this, you must make it incredibly easy for donors to determine their eligibility without forcing them to dig through their own HR handbooks.
Leverage Database Search Tools: The most effective way to solve the eligibility puzzle is by integrating an employer search tool directly into your fundraising infrastructure. Tools like Double the Donation’s payroll giving widget allow donors to enter their company name and instantly see whether their employer offers payroll giving, matching gifts, or volunteer grants.
Capture Employment Data Early: Don’t wait until a donor has already given to ask about their employer. Incorporate an optional “Company” or “Employer” field into your donation forms, event registrations, and volunteer sign-ups. By collecting this data upfront, you can screen your existing database using employer appends to identify high-value segments of donors who work for companies with established payroll giving programs.
Promote Search Functionality: Place your eligibility search tool prominently on your website. It should not be hidden on a sub-page; it should be integrated into your main “Ways to Give” page and your dedicated payroll giving landing page. The goal is to reduce the cognitive load on the donor. If they can type their company name and get an instant “Yes,” they are far more likely to proceed to the next step.
Best Practice 2: Streamline Enrollment with Direct Links
Once a donor knows they are eligible, the next obstacle is the enrollment process itself. Navigating corporate intranets or third-party CSR platforms can be confusing. To maximize conversion, you must provide clear, company-specific instructions that bridge the gap between your website and their payroll system.
Provide Company-Specific Instructions: Generic instructions like “ask your HR department” are conversion killers. Instead, provide detailed, step-by-step guides for major employers. For example, if you know a large portion of your donor base works for a specific corporation, outline exactly which portal they need to visit and which forms to fill out.
Link to Giving Platforms: Many companies manage their payroll giving through third-party platforms like Benevity, Blackbaud, CyberGrants, or YourCause. If possible, provide direct links to your organization’s profile within these platforms. This allows the donor to click a button on your site, log in to their corporate portal, and land directly on your donation page, minimizing the risk of drop-off.
Simplify the Ask: When providing instructions, keep them simple and actionable. Use clear calls to action such as “Enroll Now” or “Go to Employee Portal.” If the process requires filling out a physical form, provide a downloadable PDF of that form pre-filled with your nonprofit’s details (Tax ID, address, etc.) to save the donor time.
Quick Tip: Create a “Cheat Sheet” for your donors. List the top 10-20 employers in your donor base and provide a one-click link or a specific set of instructions for each. This tailored approach demonstrates that you value their time and understand their specific workplace environment.
Best Practice 3: Establish a Dedicated Web Page
Your website is the hub of your fundraising efforts, and payroll giving deserves its own spotlight. A dedicated payroll giving landing page serves as a central resource where you can educate donors, explain the benefits, and guide them through the enrollment process.
Educational Content: Use this page to explain what payroll giving is in simple, user-friendly terms. Avoid jargon. Clearly articulate the benefits for the donor, such as tax efficiency and the convenience of automatic deductions.
Visual Impact: Incorporate visuals that demonstrate the power of recurring giving. Use an impact calculator or infographic to show how a small deduction per paycheck adds up over a year. For example, show that $10 per pay period provides enough food for a family for a month.
Social Proof: Include testimonials from current payroll donors. Stories from peers are powerful motivators. A quote from a donor saying, “I love payroll giving because I don’t even miss the money, but I know I’m making a difference every two weeks,” can be very persuasive.
Employer Search Tool: Embed your Double the Donation search widget directly on this page. This allows visitors to immediately check their eligibility and access the specific forms and guidelines they need to participate.
Best Practice 4: Leverage Multi-Channel Marketing
Building the program infrastructure is only half the battle; you must also actively market it. Payroll giving should be woven into your broader nonprofit marketing strategy to normalize it as a standard way to give.
Email Campaigns: Email remains a highly effective channel for donor communication. Segment your email lists to target past donors, volunteers, or event attendees who have already expressed interest in your cause. Send targeted campaigns to donors with known employers, explicitly mentioning their company’s program: “Did you know [Company Name] allows you to donate directly from your paycheck?”.
Social Media Integration: Use social media to raise awareness. Share short, educational posts explaining how payroll giving works. Create graphics that highlight the ease of the process. You can even run specific campaigns, such as a “Payroll Giving Week,” to create a sense of urgency and focus. Use hashtags like #GiveThroughWork or #PayrollGiving to increase discoverability.
Newsletter Features: Include a permanent “Payroll Giving” section or button in your regular newsletters. Even a small P.S. line at the bottom of donation appeals can be effective: “Want to make your donation go further? Sign up for payroll giving and support us every payday”.
Best Practice 5: Incentivize and Steward Donors
People are more likely to take action when they feel recognized and valued. Because payroll giving is often invisible (happening automatically in the background), deliberate stewardship is essential to keep these donors engaged.
Offer Exclusive Perks: Consider creating a special club or designation for payroll donors. Offer incentives such as welcome gifts (stickers, mugs), digital badges they can share on LinkedIn, or access to exclusive donor-only webinars and events.
Corporate Match Bonuses: If a corporate partner is willing, organize a “match drive” where the company agrees to double or triple payroll donations for a limited time. This creates a powerful incentive for employees to sign up immediately.
Regular Impact Reporting: Don’t let payroll donors feel like an ATM. Send them exclusive updates that show exactly how their sustained support is making a difference. Frame these communications as appreciation rather than solicitation. For example: “Thanks to payroll donors like you, we were able to plan ahead and launch this new program”.
Best Practice 6: Measure Success and Optimize
To ensure your payroll giving program grows over time, you must track its performance. Data-driven insights allow you to identify bottlenecks in the enrollment process and refine your marketing strategies.
Key Metrics to Track: Establish a baseline and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). Important metrics include:
Number of active payroll donors: Tracks growth and participation trends.
Total revenue from payroll giving: The core financial metric for assessing ROI.
Donor retention rate: A high retention rate signals strong engagement and program “stickiness”.
Employer participation rate: Which companies have the highest number of enrolled employees?.
Consolidate Data: Payroll giving data often comes from multiple sources: different corporate portals and your own CRM. Create a centralized tracking system to consolidate this information. Regular reporting reviews will help you spot trends, such as a sudden drop-off in donors from a specific company, allowing you to intervene quickly.
Iterate and Improve: Use this data to continuously improve your donor journey. If you see high traffic to your payroll giving page but low conversions, you may need to simplify the instructions or make the search tool more prominent. Regularly solicit feedback from current payroll donors to understand their motivations and pain points.
Wrapping Up & Next Steps
Implementing these payroll giving best practices is a strategic investment in the long-term sustainability of your nonprofit. By shifting your focus from passive acceptance to active promotion, you can unlock a reliable revenue stream that complements your existing fundraising efforts. Payroll giving transforms one-time donors into consistent partners, allowing your mission to grow with every paycheck.
To get started, audit your current website and donation forms. Ensure you are capturing employment data and providing a clear, searchable pathway for donors to check their eligibility. Build a dedicated resource page, and begin segmenting your email communications to target employees at companies with known programs.
Ready to streamline your corporate fundraising? Request a demo with Double the Donation to see how our industry-leading tools can help you identify, track, and secure more workplace giving and matching gift opportunities today.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DTD_Master-These-Payroll-Giving-Best-Practices-Helpful-Tips_Feature.png6001600Kyra Englehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngKyra Engle2025-12-15 19:42:562025-12-15 19:42:56Master These Payroll Giving Best Practices: Helpful Tips
In the high-stakes world of nonprofit fundraising, the donor journey is often visualized as a funnel. You cast a wide net to attract supporters, work tirelessly to convert them into donors, and then fight an uphill battle to retain them. The drop-off at each stage can be discouraging, particularly the “churn” of one-time donors who never return. But what if you could fundamentally alter the mechanics of this journey, transforming a transactional donor into a lifelong partner with a single decision? This is the power of improving the donor journey with payroll giving.
Payroll giving removes the friction of recurring donations by embedding philanthropy directly into a supporter’s livelihood. It offers a “set it and forget it” mechanism that provides nonprofits with stable, unrestricted revenue while offering donors a tax-efficient way to give. Yet, for many organizations, payroll giving is treated as an afterthought—a passive channel rather than a proactive strategy. By integrating payroll giving into every stage of your donor communications and stewardship plans, you can smooth out the bumps in the traditional donor lifecycle, increase lifetime value (LTV), and build a deeper connection with your supporters.
The donor journey shouldn’t be a mystery. By understanding how workplace giving fits into the modern supporter’s life, you can craft a strategy that not only acquires new donors but keeps them engaged for years.
How Payroll Giving Redefines the Traditional Donor Lifecycle
The traditional donor journey is often fraught with friction. A donor must remember to give, take out their credit card, and manually process a transaction. Even monthly giving programs suffer from credit card expirations and cancellations. Payroll giving bypasses these hurdles entirely. Because the donation is deducted from the employee’s paycheck (often before taxes), it feels less like a monthly bill and more like a lifestyle choice.
When you focus on improving the donor journey with payroll giving, you are essentially shifting the relationship from transactional to relational. The donor makes one decision to support you, and that decision is reinforced every pay period without any further effort on their part. This creates a “sticky” relationship where retention rates are significantly higher than standard recurring giving programs.
However, because the transaction happens within a corporate ecosystem (like a payroll portal or CSR platform) rather than on your website, the donor journey looks different. You have less control over the checkout experience, which means your influence must be exerted earlier (education) and later (stewardship) in the process. Understanding this shift is the first step toward mastering it.
Did You Know?Payroll donors are among the most loyal supporters a nonprofit can have. Because their giving is automated and tied to their employment, they rarely cancel unless they change jobs. This high retention rate makes the initial cost of acquiring a payroll donor an incredibly high-yield investment for your organization.
Stage 1: Awareness and Education for Workplace Giving
The journey begins with awareness. Unlike a viral social media campaign that prompts an impulse gift, payroll giving requires a donor to know that the option exists and understand its benefits. Unfortunately, many employees are unaware that their company offers a workplace giving program, or they don’t realize they can direct those funds to your specific organization.
Marketing the Opportunity: To improve the entry point of the journey, you must actively market payroll giving across your communication channels. Do not bury this option in the footer of your website. Create a dedicated “Workplace Giving” page that explains the concept simply. Use language that highlights the benefits to the donor, such as tax efficiency and convenience.
Targeted Outreach: Use your existing data to target the right people. If you know a segment of your donors works for a major employer like the Federal Government, Microsoft, or Walmart, send them a targeted email campaign explaining how to find your nonprofit in their specific employee portal. This personalized approach moves the donor from general awareness (“I like this charity”) to specific consideration (“I can support them through my paycheck”).
Educational Content: Produce content that demystifies the process. A short video or an infographic showing how a $10 deduction per paycheck adds up to $240 a year can be a powerful motivator. By framing the donation as a small slice of their salary rather than a lump sum, you lower the psychological barrier to entry.
Stage 2: Removing Friction from the Enrollment Process
The “Decision” phase of the donor journey is where most drop-offs occur. In a standard donation flow, you optimize your donation form to reduce clicks. In payroll giving, you cannot optimize the form because it lives on a third-party corporate portal (like Benevity, YourCause, or CyberGrants). However, you can equip the donor with everything they need to navigate that portal quickly.
The “Cheat Sheet” Strategy: Create a downloadable or easily accessible “Cheat Sheet” for your donors. This document should contain:
Your organization’s legal name (as it appears in IRS records).
Your EIN / Tax ID number.
Your address.
Specific codes for major giving campaigns (like your CFC number for federal employees).
Guidance for Write-Ins: If your nonprofit is not listed as a default choice in a corporate portal, educate donors on the “write-in” option. Many platforms allow employees to manually enter a charity. Provide step-by-step screenshots or instructions on your website showing how to do this. By acting as a guide through a system you don’t control, you build trust and show the donor that you value their effort.
Stage 3: The Challenge of Acknowledgment and Immediate Gratification
In a typical online donation, the donor receives an immediate tax receipt and a thank-you email. This instant gratification is a crucial dopamine hit that reinforces the behavior. With payroll giving, there is often a delay. You might receive a lump-sum check from a third-party processor months after the employee signed up, sometimes with limited donor data. This “blind spot” can disrupt the donor journey if not managed carefully.
Closing the Gap: To solve this, encourage donors to self-report. On your website’s workplace giving page, include a simple form: “Did you just sign up for payroll giving? Let us know so we can say thanks!” When a donor fills this out, trigger an immediate, automated welcome email welcoming them to your “Workplace Sustainers” circle.
The Welcome Packet: Treat new payroll donors like VIPs. Send them a digital or physical welcome packet that outlines the impact of their recurring gift. Since they won’t get a receipt for every individual deduction (it usually appears on their W-2), use this touchpoint to reinforce the emotional connection. Explain that their steady support allows you to plan long-term programs, making them partners in your strategic vision.
Quick Tip: If you receive anonymous payroll donations through a portal, work with the corporate liaison or the platform provider. Sometimes, donor data is available but requires you to download a specific report. Proactively seeking this data allows you to move anonymous donors into your active stewardship pipeline.
Stage 4: Long-Term Stewardship and Impact Reporting
Retention is the name of the game in improving the donor journey with payroll giving. Because the donation is automated, there is a risk that the donor will emotionally disengage, even if they remain financially active. Your stewardship strategy must combat this “set and forget” mentality by keeping the mission front of mind.
The “No-Ask” Communication: Payroll donors are already giving. They don’t need monthly appeals. Instead, place them in a communication stream focused purely on impact. Send quarterly updates that say, “Because of your steady support, we achieved X this quarter.” These “no-ask” communications build trust and reinforce the value of their ongoing contribution.
Annual Statements: While the donor’s W-2 serves as their tax receipt, sending an annual “Impact Statement” is a best practice. This document should summarize their total giving for the year and translate it into tangible outcomes (e.g., “Your payroll contributions in 2024 provided 300 meals”). This tangible connection between their paycheck and your mission prevents the donation from becoming just another line item on their pay stub.
Corporate Recognition: If you have a critical mass of payroll donors from a specific company, recognize that company publicly. A shout-out on social media, tagging the employer, validates the employees’ choice and fosters a sense of pride. It creates a community around the giving behavior, making the donor feel part of a larger movement within their workplace.
Stage 5: Leveraging the Matching Gift Multiplier
The donor journey doesn’t end with the payroll deduction. The final, and perhaps most lucrative, stage is upgrading the donor through matching gifts. Many companies that offer payroll giving also offer matching gift programs. In fact, these two programs often live in the same portal.
The Double Ask: When educating donors about payroll giving, always mention matching gifts. Use language like: “While you are setting up your payroll deduction, check the box to request a match!” Many modern CSR platforms allow employees to set up an automatic match for their recurring deductions.
Identifying Opportunities: Use employer appends and matching gift databases to identify which of your payroll donors work for matching-eligible companies. If you see a payroll donation coming from a donor at General Electric or Johnson & Johnson, reach out immediately. A simple email saying, “Thank you for your payroll gift! Did you know your company will match that?” can instantly double your revenue from that donor without them spending another dime.
Did You Know? [cite_start]An estimated $4 to $7 billion in matching gift revenue goes unclaimed every year[cite: 16]. By linking payroll giving and matching gifts in your donor journey map, you can capture a significant portion of this funding. It turns a $1,000 annual payroll donor into a $2,000 impact partner.
The Role of Technology in Automating the Journey
Managing the nuances of payroll giving, especially the data delays and platform variations, can be labor-intensive. Therefore, leveraging the right technology is particularly essential for scaling this strategy. Here’s what we recommend:
Corporate Giving Databases: Tools like Double the Donation provide comprehensive databases of corporate giving programs. Embedding a search tool on your “Workplace Giving” page allows donors to instantly check if their employer offers payroll deductions and matching gifts. This self-service tool removes the guesswork and empowers the donor to take action immediately.
CRM Integration: Ensure your donor management system (CRM) can handle payroll giving data. You need to be able to tag donors as “Payroll Givers” and track their employer relationships. This data segmentation allows you to suppress standard appeals (preventing donor fatigue) and send targeted stewardship content relevant to their workplace.
Automated Workflows: Set up email automation for the “self-report” form mentioned in Stage 3. When a donor tells you they have started payroll giving, your system should automatically tag them, send a thank-you, and enter them into a stewardship cadence. This ensures no donor falls through the cracks, even if your development team is busy.
Wrapping Up & Next Steps
Improving the donor journey with payroll giving requires a shift in perspective. You are moving away from the high-adrenaline, high-churn world of transactional fundraising and entering a model built on stability, consistency, and corporate partnership. By guiding your donors through the specific hurdles of workplace giving (from awareness and enrollment to acknowledgment and matching), you create a frictionless experience that benefits everyone.
The donor gets a convenient, tax-smart way to support the cause they love. Your nonprofit gets a reliable, unrestricted revenue stream that allows for bold long-term planning. And the corporate partner gets to engage their workforce in meaningful social impact.
If you are ready to optimize this journey, start by auditing your current web presence. Do you have a dedicated payroll giving page? Do you provide your EIN and CFC codes clearly? Are you cross-promoting matching gifts? Small tweaks to your digital infrastructure can open the floodgates to this sustainable funding source.
Ready to transform your donor journey?
Audit Your Data: Identify which of your current donors work for major employers with payroll giving programs.
Build the Page: Create a dedicated resource hub on your website with all the “cheat sheet” info a donor needs.
Automate the Ask: Integrate corporate giving search tools into your donation forms to catch opportunities in real-time.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DTD_Tips-for-Improving-the-Donor-Journey-with-Payroll-Giving_Feature.png6001600Kyra Englehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngKyra Engle2025-12-15 19:11:242025-12-15 19:11:24Tips for Improving the Donor Journey with Payroll Giving
A retention crisis is quietly undermining the hard work of donor stewardship teams across the country. According to recent reports, the percentage of organizations prioritizing donor retention has dropped sharply. While this trend is troubling, it also reveals a powerful, often-overlooked opportunity: the chance to secure your organization’s financial future and stand out from your peers by mastering truly effective donor stewardship.
With the average donor retention rate hovering at a challenging 40%, the key to unlocking sustainable growth isn’t simply finding new supporters, but building authentic, lasting relationships with the people who already believe in your mission. This journey begins with understanding what modern donor care truly entails and developing a proactive, personal plan. For that reason, we’ll help you dive into donor stewardship by reviewing the following topics:
With a better understanding of donor stewardship and a dedicated plan, you can make stewardship an ongoing, iterative process at your organization and consistently build enduring donor relationships.
What is donor stewardship?
Donor stewardship is the process of extending a relationship beyond the donor’s gift. The ultimate goal of donor stewardship is to encourage them to give again by building a deeper connection. Developing that sense of loyalty will make your fundraising efforts more seamless in the future because you’ll have a strong supporter base to tap into.
For stewardship to be effective, nonprofits must form mutually beneficial relationships with their donors. While nonprofits receive financial support, donors get to feel good about the impact they’ve made and join a community of people passionate about your cause. To build these relationships, nonprofits implement stewardship strategies that keep donors informed about the impact of their gifts and offer additional engagement opportunities.
The relationship between donor stewardship and retention
Donor retention is the percentage of donors who return to contribute to your organization after their initial gift. You can calculate your donor retention rate by dividing the number of donors who gave again this year by the number of donors who contributed last year, then multiplying that number by 100.
In recent years, donor retention has been declining, with an overall rate of 42.6%, down 3.5% from the previous year. There are costs associated with acquiring new donors, and when your donor retention rate is low, your organization has to continually maximize the time, effort, and resources it invests in donor acquisition.
Donor stewardship helps your organization conserve resources and build a more reliable donor pool. You need regular communication to remind donors of your cause and the vital role their support plays. With a dedicated donor stewardship plan, you can stay in touch with donors and ultimately retain them.
Additionally, retained donors are more valuable to your organization because they give more, more often, and are more likely to engage with your nonprofit in other ways. Given that 94% of recurring donors prefer to give to their causes of choice monthly, stewarding these donors helps you build a consistent community of supporters rather than a sporadic, constantly shifting list of one-time donors.
Lastly, you already have data on previous donors in your database or a constituent relationship management (CRM) platform. You can use this information to re-engage and steward these relationships, as you now know more about their interests and preferences. With a data-driven stewardship approach, you can meet donors where they are and personalize your communications to retain their support.
How donor stewardship fits into the cultivation cycle
Donor cultivation is the process of acquiring new donors and strengthening relationships with them. While donor stewardship is the last step in the cultivation cycle, it’s essential to understand each step in the process and how it informs your stewardship efforts:
1. Identification
The first step in the donor cultivation cycle is to identify potential donors. This step may involve reviewing your CRM for supporters who may be interested in donating, identifying previous or lapsed donors, or conducting outreach to entirely new supporters.
Some strategies for identifying prospective donors include:
Prospect research. When you’re looking for potential major donors, conducting prospect research can help you determine supporters’ giving capacity and willingness to contribute. That way, you can focus your outreach on those who are most likely to make a significant contribution.
Existing connections. Current supporters and stakeholders in your organization can help you identify people in their networks who may be interested in contributing to your cause. Ask your board members, major donors, and staff if they have any connections they can leverage.
Surveys. Sometimes the best way to identify if someone would be interested in giving is to ask them. Send surveys to your supporter base asking them if they’re open to making a monetary contribution and what type of gift they would like to make.
In this stage, it’s crucial to emphasize your nonprofit’s mission and let potential donors know the impact their contributions could make.
2. Qualification
Now that you’ve identified potential donors, it’s time to narrow down that list further to prioritize those with the highest giving likelihood. Some factors you may assess to determine the most qualified potential donors are:
Previous engagement. Potential donors may have interacted with your organization in ways other than donating, such as attending an event, volunteering, following your social media accounts, or signing up for your newsletter. These interactions demonstrate potential donors’ interest in your nonprofit and may indicate their likelihood to donate.
Wealth markers. Identifying potential donors’ capacity to give is especially useful for determining who may become a major donor. These wealth indicators may include real estate ownership, stock holdings, and business affiliations.
Affinity markers. Just because someone has the capacity to give doesn’t mean they’re interested in contributing. Affinity markers, such as political involvement and prior support for other charitable causes, help you assess the alignment between a potential donor’s values and your organization’s mission.
While some of this information may be stored in your CRM or found in public records, it can be helpful to work with a fundraising consultant or data provider who can acquire this data for you.
3. Cultivation
The cultivation step involves laying the foundation for a long-term relationship with prospects. Before soliciting a donation, introduce potential donors to your organization and invite them to get involved with:
Educational materials. Allow prospects to learn more about your mission and work by providing them with educational materials. Send them introductory pamphlets, videos of your beneficiaries, and summaries of your services so they can become more familiar with your organization.
Volunteer opportunities. When prospects volunteer with your nonprofit, they’ll receive hands-on experience with your cause. As a result, they may develop a connection to your mission and be more open to donating.
Events. An event is a perfect opportunity for prospects to meet current donors and find out why they support your cause. Consider inviting prospects to your next fundraising or advocacy event so they can become immersed in your community and determine if they’d like to become more involved.
Personalizing your communications with prospects is also a powerful way to build relationships with them. Use data from your CRM to better understand your prospects and tailor your communications accordingly. For example, if a prospect recently volunteered with your nonprofit, thank them for their support and follow up with additional volunteer opportunities they may be interested in.
4. Solicitation
After getting to know potential donors and informing them about your organization, you can begin soliciting donations. When making your initial asks, keep these tips in mind:
Be specific.
Using the data you’ve gathered about your prospects, suggest a specific donation amount that aligns with their giving capacity. You should also be clear about what that amount of money will allow your nonprofit to accomplish. For example, an animal shelter might specify that a $100 donation allows it to restock its pet food supply for one week.
Appeal to prospects’ emotions.
Don’t be afraid to use emotionally charged language to show prospects why they should care about your cause and how they have the power to make an impact. Including a testimonial from a beneficiary or current donor can help make a prospect’s potential impact more tangible.
Mention matching gift opportunities.
Did you know that 84% of people say they’re more likely to donate if a match is offered, and 1 in 3 donors claim they’d give a larger gift if matching is applied to their donation? Informing prospects about matching gift opportunities in your ask can motivate them to donate and help you raise even more for your cause. Matching gifts occur when a company matches its employees’ donations to a nonprofit, usually at a 1:1 ratio. As a result, your nonprofit can double its donation revenue. Learn best practices for promoting matching gifts in the video below:
As the video states, raising awareness for matching gifts is key. Once potential donors know about the power of matching gifts, you can make the process easier by researching their eligibility or providing a matching gift database where they can easily find their employer’s matching gift policies.
If a prospect says “no” to your first ask, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed to garner their support. Continue cultivating a relationship with this individual until it’s appropriate to make another donation request. Even if they don’t end up contributing monetarily, they can still become an active member of your community by volunteering, attending events, and engaging with your content online.
5. Stewardship
You should begin the donor stewardship process immediately after a prospect becomes a donor. Follow these steps to kick off your stewardship efforts:
Thank donors for their support. Show donors your appreciation for their contributions. To quickly and efficiently thank donors, automate a thank-you eCard to be sent to each donor right after they submit their donation. For larger gifts, you may send a handwritten thank-you note or call major donors to demonstrate your appreciation.
Recognize your donors. Larger gifts may also warrant public recognition of your donors through plaques, donor appreciation events, or invitations to your nonprofit’s giving society. You can also recognize mid-level donors by creating social media or newsletter spotlights.
Report on their impact. No matter the size of their donation, donors want to know that your organization is using their funds responsibly. Update donors on the specific initiatives you’ve allocated their donations toward, whether that’s a new program, supplies, a fundraising event, or something else entirely.
While these steps are a great start to donor stewardship, you’ll need a dedicated stewardship plan to sustain your donor relationships effectively.
What to know about the donor pyramid
The donor pyramid is a visual representation of different donor giving levels. Since first-time donors are likely your largest donor group, they occupy the bottom of the pyramid, whereas the few major donors you have reside at the top. When you understand which category of the pyramid each donor fits into, you can better steward them up the pyramid and increase their support.
The main categories of the donor pyramid include:
Prospective donors
Some organizations include prospective donors at the bottom of the pyramid to represent all potential giving opportunities. You may omit this group or narrow it down to those who have shown interest in your cause but haven’t yet contributed monetarily, such as volunteers, social media followers, or newsletter subscribers.
First-time donors
Most nonprofits place first-time donors at the bottom of the pyramid. While these supporters have demonstrated interest in your mission, it’s crucial to follow up with them immediately after their initial gift to show your appreciation and share the impact of their contribution.
Recurring donors
Recurring donors may give monthly, quarterly, annually, or on a varying basis. including directly through their payroll. You may create different segments for each of these groups and develop stewardship strategies depending on giving frequency.
Planned donors
Planned donors pledge gifts to be contributed to nonprofits upon their death. These bequests are typically sizable donations, so it’s important to show your appreciation for planned donors’ contributions.
Major donors
The top of the pyramid comprises major donors who make the most significant gifts to your organization. Depending on your nonprofit’s size and typical donation amounts, you may define your major gift threshold differently from other organizations.
To build your nonprofit’s donor pyramid, draw on supporter insights from your donor database. This information will help you determine which categories to include, roughly how many donors are in each tier, and how best to steward each group toward higher levels of the pyramid or toward larger commitments at their current tier.
Beyond the thank-you: active vs. passive stewardship
The most successful nonprofits are shifting their mindset from passive to active stewardship. Passive stewardship is reactive: the basic thank-you letter, the standard tax receipt, and the generic newsletter that follows a gift. This is compliance, not relationship building. While necessary, passive stewardship often leaves the donor feeling like a transaction has closed. Active stewardship, on the other hand, is proactive, ongoing, personalized, and seeks to honor the donor’s value to the mission beyond their wallet. It treats the relationship not as finished, but as just beginning.
Active stewardship focuses on creating unexpected, high-value, and deeply personal moments of appreciation. It involves leveraging data to anticipate a donor’s needs or potential for deeper involvement, and to reach out before you ever need to ask for another gift. The goal of this approach is to make the donor feel like a respected partner and a true difference-maker, which is the most powerful incentive for continued giving.
How to Use Challenge Grants as a Creative Stewardship Tool
One of the highest-impact strategies in active stewardship is the strategic use of Challenge Grants. A challenge grant is a large, pre-secured gift from an individual, foundation, or corporation that is usually contingent upon your organization raising a specific amount from other sources within a defined time period. Rather than simply using this grant as a fundraising hook for mass outreach, savvy fundraisers leverage the challenge grant as an unparalleled stewardship opportunity for the major donor who provided it.
Here’s an example from Charity Navigator:
Instead of seeing the major donor’s contribution as a mere transaction, you position them as the Lead Partner and the hero of the resulting campaign. This strategy honors the donor by giving them public credit (if they desire) for inspiring hundreds of smaller gifts. It re-engages them not with an ask, but with a celebration of their power to multiply others’ generosity. This is a creative, high-impact stewardship touchpoint because it shifts the focus from their past gift to the future impact they are actively helping to create. This active acknowledgment deepens their loyalty and strengthens their bond with your organization far more effectively than a standard thank-you ever could.
When to steward your nonprofit’s donors: A helpful timeline
Timing a stewardship touchpoint is just as critical as the message itself, transforming a routine communication into a high-impact relationship builder. By identifying the specific moments when your donors naturally think about your mission, their giving history, or their overall philanthropic capacity, your organization can foster deep loyalty and set the stage for sustained support without issuing an immediate ask.
In an active stewardship model, there are several crucial times when a personalized, non-solicitation outreach will yield the best results. These include:
Immediately After a Contribution Is Made
The first 48 hours after a donation are arguably the most vital period for stewardship. This is when the donor’s sense of generosity and connection to your mission is at its peak, and your response must be swift, warm, and highly personalized. While automated thank-you emails are essential for acknowledging the gift immediately, they should be supplemented with a more tailored follow-up tailored to the gift size or donor segment.
For major donors, a personal call from a board member or executive director within one business day signals that their support is deeply valued at the highest level. For all supporters, the initial thank-you must not only confirm the transaction but also connect their specific dollar amount to a tangible outcome, closing the loop on their generosity and fulfilling the initial promise of their gift. Plus, it’s a great time to mention the matching gift opportunity!
Following Attendance at an Event or Volunteer Shift
Any instance of engagement, monetary or otherwise, should trigger a stewardship follow-up. When a donor attends a mission-focused event, such as a facility tour or workshop, or when a supporter volunteers their time, focused communication is necessary. For event attendees, this might be a follow-up email with photos or a short video recap that highlights the specific impact of the programs they learned about. For volunteers, a personalized thank-you note from a beneficiary or a staff member directly acknowledging the value of their time is priceless.
Time is often considered more valuable than money, and stewarding an individual’s time and talent is critical for nurturing a relationship that can lead to deeper financial support or a sustained volunteer commitment. This immediate, mission-centered follow-up ensures the positive feeling of their engagement is preserved and linked back to your cause.
During Key Relationship Milestones
Relationship milestones provide perfect, non-ask reasons to reach out and celebrate the donor’s enduring partnership with your cause. These are organic, predictable points on the calendar that can be leveraged for deeper engagement.
Consider recognizing the annual anniversary of their very first gift, using that occasion to send a retrospective impact report detailing all they have helped accomplish since joining your community. Celebrating their birthday or sending a personalized note when they move up a giving tier are also excellent opportunities to demonstrate that you see them as an individual. These milestone communications reinforce the long-term value of their loyalty and commitment, making the donor feel like a cherished member of an exclusive inner circle.
When You Get a Data Update
In the era of active stewardship, utilizing advanced data tools to monitor changes in a donor’s profile is a powerful, non-intrusive way to initiate relevant outreach. When you receive an update from your prospect screening tools or data enrichment services that indicates a change in a donor’s life, particularly their employment data (such as moving to a new company, receiving a major promotion, or reaching C-suite status), this is a prime opportunity for a relationship-focused touchpoint.
Instead of immediately soliciting a larger gift, your team should send a congratulatory message celebrating their professional achievement. This gesture is purely relational, demonstrating genuine interest in their success. Crucially, this updated employment information is invaluable for internal use: it allows you to refresh your donor profiles, uncover potential workplace giving opportunities, such as corporate matching gift programs or volunteer grants, at their new employer, and segment them for relevant, corporate-centric communications down the line. Leveraging this data transforms a passive record into an active insight, positioning your nonprofit to maximize future support when the time is right.
Creating a comprehensive donor stewardship plan: 5 steps
A systematic approach to donor stewardship ensures no donor gets left behind and that your team knows exactly how to uphold donor relationships. To create a donor stewardship plan, follow these essential steps:
1. Determine your donor stewardship goals.
The beginning of any plan should start with goal creation, and donor stewardship is no different. Goals developed using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goal framework make it easier to measure the success of your stewardship plan.
For example, your nonprofit may want to grow its recurring giving program. Here’s how your team could incorporate each element of the SMART goal framework into your objectives:
Specific. Our fundraising team will reach out to first-time donors to introduce them to the recurring donor program and demonstrate how recurring gifts will maximize their impact.
Measurable. Our goal is to convert 20% of first-time donors into recurring donors.
Achievable. Given that 57% of donors are enrolled in a recurring giving program and that 10% of last year’s first-time donors became recurring donors, this is a challenging yet realistic goal.
Relevant. Growing our recurring donor program will enable us to build a more consistent revenue stream for our nonprofit, empowering us to better serve our beneficiaries and fulfill our mission.
Time-Bound. Our goal is to convert these donors to recurring donors by the end of the year. We will start communicating with first-time donors next week and track monthly progress.
Other common goals may include increasing your donor retention rate, bolstering your major gift fundraising, or improving your post-event outreach. No matter your goals, setting clear objectives helps your team stay on track and establish progress benchmarks, so you can make adjustments as needed.
2. Segment your donors.
While reaching out to each donor individually would be ideal for stewardship, it’s often unfeasible. When you segment your donors into relevant groups, you can personalize the donor stewardship process more efficiently.
Common ways to segment donors include grouping by:
Donation amount
Donation frequency
Donation recency
Engagement level
Communication preferences
Demographics
Then you can reach out to each group with communications and engagement opportunities that will resonate with them. For example, you may create a special newsletter for monthly donors that informs them about upcoming events and volunteer outings.
3. Develop an outreach cadence.
Using your segments, create an automated outreach cadence that keeps donors’ shared characteristics in mind. New donors should receive more in-depth information about your organization and mission that they may not have received in the initial cultivation process. Then you can automate more targeted communications to your segments to streamline donor stewardship.
By integrating your email marketing software with your donor database, you can create personalized campaigns based on donors’ interests and current stewardship stages. For instance, during the cultivation stage, you may send prospects within a ten-mile radius of your organization’s headquarters information about in-person events and engagement opportunities in their community.
Top Tip: Automating High-Value Touchpoints
Beyond scheduled campaigns, the most efficient and scalable forms of active donor stewardship involve automated systems that deliver immediate, high-value information. A prime example is implementing automated corporate matching gift alerts through Double the Donation. When a donor makes a contribution, they are immediately prompted to check their eligibility for a matching gift, and follow-up emails are automatically sent based on the employment data they provide.
This approach positions Double the Donation’s matching gift alerts as an incredible, automated stewardship touchpoint for three reasons:
First, it maximizes the donor’s impact without an extra gift, instantly doubling the value of their support and making them feel powerful.
Second, it’s a value-add service that costs the donor nothing but a few minutes of their time, increasing their positive experience with your brand.
Third, it generates hundreds or thousands of dollars in “free” revenue for your organization.
This is a donor stewardship win-win: the supporter feels appreciated for their amplified impact, and your nonprofit benefits from the increased revenue, all driven by a hands-off, automated system. It transforms a simple donation acknowledgment into a valuable financial partnership opportunity.
4. Offer additional engagement opportunities.
To maintain relationships with donors, you’ll need to offer engagement opportunities other than simply donating. While you may already have general fundraising events and volunteer opportunities planned, take the time to develop additional opportunities for donors to engage with your cause, such as:
Cause-related workshops and speaker sessions
Meetings with beneficiaries
Tours of your facility
Exclusive major donor events
Fundraising event planning committees
When you share activities with your donors that are unaccompanied by a donation ask, you prove to donors that you’re committed to providing them with a positive experience with your nonprofit. Through a variety of engagement opportunities, you can build a strong community of supporters and advocates for your cause.
5. Collect feedback.
You can (and should) measure progress using the key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals you identified early on in the stewardship process. However, qualitative data, such as donor feedback, can give you insight into what your donors enjoy about your stewardship efforts and what your team could improve.
Send regular surveys to your donors to gather feedback about your donor stewardship plan. The questions you may ask include:
How often would you like our nonprofit to communicate with you?
Is our current communication frequency too little, too much, or just right?
What engagement opportunities have you most enjoyed?
What additional engagement opportunities would you like to see offered?
Is there anything else our nonprofit can do to improve your experience with us?
Analyze your team’s responses with donors to identify insights you can apply to your donor stewardship plan. For donors with multiple ideas or many points of feedback, consider calling them to learn more about their experience and gain a deeper understanding of the efficacy of your stewardship efforts.
Wrapping Up & Further Reading
With a comprehensive, active donor stewardship plan in hand, your nonprofit can build strong donor relationships, increase donor retention, and earn more funds for your cause. Whether you’re trying to grow your recurring donor program, acquire more challenge match leaders, increase corporate matching gift participation, or follow up with event attendees more effectively, a dedicated plan will help you reach your goals and steward donors to higher levels of the donor pyramid.
To learn more about key elements of the donor stewardship process, check out these additional resources:
Nonprofit Basics: The Donor Pyramid. When you develop a donor pyramid, you can more easily steward donors to higher engagement levels. This guide presents tips for personalizing your donor pyramid to your organization.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD_Donor-Stewardship-Engaging-Retaining-Support-Effectively_Feature.png6001600Julia Beltranhttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngJulia Beltran2025-11-19 21:15:242025-11-20 17:29:43Donor Stewardship: How to Retain Support Effectively
Every nonprofit organization reaches a point where its vision outgrows its current capacity. Perhaps you need a new state-of-the-art facility, a substantial permanent endowment, or the resources to launch a massive program expansion that will transform your community. This moment, the leap from your current reality to your boldest future, is powered by a Capital Campaign.
A capital campaign is not just another annual appeal; it is the most ambitious and strategic fundraising effort a nonprofit can undertake. Successfully executed, it can permanently reshape your organization’s financial stability and physical infrastructure.
But where do you start? How do you ensure your multi-million dollar vision doesn’t turn into a multi-year headache?
In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through every critical phase of the capital campaign process. From assessing readiness and securing your first major gifts in the quiet phase, to selecting the right consulting support and executing a flawless public launch, we’ll provide the roadmap you need to turn your organization’s biggest dreams into reality. This includes:
Let’s begin by answering a few frequently asked questions by nonprofits such as yours.
Capital Campaign FAQs
What Is a Capital Campaign?
At its core, a capital campaign is an extensive, drawn-out fundraiser.
But at a more complex level, a capital campaign is a concerted effort to raise substantial funds for a specific project or undertaking. According to Capital Campaign Pro, these campaigns typically take 2-3 years from start to finish, and most organizations conduct them every 10-15 years.
Because these are the most significant fundraising campaigns your nonprofit will ever take on, capital campaigns require coordination and cooperation from your entire organization and community. Without the support of board members, staff, and individuals who are dedicated to your cause, a capital campaign has little to no chance of succeeding.
Why Do Nonprofits Use Capital Campaigns?
As stated before, nonprofits generally use capital campaigns for large projects that require substantial financial backing. More often than not, capital campaigns are used to raise money for a new building or renovations to an existing building. But they can also be for:
Purchasing Lands or Buildings
The main reason many organizations wish to acquire land is the possibility of future expansion. Capital campaigns are thus used to help organizations raise enough funds to finance land purchases. Organizations may also campaign to buy a building they’ve rented for a long time when the space goes up for sale, to secure a safe future without rent increases.
Expanding an Existing Building
Large organizations such as hospitals and schools often need to regularly expand their facilities to accommodate a growing patient or student population. Such projects are massive undertakings that require substantial financial resources, which is why they are mostly funded through capital campaigns.
Funding New Programs or Increasing Staffing
Sometimes, in order to get a new program or initiative off the ground, your nonprofit needs an influx of funds to secure the necessary resources. You may even need funding to grow your team, ensuring your organization has the capacity to do more for its beneficiaries.
Building an Endowment
An endowment helps secure a bright future for your nonprofit, but it can be difficult to encourage giving to a capital campaign focused solely on an endowment, since the impact of that giving may not be immediate. This is why many organizations choose to include endowment funding as one element of a multifaceted capital campaign.
Purchasing Equipment or Supplies
Nonprofits sometimes need large-scale purchases to further their missions. A hospital, for example, may need to upgrade existing radiology equipment, or a university may require a high-powered telescope for the astronomy department. Capital campaigns can help fund these major purchases.
What Types of Organizations Run Capital Campaigns?
Any type of organization can run a capital campaign! Let’s highlight a few examples:
Hospitals
Many hospitals and healthcare nonprofits launch capital campaigns to raise funds for new wings or buildings, purchase new equipment, replace or repair outdated machines, or fund groundbreaking medical research.
Schools and Universities
Schools, colleges, and universities are another type of organization that frequently uses capital campaigns as a fundraising method. Education-related organizations use capital campaigns to raise funds for new buildings, scholarship programs, or equipment.
Community Organizations
These organizations often launch campaigns to build or expand physical centers that serve local residents, such as new food banks, youth centers, or recreational facilities. Their campaigns focus on scaling essential programs and infrastructure that directly improve the quality of life within a specific geographic area.
Civic Organizations
Civic groups often run capital campaigns to renovate or restore historical landmarks, establish memorials, or fund large-scale public works projects like parks and libraries. Their goals are usually tied to enhancing the public good and preserving shared community assets.
Environmental Nonprofits
Environmental organizations rely on capital campaigns to secure large tracts of land for conservation, establish permanent endowments for long-term stewardship, or build interpretive and educational facilities. These campaigns aim to protect natural resources and fund significant, enduring ecological projects.
Animal-Related Organizations
These nonprofits frequently seek capital funding to construct new shelters with modern veterinary facilities, establish sanctuaries for rescued animals, or expand kennel capacity. Their campaigns are often driven by the urgent need to upgrade facilities that provide direct animal care and housing.
Arts and Culture Nonprofits
Museums, theaters, symphonies, and galleries run capital campaigns to fund the construction of new performance halls, the acquisition or preservation of significant collections, or the renovation of historical venues. These efforts are crucial for expanding programming space and ensuring the long-term viability of cultural institutions.
Churches and Religious Organizations
Religious organizations commonly use capital campaigns to raise funds for major building projects, such as renovating or constructing new places of worship, expanding classrooms for faith-based education, or creating community outreach centers. These campaigns often tie the fundraising goal directly to the organization’s spiritual and community mission.
Who Can Help You Conduct a Capital Campaign?
Capital campaigns are significant undertakings, so nonprofits usually turn to professional fundraising consultants to help plan and execute them. A consultant or advisor can help with campaign planning, feasibility studies, prospect research, fundraising and solicitation, event planning, and more.
Our recommendation:
We suggest taking a hands-on approach to your capital campaign with our preferred expert: Capital Campaign Pro.
This innovative campaign support system gives you everything you need to plan and run your capital campaign: resources, expert guidance, templates, hands-on experience, and access to a community of other nonprofits also conducting campaigns.
The traditional consulting approach, while often effective, can be quite expensive and opaque, meaning your team won’t have access to all of the campaign tools or learn how all the pieces of the campaign fit together. Capital Campaign Pro offers an alternative approach that can yield immense benefits for your team, even long after your capital campaign comes to a successful end.
How Can You Market Your Capital Campaign?
A well-marketed capital campaign can launch big projects for your mission. Before entering the public phase of your campaign, make sure you have a well-thought-out marketing plan. Here are some core considerations as you brainstorm marketing strategies with your team.
Your Website
Your nonprofit’s website should serve as the single most critical communications hub for your entire capital campaign. For this reason, we suggest dedicating a prominent section or a separate landing page to the campaign, ensuring it clearly features the Case for Support, the running campaign total, a direct donation form, and compelling visuals of the project’s future impact.
Furthermore, for your top-tier major donors, it should be easy to launch challenge matches in support of your capital campaign straight from your website. Making this high-level participation seamless signals that you are prepared for transformational gifts and empowers leadership donors to instantly amplify the campaign’s public momentum.
Google Ads
Once your capital campaign information is live on your website, paid advertising is a wonderful way to get that content in front of potential prospects. Using the Google Grants program, you can receive up to $10,000 to spend on Google Ads for free each month. With careful keyword research, you can amplify your campaign’s landing page on Google Search and drive more traffic to it.
For the best results, we recommend working with a Google Grants consultant to create inspiring ads that target the right users on Google.
Brochures
A brochure gives you plenty of space to cover the key details of your capital campaign.
The most compelling brochures feature what your project will accomplish and who it’ll benefit, whether that’s building a shelter for the homeless, an animal sanctuary for endangered species, or something else. Paint a picture with words and images about how your work will create a difference. Then provide details on how to get involved, such as visiting your campaign page’s URL.
When you move into the public phase of your campaign, send regular emails to announce it. Then, provide updates along the way. You have seconds to get your point across, so keep your emails short and include a clear call to action in each one, giving the reader their exact next step. Then, top it all off with a subject line that encourages recipients to open the email.
What Does The Research Say About Capital Campaigns?
Especially if you’re preparing for your organization’s first capital campaign, you may be wondering, “What evidence is there that we can succeed?”
Capital Campaign Pro recently conducted a benchmark study, surveying nearly 300 U.S. and Canadian nonprofits with varying experiences with capital campaigns. Here are some of the insights from the study:
94% of organizations considered their capital campaign a success.
On average, nonprofits raise $8.9 million in a capital campaign.
For small organizations (nonprofits with < $1 million in annual revenue), campaign goals were smaller and raised about $3.5 million. These organizations typically had higher levels of major donor relationship building, fundraising system improvement, and more active executive directors and boards.
Other than raising money, nonprofits that had conducted a capital campaign cited the following benefits: strengthened relationships with major donors (72%), becoming more effective at soliciting large gifts (50%), increasing development staff effectiveness (39%), developing better fundraising systems (38%), and more board member engagement in fundraising (32%).
Your nonprofit needs to carefully plan its capital campaign before it begins fundraising to ensure the implementation process goes as smoothly as possible. Without a thorough plan in place, your team may not successfully anticipate issues before they arise and may realize too late that your fundraising strategy needs revision. Some tasks that should be completed in the planning phase include:
Determining objectives & working financial goal
The objectives of your campaign are the reasons you’re conducting your campaign. For instance, you may want to purchase new supplies and equipment or renovate your facility. Your financial goal will depend on the scope and size of the project your organization is undertaking. You should arrive at this number after careful calculation and accounting for hidden costs.
Conducting a feasibility study or report
We’ll go over the details of a feasibility report in a later section, but it’s vital to the success of your capital campaign. A feasibility report is essentially “product-testing” your campaign. You want to ensure the community will support your project, and a feasibility report helps you do just that.
Creating a gift range chart
Once you’ve tested the feasibility of your campaign and have a more solid financial goal, create a gift range chart. This visualization shows how many gifts your nonprofit needs to secure at different levels. You can take this a step further by developing a depth chart, which attaches specific prospect and donor names to each gift.
Establishing your communications strategy
Determine how you’ll get the word out about your campaign during both the quiet and the public phases. Review the strategies listed above, like using Google Ad Grants or creating a brochure, while also considering what you know about your community and the communications they’ve responded to in the past.
Developing your budget
Capital campaigns are used to raise money for large projects, but they also cost money to prepare and launch. You’ll need to account for marketing materials, event costs, and other fundraising expenses that may arise.
Setting a deadline
Your deadline will largely depend on your financial target and the pool of donors you expect to donate. You don’t want to make your deadline too soon and risk not reaching your goal. On the other hand, you don’t want to set a deadline that’s five years from now when it would only take two years to raise the money.
Implementing a Capital Campaign
After all of the hard work in the planning phase, it’s time to implement your capital campaign! There are two main segments within the implementation process:
The Quiet Phase
The quiet phase is not open to the public; instead, it relies on contributions from your major donors. During this stage, your committee members will reach out to your major donors and local businesses to solicit large donations. Usually, capital campaigns raise 50-70% of their total during the quiet phase, and it’s a great opportunity to kick off the prospect research and appending processes to learn more about your target donors.
The Public Phase
The public phase begins with a kickoff event, sometimes at the building site (when applicable). Once the public phase begins, donors can give as much as they want. Your committee can still solicit major gifts, but the focus should be on broad marketing to as many donors as possible.
Once you reach your goal in the public phase, it’s time to celebrate! However, don’t neglect important donor stewardship tasks, such as thanking your donors and continuing to communicate with them. Capitalize on the relationships you strengthened during your campaign in order to secure future engagement and support.
Essentials for a Successful Capital Campaign
A Feasibility Study
Feasibility studies are crucial to the success of any capital campaign. They essentially determine whether or not your donors and the community will be willing to support your organization’s project.
Think of your feasibility study as a critical must-have instead of an optional step. It will help you get a leg up on your campaign from the get-go. In fact, Capital Campaign Pro found that organizations that conducted a feasibility study raised, on average, 115% of their original campaign goal, compared with 101% for those that did not.
During a feasibility study, your organization’s leaders or an outside consultant will sit down and interview 30 to 40 individuals from the community. The experts at Capital Campaign Pro recommend taking a hands-on, guided approach in which your nonprofit’s leaders conduct the interviews personally with the support of a campaign advisor. You’ll then work together to distill insights and recommendations.
We recommend interviewing a combination of:
Community leaders: Mayors, local representatives, and company board members will have valuable insight into the feasibility of your capital campaign. Test the waters by talking to the movers and shakers of your local community. Make sure to get leaders from a variety of industries and sectors.
Current and past board members: Your current and past board members can offer valuable perspectives and opinions on whether the capital campaign will be successful. Previous board members can do the same, and they may also be able to offer good advice if they have experience with capital campaigns during their tenure.
Staff members: It’s important to gather their thoughts on your capital campaign before you launch it. They might have insights or reservations that you hadn’t thought of before. Depending on the size of your nonprofit, you might not be able to interview every single staff member. Instead, grab a leader from each department to talk to during your feasibility study.
Major donors: These donors will contribute the most to your capital campaign. It makes sense to interview them to get their input about your fundraising efforts. Talk to previous major gift donors as well as any prospects in your community who you think might want to donate to your capital campaign.
Questions to ask your interviewees during a feasibility study will range from personal (“What is your connection to the organization?”) to more broad (“Do you think this organization can raise the money for this project?”).
Here are a few questions to consider:
How do you feel about our case for support?
How do you feel about the project as a whole?
Do you think our goal and deadline are attainable and reasonable?
How do you think the community will respond to the project and campaign?
Who do you think will be the biggest supporters of this campaign?
By the end of the feasibility study, your organization should be able to determine whether or not you have the support needed to raise money for your capital campaign.
Powering your feasibility study with employment data
Modern fundraising best practices recognize that wealth indicators and philanthropic connections go hand in hand with professional background. Powering your feasibility study and quiet-phase outreach with up-to-date donor employment data is key to identifying top prospects and accurately assessing their capacity. Traditional wealth screening may only capture real estate or stock holdings, but sophisticated data tools, often powered by workplace giving providers, can pinpoint a prospect’s current employer, workplace giving potential, and more. This information is invaluable because it not only confirms their financial capacity but also reveals their eligibility for matching gifts and volunteer grants.
By combining internal giving history with comprehensive employment data, your team can prioritize outreach to individuals with the greatest capacity to make a transformational gift and simultaneously unlock matching funds from their employers.
A Capital Campaign Committee
Before you begin planning your capital campaign, you’ll first want to gather a committee of dedicated individuals around you to help with its planning and execution. People you should consider for your capital campaign committee include:
Board Members
Staff Members
Major Gift Donors
Challenge Match Leaders
Volunteer Leaders
Community Leaders
Don’t feel obligated to create a massive capital campaign committee that includes every board member, staff member, and major donor in your organization’s history. The committee should be big enough to handle the particulars of the capital campaign but small enough to give everyone an opportunity to voice their opinion.
Prospect Research
As a valuable tool you can leverage to better understand your donor base, prospect research can help you learn more about your donors. This includes their:
Past giving history to your organization
Previous donations to other nonprofits and political campaigns
Business connections
Employment information
Basic data like name, email address, and phone number
Having this information will help guide you toward your major donors. Because major gifts are going to drive the first half to two-thirds of your capital campaign, you’ll need to be well prepared to make those donation appeals.
With prospect research on your side, you’ll be more than ready to solicit those major donations from your supporters.
A Case for Support
A case for support is a document that outlines your nonprofit’s justification for hosting a capital campaign. It is useful for both your feasibility study and the quiet and public phases of the campaign.
For that reason, your case for support must be airtight and convincing! Convey a sense of urgency as concisely and clearly as possible. After all, donors want to know why they should support you and how they can help. Your case for support should include:
Your nonprofit’s background
Your cause and services
Your future goals
The reason for the capital campaign
An explanation of the capital campaign
A great case for support will be branded to your organization. Just take a look at this example from St. Ursula’s Academy.
As this example from Aly Sterling’s Capital Campaign guide demonstrates, nonprofits can creatively showcase their financial goals while capturing the spirit of their cause! Specifically, the branded colors, the heartfelt text, and the easy-to-understand fundraising goals make this case for support tangible.
The Right Tools + Technology
The complexity and scale of a modern capital campaign require specialized technology to manage donor data, automate outreach, and capture every available dollar. While human relationship building is always paramount, smart technology ensures that no opportunity is left on the table, especially when dealing with thousands of donors and a high financial goal. The good news? The right tools help you move faster and raise more by streamlining complex tasks.
One of the most critical and often overlooked components of a capital campaign is the potential revenue stream from corporate matching gifts, which can easily amount to a multi-million-dollar mistake if ignored. This is where a tool like Double the Donation becomes a non-negotiable part of your campaign technology stack. Not to mention, the platform serves a dual strategic purpose. First, it automatically identifies matching gift eligibility on your donation forms and thank you pages, ensuring donors can easily double their contributions toward your capital goal.
Second, Double the Donation’s data-appending capabilities can power your major gift prospect research by identifying an individual’s employer and associated corporate giving potential. This workplace data is key to calculating capacity, finding corporate grant connections, and confirming eligibility for those high-value matching gifts, giving your team the essential intelligence they need for successful solicitations.
How to Use Challenge Grants as a Capital Campaign Multiplier
Challenge grants offer a core strategy for maximizing campaign success and urgency in a way that just about no other fundraising vehicle can match. A challenge grant is a type of funding awarded by a grant-making entity, often a foundation or wealthy individual, typically after a nonprofit completes a specific fiscal challenge. This challenge typically involves raising a specific amount of money from other sources within a defined period.
Here’s how it works:
Creating Capital Campaign Urgency and Momentum
The primary advantage of a challenge grant is the instant urgency it creates for a capital campaign. The concept is simple yet profoundly effective: the challenge only exists for a limited time, and the matching funds are often framed in a “use it or lose it” way. This structure transforms a general plea for support into a time-sensitive opportunity for donors to double the impact of their gift.
For the public phase of a campaign, announcing a $1 million challenge grant, for instance, provides a massive, irresistible hook for all communications, galvanizing lower- and mid-level donors to participate right away.
Framing the Ask: Leveraging Major Gifts for Broader Participation
Challenge grants do not just pull in general donors; they also leverage the major gifts already secured during the quiet phase. As discussed previously, asking a lead donor to be the source of the challenge match is a powerful framing tool. The initial major gift is then publicly announced as the Challenge Match, inspiring others to follow suit. This strategy ensures that the quiet-phase gifts do double duty: they serve as the foundational funding and the motivational fuel for the rest of the campaign.
A challenge grant will sometimes match the challenge amount at a ratio of 0.5:1 to 2:1, meaning your nonprofit could stand to more than double the funds that you raise during your campaign simply by strategically applying this leverage. Do some research to find out whether there are any challenge grants available in your local area, or whether you have major donors with challenge match potential, to help your campaign reach its goal!
Here’s an example:
Did You Know? The challenge grant model is a psychological tool as much as a fiscal one. It reduces donors’ perceived risk because they see that a major gift has already been committed (the match), and it activates a sense of community achievement by requiring collective action to unlock the larger prize.
What to Know About Capital Campaign Consultants
How to Hire a Capital Campaign Consultant
Capital campaign consultants bring valuable expertise and a refreshing outside perspective to help you plan and execute your capital campaign. However, hiring a consultant can be rather involved. After all, you’re building a partnership and a long-lasting relationship with someone who can understand your mission, meet your needs, and get along well with your existing staff.
Here are some tips for making sure you get the right fit:
1. Determine your nonprofit’s needs.
Do you need a consultant to conduct a feasibility study, or to support your efforts throughout the campaign?
2. Do your research.
Look online for consultants who offer the specialty services that you need. Consider their location, cost, and core values. Ask other nonprofits in your network for recommendations.
3. Start a conversation with your top choices.
Speak with your top consultants on the phone or in person. Get a feel for their personalities and how they’d mesh with your nonprofit.
4. Request a proposal.
Request a proposal from your top choices. Look for a consultant who understands your nonprofit’s unique needs and brings new ideas to the table.
5. Check your consultant’s references.
Ask for former clients that you can speak with to better understand how each consultant can serve your nonprofit.
6. Finalize the details.
Once you’ve selected a consultant, you can discuss changes to their proposal and the engagement. Then, sign a contract that you’re both happy with and get to work!
Top Capital Campaign Consultants
The good news is that there are a ton of capital campaign consultants available to assist your organization with its upcoming campaign. Here are a few of our recommended firms and resources:
Averill Fundraising Solutions
For organizations seeking comprehensive, on-the-ground support, Averill Fundraising Solutions provides a highly experienced consulting model. Averill focuses on maximizing campaign potential through proven strategies and professional execution, offering a partnership that guides your team from the early feasibility study through final gift closing.
Averill’s approach emphasizes rigorous planning, tailored case development, and personalized coaching for your leadership and staff. Their consultants integrate directly with your internal teams, lending expertise in major donor identification, volunteer training, and meticulous campaign timeline management.
Aly Sterling Philanthropy
Organizations that require strategic guidance across various stages of growth often turn to Aly Sterling Philanthropy. While offering comprehensive capital campaign consulting, their focus is on building long-term organizational health that supports fundraising success. They work with nonprofits to ensure the capital campaign is not just a temporary project, but a launchpad for sustained major giving.
Aly Sterling Philanthropy’s campaign services begin with a deep dive into organizational readiness, ensuring your board, staff, and major gift pipeline are robust enough to support a large-scale campaign. Their consultants provide tailored advice on board engagement, case-for-support development, and integrating campaign goals with the nonprofit’s long-term strategic plan.
Capital Campaign Pro
For nonprofit leaders interested in taking a more hands-on approach to planning and running their campaigns, other capital campaign support options are available. For example, Capital Campaign Pro combines online campaign resources with expert advising for budget-friendly support that gives you the best of both worlds. By playing an active, direct role in your capital campaign, your team will learn invaluable skills related to campaign planning, donor stewardship, major gift solicitation, and more.
With Capital Campaign Pro, nonprofits are guided through an organized capital campaign plan. The step-by-step plan, resources and templates, and coaching calls all guide you to campaign success. Further, you’re able to have one-on-one advising with one of their expert capital campaign advisors for additional support.
Unique Capital Campaign Ideas
Capital Campaigns and Fundraising Events
Fundraising events can be a great opportunity for your nonprofit to directly interact with donors and build deeper connections. Because capital campaigns often run for months and even years, there is plenty of time for your nonprofit to host fun events that bring in more donations.
Obviously, the one event you’ll need to plan is the kickoff between the Quiet Phase and the Public Phase. But you can host all sorts of fundraisers to bring your community together and raise money for your campaign.
A capital campaign committee may elect to apply for a challenge grant to take its fundraising efforts to the next level. Challenge grants are funds released by a grant-making entity after a nonprofit completes a challenge, typically a fiscal one, making them perfect additions to capital campaigns.
A challenge grant will sometimes match the challenge amount at a ratio of 0.5:1 to 2:1. This means that your nonprofit could stand to triple the funds that you raise during your capital campaign with the help of a challenge grant.
Do some research to find out whether there are any challenge grants available in your local area, or whether you have major donors with challenge match potential, to help your capital campaign reach its goal!
Matching gifts can speed up your capital campaign by twofold. These corporate giving programs reward employee donations to nonprofits by doubling or, in some cases, tripling employees’ donations to eligible organizations.
Not every donor will work for a company that matches donations, and even if they do, every company has different guidelines and restrictions that must be followed before the matching funds are released. But your organization should still promote matching gifts to all of your capital campaign donors!
Why? Well, since 50-70% of your capital campaign funds will come from major gifts, those donations mean even more when they are doubled. It can’t hurt to remind your donors of matching gift programs.
Companies, big and small, are often willing to support nonprofit projects, such as capital campaigns. Not only does it allow them to be more philanthropic, but it also provides tax benefits and enables them to form meaningful partnerships with organizations.
Therefore, it’s a smart move for some members of your capital campaign committee to ask businesses for cash and in-kind donations for your capital campaign. Some companies will respond favorably and donate generously, while others will have guidelines on the types of nonprofits and projects they support. The best route to take is to research which companies offer grant programs and regularly donate to nonprofit organizations.
The journey through a capital campaign is perhaps the most ambitious, rewarding, and transformative endeavor a nonprofit can undertake. It requires meticulous planning, unwavering board commitment, and a willingness to embrace the strategic process.
The ultimate takeaway? Don’t go it alone. Use this guide as your roadmap, commit to thorough preparation, and step confidently into the process. The vision you hold for your organization’s future, that new facility, expanded endowment, or vital program expansion, is within reach.
Now, take this knowledge, choose your path forward, and prepare to make your organization’s boldest dreams a reality.
Interested in learning more with additional fundraising resources and guides? Here’s our recommended further reading:
Major Gifts: How to Unlock Your Donors’ Fullest Potential. A successful capital campaign will rely on a number of major gifts to reach its goal. Check out everything you need to know about major donor fundraising in this helpful guide!
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD_Capital-Campaigns-A-Groundbreaking-Guide-to-Success_Feature.png6001600Adam Weingerhttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngAdam Weinger2025-11-19 18:23:032025-11-19 20:32:27Capital Campaigns: A Groundbreaking Guide to Success
In my years working alongside fundraising directors, annual giving teams, and volunteer coordinators, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: we all want to know more about our donors. We want to understand what drives them, how they were acquired, and crucially how their employers might be willing to amplify their philanthropy. However, there is a massive disconnect between the perception of workplace giving and the reality of the current corporate landscape. Too many nonprofits and universities are leaving significant revenue on the table because of outdated assumptions. You might be focusing on individual giving while ignoring the “invisible” corporate check that should be accompanying every donation. To fix this, we need to talk about employment data as fundraising intelligence. I’ve compiled the five most common myths I hear regarding workplace giving and used recent data to debunk them. If you are looking to grow revenue through workplace giving programs, this is your roadmap.
Myth #1: “Fewer than 10% of our donors are match-eligible.”
The Reality: The pool of eligible donors is growing faster than you think.
If you look at broad industry averages from five years ago, it’s easy to get discouraged. Historically, the sector cited that roughly 4–12% of a donor base was eligible for a matching gift program. Because of this, I often hear leaders say, “There is no way we can reach a 10% match-eligible rate. Our donors just don’t work for those kinds of companies.”
That is no longer the case. Companies are expanding employee engagement and corporate social responsibility programs at record rates to compete for talent. As a result, the density of match-eligible donors in your database is likely much higher than you realize.
The Data: In a recent cohort of organizations we analyzed for workplace giving insights, we didn’t just find a 10% eligibility rate; we found an average of 15.45%.
Why this matters for your strategy:
If you assume only 1 in 20 donors is eligible, you won’t prioritize matching gift marketing. But if that number is actually 1 in 6, the ROI on pursuing those matches changes dramatically. By utilizing workplace giving data enrichment, you aren’t just finding a few extra dollars; you are uncovering a dormant revenue stream significant enough to alter your annual goals.
Myth #2: “Employment data is only useful for matching gifts.”
The Reality: Employer data is a multi-purpose tool for fundraising intelligence, volunteerism, and advocacy.
This is perhaps the most damaging myth. Many teams view “employer name” as a field that only matters for a matching check. In reality, companies are giving employees choices, and your data should reflect that.
When I look at enriched donor data, I see a holistic engagement opportunity:
Volunteer Grants (Dollars for Doers): Thousands of companies offer grants based on volunteer hours. If your volunteer coordinator is struggling with a budget, this data is gold.
Payroll Giving: 50% of match-eligible supporters in my recent cohort were also eligible for payroll giving programs. These often result in higher lifetime value and better donor retention.
Corporate Sponsorship Pipelines: If 50 of your donors work for a specific regional bank, you have leverage. You can approach their CSR officer with data showing their own employees already support your mission.
Internal Champions: Using employment data, you can identify donors with influential titles (e.g., HR Director, VP of People). These are your “insiders” who can champion a partnership from within the company.
The Reality: Workplace giving has spread to Small-to-Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs).
There is an antiquated belief that unless your donor works for Google, Microsoft, or Coca-Cola, they aren’t eligible. Today, offering a giving program is a “need-to-have” for any company looking to retain top talent.
We are seeing robust programs emerging in sectors that were previously “dead zones,” including:
Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology
Banking and Financial Services
Healthcare Systems
IT and Telecommunications
The Strategic Shift: If you only screen your top 100 donors for recognizable brand names, you are missing the “long tail” of philanthropy. A donor at a mid-sized regional logistics firm might have a 1:1 match up to $2,500 that you are completely ignoring simply because you don’t recognize the company name.
Myth #4: “Young donors aren’t eligible for workplace giving.”
The Reality: Gen Z and Millennial donors drive the demand for these programs.
There is a stereotype that the “Match Eligible” donor is a mid-career professional in their 50s. However, young employees are the primary drivers of CSR. They want to work for companies that align with their values and offer philanthropic benefits from day one.
Insights from the University Sector:
In our work with large universities, we helped them target young alumni with workplace giving insights. The assumption was that yield would be low. The reality? Young alumni were sometimes more eligible than older demographics because they flock to modern, tech-forward companies with social impact programs baked in.
Myth #5: “It’s impossible to get accurate employer insights on my donors.”
The Reality: It is only “impossible” if you rely on a single, manual source of truth.
I hear this frustration constantly: “We don’t know where our donors work because they leave that field blank on the form.” If you rely solely on manual entry, your data will always be sparse. Successful organizations take a multi-pronged approach to data hygiene:
Integrated Donation Forms: Use tools like Double the Donation to capture employment data during the checkout process. If a donor types “Home Depot,” the system should instantly recognize the match eligibility.
Workplace Giving Insights: You likely have thousands of records (lapsed donors, event attendees) with no employment info. You can enrich this donor data with workplace giving insights to uncover eligibility.
This allows you to reach out to a lapsed donor not with a generic “We miss you” email, but with a targeted message: “Did you know your employer matches gifts? Your past support could go twice as far.”
Data is Your Competitive Advantage
The fundraising landscape is shifting. We can no longer rely on the same old tactics to hit aggressive goals. The organizations that will win in the next decade are those that treat employer data as a strategic asset.
Workplace giving isn’t just a “nice-to-have” bonus; it is a vital revenue stream waiting to be unlocked. By debunking these myths and embracing fundraising intelligence, you can stop leaving money on the table and start building deeper, more valuable relationships with your supporters.
Ready to see what you’re missing? Connect with our team to learn how to uncover workplace giving insights and transform your donor database into a revenue engine.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/5-Workplace-Giving-Myths-Debunked.png6001600Kyra Englehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngKyra Engle2025-11-18 17:19:392025-12-18 17:22:275 Workplace Giving Myths Debunked: Unlocking Hidden Revenue with Employer Data
If your nonprofit is looking for a way to maximize its fundraising efforts, there’s one avenue you might not be paying enough attention to: prospect research.
Regardless of your organization’s size, gathering the right donor data via prospect research can have a huge impact on your nonprofit’s revenue. These funds can help you serve your mission, fund important projects, and work toward your goals.
In this guide, we’ll outline several important pieces of information you’ll need to successfully leverage prospect research, including:
From learning the basics to soliciting your first prospects, a thorough understanding of prospect research can be a game-changer for your organization. Let’s get started!
The Basics of Prospect Research
What Is Prospect Research?
Prospect research is a process performed by a nonprofit’s development team to gather data about donors, volunteers, and other supporters. The process analyzes each individual’s giving capacity, motivations, and affinity for the cause. It helps determine an individual’s ability and desire to support that specific cause, as well as how to appeal to their interests.
Key factors nonprofits look for during prospect research include past giving, wealth markers, business affiliations, and philanthropic tendencies. Nonprofits can also use software or turn to prospect research companies to gather this data.
Wealth Screening vs. Prospect Research
You may have heard the term wealth screening in conjunction with prospect research. While the two terms are often used interchangeably, wealth screening is only one component of prospect research.
Wealth screening analyzes a donor’s financial profile, including real estate and stock holdings, as well as political giving. While it’s an essential part of prospect research, this only indicates an individual’s ability to give.
Prospect research goes a step further and uses both wealth and philanthropic indicators to determine a donor’s willingness and capacity to give. This provides nonprofits with a complete picture of each donor and helps make more informed solicitations. We’ll explore the complete range of data you should collect in the next section.
Who Uses Prospect Research?
A variety of organizations use prospect research to boost revenue and drive more meaningful relationships. These include:
Educational institutions: Thorough research can pinpoint alumni and parents with a strong financial capacity and a history of philanthropy. Educational institutions can then tailor fundraising appeals to promote scholarships, facilities upgrades, and special programs.
Healthcare organizations: Prospect research helps identify donors with personal connections to specific medical causes or who have previously donated to health-related initiatives. This allows these organizations to focus on potential donors likely to fund state-of-the-art equipment or patient care facilities.
Arts and cultural organizations: Arts organizations can identify patrons with a keen interest in the arts and a history of supporting cultural initiatives. This information is crucial for targeting campaigns for exhibitions, performances, and educational workshops.
Environmental groups: These organizations can identify donors who are passionate about conservation, climate change, or specific regional environmental issues. Effective prospect research can lead to targeted campaigns that resonate deeply with donors’ values, driving funding for crucial projects and advocacy efforts.
Faith-based organizations: Prospect research helps identify individuals who have shown generosity to religious or spiritual causes, enabling faith-based organizations, such as churches, to personalize solicitations for funding new facilities and mission work.
Advocacy groups: Prospect research helps uncover supporters who are financially capable and deeply committed to specific causes like civil rights, education reform, or health policy. This insight helps mobilize resources for lobbying and public awareness campaigns.
Greek organizations: Fraternities and sororities can use prospect research to connect with alumni who have fond memories of their membership and might be interested in funding scholarships and chapter house renovations.
Prospect research can help all of these organizations (plus others!) become more focused in their outreach.
The Value of Thorough Prospect Research
40% of B2B salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. When it comes to fundraising, nonprofits experience that same exact pain point. Prospect research can be incredibly helpful in sourcing and qualifying leads to avoid wasting time pursuing individuals without the affinity or capacity to give.
Beyond time savings, here are the most important benefits of researching supporters:
Improved Fundraising Efficiency: Prospect research helps nonprofits identify the most promising donors, focusing efforts on those who are most likely to contribute.
Tailored Appeals and Marketing: By understanding potential donors’ giving capacity, nonprofits can tailor asks to different supporter segments based on individual wealth indicators and giving history.
Better Supporter Relationships: Comprehensive prospect research enables nonprofits to understand supporters’ interests and passions, enabling personalized communication that resonates with each individual’s values and helps retain support.
Strategic Planning: Insights into supporters’ capabilities and preferences help nonprofits plan their projects more effectively.
Finding Your Next Challenge Match Leader: While many nonprofits view prospect research simply as a way to fill a pipeline with individual donors, the most strategic organizations use it to find partners. The ultimate win is identifying a high-capacity donor who is willing to leverage their gift as a Challenge Match to inspire other donors as well.
More Reliable Data: Prospect research helps nonprofits gather comprehensive, accurate data on potential donors, including phone numbers, demographics, wealth indicators, and philanthropic interests. Reliable data is crucial for making informed decisions and staying connected with supporters.
Prospect research is essential for nonprofits looking to optimize their fundraising initiatives and build lasting relationships. Make sure you’re working with reliable tools and companies to gather supporter data, and you’ll set your team up for success.
Employment Data: the Most Powerful Piece of Modern Fundraising Intelligence
While real estate and stock holdings have traditionally been the “gold standard” of wealth screening, employment data has emerged as the single most valuable data point in modern fundraising.
Why? Because knowing where a donor works provides a dual layer of financial intelligence that no other data point can offer:
It Reveals Immediate Capacity: Job titles and employers are direct proxies for income and disposable assets. A Director at a Fortune 500 company or a Partner at a major law firm signals immediate major gift potential without needing to dig through property tax records.
It Unlocks Corporate Wallets: This is the hidden value. Employment data tells you exactly which donors are eligible for matching gifts, volunteer grants, and even sponsorship programs. When you identify a donor who works for a workplace giving company, you are effectively identifying a donor whose gift can be instantly doubled or tripled, with even greater partnership potential down the road.
In today’s landscape, employment data is the bridge between individual giving and corporate philanthropy. By prioritizing employment information in your prospect research, you aren’t just assessing a donor’s personal checkbook; you are assessing their ability to direct corporate funds to your mission.
Other Data Points To Gather During Prospect Research
Since prospect research involves collecting both wealth and philanthropic indicators, it’s important to understand the common data points under each umbrella.
1) Philanthropic Indicators
Philanthropic indicators represent an individual’s willingness to give to your organization. These include:
Previous Donations to Your Nonprofit
Past giving is the best indicator of future giving because it means the supporter is interested in your cause and has already contributed. Prospect research helps uncover prior donations so your organization can reach out again.
Donations to Other Organizations
If your donors are philanthropically minded, they probably aren’t only giving to your nonprofit. Let prospect research unveil past giving to organizations with causes similar to yours.
Nonprofit Involvement
Giving isn’t the only indicator of an individual’s philanthropic mindset. With prospect research, you can identify other forms of nonprofit involvement, such as advocacy, volunteerism, and board membership.
Personal Information
Collecting personal data will give you a more holistic understanding of each donor and how to connect with them on a deeper level. Craft more targeted appeals and deliver those appeals successfully by gathering this donor data:
Full and preferred name and title
Gender
Marital status
Contact information, like email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses
Hobbies and interests
Dates of birth
Much of this information can be collected online or through data appending services, helping you identify ideal prospects.
2) Wealth Indicators
Wealth indicators represent an individual’s ability to give to your organization. These include:
Real Estate Ownership
The quality and quantity of real estate someone owns are wealth indicators your fundraising team should pay attention to. Individuals with notable real estate have large giving capacities that you can capitalize on in your nonprofit’s fundraising initiatives.
Business Affiliations
Prospect research can help you detect existing business connections among your donors. This research includes details about a donor’s career, such as salary estimates, which can indicate wealth and ability to give. You may also discover information about a donor’s employer’s corporate giving program, which can provide insights into potential matching gift opportunities.
Stock Ownership/SEC Transactions
Knowing about a contributor’s stock ownership can give you even more insight into their wealth and capacity to donate to your organization.
Political Contributions
Chances are that an individual who has made sizable donations to a political campaign also has the giving capacity to donate major gifts to your nonprofit. By using prospect research to target this group, you can focus on winning over prospects with the potential to make generous contributions.
Primary Uses of Prospect Research
Prospect research can impact several areas of your mission. Let’s explore common ways nonprofits use the data they gather.
Major Giving
Prospect research is the perfect tool for identifying major gift prospects hidden in your existing donor database. It can help you uncover past giving and involvement and track giving patterns that may predict major giving.
For instance, you might have a faithful donor whose contributions have steadily increased over the past five years. With prospect research, you can examine that donor’s history and figure out the best strategy to ask for a major donation.
Capital Campaigns
A capital campaign is a long-term fundraising effort that’s usually tied to a large project, such as the construction of a new building or the development of an endowment.
Capital campaigns typically rely on a set number of major gifts during the “quiet phase” before fundraising is opened to everyone in the “public phase.” Prospect research can help uncover ideal donors for both the quiet and public phases.
Challenge Matches
A challenge match (wherein a major donor pledges a large sum contingent on the nonprofit raising an equal amount from other supporters) creates urgency and excitement. Prospect research can be vital for identifying a lead donor for this strategy by uncovering individuals who not only have high financial capacity but also a leadership profile and deep affinity for the cause.
Identifying these “Challenge Match Leaders” is a powerful way to turn a single major gift into a revenue multiplier for your entire campaign, far exceeding the value of a standard one-time donation.
Annual Giving
Annual giving is what keeps your organization’s wheels turning. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to complete your day-to-day operations.
While your organization likely already asks all supporters to contribute to your annual fund, you can now search for new annual donors via prospect research tools. In addition, you’re more likely to uncover potential supporters by looking into someone’s past giving to organizations that align with your own.
Corporate Giving Opportunities
Prospect research is instrumental in identifying and understanding potential corporate partners whose philanthropic interests align with your nonprofit’s mission. Collecting employer data also helps pinpoint untapped opportunities. Examples include:
Matching gifts: Many companies match their employees’ donations to eligible nonprofits. Knowing where your supporters work can help you identify match-eligible donors, so you can follow up and double those individuals’ contributions.
Volunteer grants:Businesses also provide volunteer grants to nonprofits where their employees volunteer regularly. Prospect research can help pinpoint these opportunities.
Volunteer Time Off: Tons of companies offer their employees bonus PTO to participate in volunteer activities with organizations like ours. Use prospect research to identify volunteers (or prospects) who work for companies with these programs.
In-Kind Donations: Companies can provide non-monetary support in the form of goods or services. Prospect research helps identify potential donors who can offer in-kind contributions relevant to your nonprofit’s needs, such as technology, office supplies, or professional services.
Once you identify these opportunities, your nonprofit can reach out to supporters who are eligible to participate in their companies’ corporate giving programs.
Planned Giving
Identify donors who are in a position to make significant long-term commitments, such as bequests, trusts, or annuities.
Researching a donor’s financial background and giving history enables your nonprofit to tailor conversations about legacy opportunities that resonate on a personal level, helping you secure future funding and ensure the donor’s lifelong engagement with your mission.
How Matching Gifts and Prospect Research Work Together
Matching gifts and prospect research are both powerful strategies that, when combined, can significantly enhance your fundraising efforts.
As mentioned, prospect research helps identify donors who are affiliated with companies that offer matching gift programs, potentially doubling their donations without requiring extra effort from the donors themselves. This synergy not only boosts your fundraising capacity but also deepens donor engagement, as donors feel their contributions have a greater impact.
Here are some key ways that matching gifts and prospect research can work together to dramatically increase your fundraising success:
A matching gift search tool can help you identify corporate and individual prospects from a list of people who have already made matching gifts to your nonprofit.
Matching gifts can encourage prospects to give more to your organization by inspiring them to double their impact. In fact, one in three donors is more likely to donate if a match is offered.
Prospect research and matching gifts can grow your corporate engagement efforts by pinpointing companies with generous programs.
Focusing on individuals with matching gift potential doubles the value of that donor’s potential support.
To manage this strategy effectively, consider using specialized tools like Double the Donation Matching. This software simplifies tracking and verifying matching gift eligibility and submissions, ensuring you make the most of every donation opportunity.
How to Research Donors and Other Constituents
Once you’ve decided to perform prospect research, you might be wondering where you should start. Here are the general steps you can take to gather supporter data.
1) Choose your prospect research method.
Your first step is to plan how you’ll approach your research process by asking yourself about your fundraising goals, current strategies, and timeline. Once you understand what you need out of your research, choose one of these methods:
Do It Yourself: For smaller or newer nonprofits with tighter budgets, a do-it-yourself prospect screening approach is a good option. Use free or low-cost prospect research tools to examine donors’ giving and philanthropic histories.
Prospect Research Consultants: Prospect research consulting firms are extremely valuable resources for nonprofits. They offer advice and comprehensive screenings for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes.
Prospect Screening Companies: Every prospect screening company is different, but most compare your donors against a variety of databases to create a comprehensive profile for each supporter. This will help your organization track, sort, and evaluate all of your supporters.
Make sure you know exactly which data you need to collect and how quickly you need to collect it, so you can pick the right method.
2) Form a prospect research team.
If you’ll conduct prospect research in-house, you’ll need to build an effective prospect research team of individuals with complementary skills. The following roles are critical to your team’s success:
Director: This individual leads the team, sets strategic goals, and ensures alignment with your nonprofit’s broader objectives. They oversee the entire research process and ensure the team has the necessary tools to conduct research.
Prospect Researcher: This team member is responsible for gathering data about potential and current supporters. They’re tasked with creating detailed profiles by digging into donor data using various sources, such as databases, public records, and social media.
Data Analyst: A data analyst focuses on interpreting data and trends from donor databases and external sources. They help the team understand giving patterns and identify potential high-value donors.
Development Officer: This individual uses insights from prospect research to cultivate and maintain donor relationships. They are typically involved in direct fundraising efforts and use data-driven strategies to approach potential donors, secure donations, and nurture ongoing donor relationships.
Legal/Compliance Officer: Given the sensitive nature of handling personal data, having someone knowledgeable about legal and ethical standards is crucial. This team member ensures that all prospect research activities comply with privacy laws and ethical fundraising practices.
Each role focuses on a specific aspect of the prospect research process, contributing to a comprehensive approach. While the structure of your team may vary, this suggested structure supports targeted fundraising efforts and helps build a robust foundation for long-term supporter engagement.
3) Clean up your data.
Before conducting prospect research, clean up your data to ensure the process runs smoothly and yields more accurate results. A few ways to maintain proper data hygiene include:
Identifying and removing duplicate records within your database
Standardizing data entries to maintain consistency across your database, such as by using uniform formats for dates, addresses, phone numbers, and names
Identifying and removing outdated or irrelevant information that no longer serves your fundraising strategies
Removing lapsed donors from your records
Scanning your database for typos
Your data doesn’t need to be perfect, but cleaning it up as much as possible will optimize your system for prospect research.
4) Check for accuracy.
Once you’ve actually conducted prospect research, verify the accuracy of the data gathered. This step involves cross-referencing information from multiple sources to confirm details such as contact information, philanthropic history, and financial capacity. Some prospect research companies will have an accuracy-check process, such as manually verifying appended emails and phone numbers.
Ensuring data accuracy helps prevent miscommunication and fosters trust by demonstrating diligence and respect for each prospect’s information. It also optimizes the efficiency of subsequent outreach efforts by reducing the time spent on addressing inaccurate or outdated information.
5) Analyze and make a plan for leveraging your new data.
After integrating the new data into your CRM, be sure to sift through the results to identify the most promising prospects by analyzing factors such as giving capacity, alignment with your nonprofit’s mission, and likelihood of giving. Based on this analysis, create a detailed plan for how to best use this data for outreach.
This plan should outline who to approach, the best ways to reach out to them, and the right time to do so. It involves deciding whether to meet someone in person, invite them to a special event, send them a personalized letter, or connect through online platforms based on their preferences and past donations.
During this stage, you’ll want to segment your supporters based on shared characteristics.
These may include:
Donation Level: Group donors based on the amount they contribute, such as major, mid-level, and low-level donors. This allows for tailored communication strategies that recognize the level of support.
Workplace Giving Eligibility: Targeting donors who qualify for matching gifts, volunteer programs, or payroll giving is a great way to make the most of your supporters’ uncovered connections. Be sure to use the information you’ve gathered (such as employer name and program guidelines) to further personalize your outreach.
Donation Frequency: Identify who gives regularly versus those who donate sporadically. Regular givers can be approached for recurring giving programs, while sporadic givers can be encouraged to give more consistently.
Geographic Location: Segmenting donors by location can help organize local events, understand regional interests, and tailor communications that resonate with local community values or needs.
Interests: By understanding what specific projects or aspects of the organization’s work a donor supports, nonprofits can tailor outreach to reflect donors’ interests.
Type of Support: Differentiate between types of supporters such as volunteers, advocates, corporate sponsors, and individual donors.
Demographics: Segmenting based on demographics helps choose messages and outreach strategies that are more likely to resonate with different groups.
Communication Preferences: Some supporters may prefer digital communication, while others might value traditional mail or personal calls. Segmenting by communication preference ensures supporters receive information in the way that is most accessible and engaging to them.
An effective plan ensures your team knows exactly what steps to take to engage each prospect, turning potential interest into actual support. From here, put your plan into action and start reaching out!
Types of Prospect Research Tools and Software
While the prospect research process may sound daunting, there are several prospect screening companies and platforms that nonprofits and educational institutions can use. Let’s explore a few recommended services and tools.
Data Enhancement
Also called data appending companies, data enhancement services improve the quality and depth of existing donor databases by pulling additional information, such as:
Contact information like email addresses, postal addresses, and phone numbers
Demographics like ages, birthdates, and geographic location
Employer data like company names and role titles
These services leverage external data sources to fill in gaps and update outdated information within your database. This ensures your nonprofit has accurate, comprehensive profiles for each prospect.
Prospect Research Database
Prospect research databases are specialized tools that provide access to a wealth of information on potential donors, including personal backgrounds, giving histories, wealth assessments, and affiliations.
These databases compile data from multiple public and proprietary sources, allowing fundraisers to quickly gather detailed insights about prospective donors’ capacity and propensity to give. Using this type of prospect research tool helps nonprofits identify and prioritize high-potential prospects.
Corporate Giving and Prospecting Software
Corporate giving software is designed to help nonprofits identify potential corporate donors. This type of software typically includes features for researching matching gift programs and volunteer grant information. Here are two types of tools that are most helpful:
Matching gift databases contain information on companies that offer matching gift programs. They store requirements for employee eligibility, nonprofit eligibility, and donation amounts. Plus, they provide relevant submission information such as available forms and deadlines.
Volunteer grant databases provide details on companies that offer grants to nonprofits where their employees volunteer. This prospect research tool stores records of individual companies’ programs, including volunteer hours, employee and nonprofit requirements, and instructions, along with links to application forms and deadlines.
Additionally, corporate prospecting software like Double the Donation leverages existing donor data to uncover hidden corporate potential. By uploading your current donor list for a quick employer append screening, the platform instantly identifies which of your supporters are eligible for workplace giving opportunities that can significantly grow your organization’s revenue. This transforms your standard donor list into a high-value prospect list, allowing your team to prioritize outreach to donors whose contributions can be immediately doubled, maximizing both individual donor value and overall fundraising efficiency before a major gift ask is even made.
These prospect research tools can help your nonprofit identify donors and volunteers eligible for their companies’ philanthropic programs. Plus, they can help you identify companies that offer generous corporate giving initiatives, which can open the door to strategic partnerships.
Donor News Alert Services
Donor news alert services are platforms that monitor and report news about prospective donors. Your nonprofit can use a platform like this to stay informed about donor activities that signal a willingness or ability to give. Even more importantly, these insights help nonprofits build deep, meaningful relationships with their donors, which may yield significant gifts in the future.
For example, these platforms monitor obituary data, meaning they can notify your nonprofit when a prospect or donor’s loved one passes away. Your fundraising team can then reach out with heartfelt condolences on behalf of your organization. Prospects will likely appreciate this personal outreach and attention to detail, and may be more willing to support your organization in the future.
Insightful Philanthropy is our recommended donor news alert service for its extensive information sourcing and timely notifications. This platform relies on 14,000 news and information sources from more than 200+ countries, and even taps into historical donor data from up to 40 years ago to give nonprofits a complete picture of their prospects.
Your Nonprofit’s CRM
Your nonprofit’s CRM is a fundamental tool for managing donor interactions and tracking engagement history. It stores critical data such as donation records, event attendance, volunteer activity, and communication preferences, which can be leveraged to build stronger relationships with supporters.
Effective use of a CRM helps personalize donor interactions and streamline fundraising activities, making it easier to cultivate and steward donor relationships.
SEC Investment Records
SEC investment records provide information about the investment activities of individuals and institutions, which can be particularly valuable in assessing the financial capacity of potential major donors.
By examining public filings such as insider trading reports and stock holdings, nonprofits can gauge prospects’ wealth level and philanthropic capacity. This is especially useful for identifying high-net-worth individuals and understanding their investment behaviors.
Predictive Modeling Solutions
Predictive modeling solutions use statistical techniques and algorithms to analyze historical data and predict future donor behaviors. These tools help nonprofits anticipate which prospects are most likely to donate, their expected donation amounts, and optimal times for solicitation.
Wealth Screening Tools
These tools help nonprofits assess potential donors’ financial capacity by analyzing data points such as real estate ownership, stock holdings, past charitable contributions, and other publicly available financial information. That way, you can focus on prospects with the means and propensity to give significantly.
As a top recommended prospect research service, DonorSearch blends philanthropic and wealth metrics so your organization can make informed decisions about prospects and plan effective outreach. Plus, the company offers a few choices of tools when it comes to conducting prospect research:
Charitable giving database. DonorSearch’s charitable giving database is comprehensive and constantly growing, housing tons of useful philanthropic data.
DSGiving search tool.DSGiving is a free prospect research tool that offers access to a smaller-scale version of DonorSearch’s philanthropic and political contributions data. Simply type in an individual’s name, state of residence, and gift type, and the tool will pull useful data.
DonorSearch helps your nonprofit learn more about your donors and create comprehensive donor profiles. Because the tools analyze philanthropic and wealth indicators, they yield more qualified leads for nonprofits to pursue.
Fueling Your Prospect Research With Double the Donation
Double the Donation is a leading fundraising tool for nonprofits, providing a range of matching gift solutions. Our complete automation platform can give your nonprofit the ability to maximize donations with matching gifts, volunteer grants, payroll giving, and more without lifting a finger.
Here’s an overview of our solution:
Double the Donation Matching: Using Double the Donation’s matching gift fundraising software, organizations can uncover valuable matching gift prospects by collecting employer information within the donation process. From there, the solution screens for matching gift eligibility and populates the appropriate forms and guidelines for submitting a match. Plus, Double the Donation Matching offers a real-time employer appends add-on that instantly scans donor records and automatically supplies company information if available. Check out this video for a closer look:
Double the Donation’s Workplace Giving Insights: This powerful new module takes your donor list and provides in-depth prospect research data focused solely on corporate giving potential. It screens donors’ employer affiliations to reveal which companies offer matching gifts, volunteer grants, and other workplace giving programs, transforming a scattering of individual donors into a prioritized list of corporate revenue opportunities.
Want to learn more about how our cutting-edge technology can support your prospect research and drive greater fundraising results? Reach out to our team for a free demo to see the complete platform in action!
Wrapping Up
Prospect research is an invaluable strategy that equips nonprofits with the insights needed to target donors effectively. By harnessing the power of detailed data analysis and strategic donor segmentation, your organization can unlock new opportunities and maximize the impact of its fundraising efforts.
If you’re looking for more information about prospect research, check out the additional resources below:
Top 15 Prospect Research Tools for Clever Fundraisers. Interested in getting started with innovative prospect research solutions that can help power your next initiative? Check out this list of our top recommendations.
Corporate volunteering is an essential part of many businesses’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, and nonprofits that understand how to tap into this resource can reap significant benefits. However, effectively engaging corporate volunteers requires strategy, communication, and adaptability.
At the recent Workplace Fundraising + Volunteering Summit, nonprofit and corporate leaders shared valuable insights on how organizations can leverage workplace volunteering to boost engagement, strengthen partnerships, and maximize their impact. In this blog post, we’ll break down seven key takeaways from this event that nonprofits can apply to make the most of corporate volunteer opportunities.
Of course, these strategies weren’t developed in a vacuum; they were born from the real-world experiences of the industry’s most forward-thinking leaders. The most recent Summit event brought together a dynamic lineup of CSR directors, nonprofit executives, and social impact strategists who are actively redefining how companies and causes collaborate. Before we unpack the specific lessons learned, let’s meet the experts whose knowledge and vision shaped these conversations.
Jim Starr of America’s Charities
The President & CEO of America’s Charities, Jim Starr leads initiatives to help nonprofits engage employees in workplace giving and matching gifts.
Joni Celiz is the Director of Institutional Development at Martha’s Table, where she leads fundraising and community engagement efforts, including volunteerism.
As businesses increasingly prioritize social responsibility initiatives, corporate volunteering has emerged as a powerful tool for nonprofits seeking to build meaningful, long-lasting partnerships. Let’s find out how your team can tap into this opportunity as effectively as possible!
1) There’s a growing focus on volunteerism among companies.
Corporate volunteering programs are no longer just a nice-to-have; they are becoming a core part of many companies’ strategies to engage employees and give back to the community. During the summit, Jim Starr from America’s Charities and Fernando Lorence from JPMorgan Chase highlighted the increasing importance of volunteerism as a tool for employee engagement, corporate reputation, and community impact alike.
Fernando explained that large corporations, such as JPMorgan Chase, are increasingly focusing on skills-based volunteering, in which employees use their professional expertise to benefit nonprofit organizations. This type of volunteering is highly valuable to both the employee and the company, as it allows team members to make a meaningful impact while also developing their skills.
Looking to tap in? Aim for opportunities to engage corporate volunteers in areas such as mentoring, project management, financial planning, or technical support. These skills-based volunteer engagements are highly sought after and often offer more substantial and lasting contributions to nonprofits.
2) Companies and nonprofits are looking for sustainable partnerships.
Corporate volunteer programs are most effective when built on sustainable, long-term partnerships between companies and nonprofits. Fernando stressed that nonprofits should aim to develop relationships with corporate partners that go beyond just one-off volunteer events. By aligning volunteer opportunities with the company’s mission and values, nonprofits can ensure that their partnership is meaningful and long-lasting.
A significant part of this strategy involves constant communication and feedback. Therefore, companies and nonprofits must continually engage with one another to ensure that volunteer programs remain relevant and impactful. After a volunteering event, nonprofits should provide feedback to corporate partners to demonstrate the value of their employees’ efforts. Using surveys, testimonials, and media like photos and videos can help capture the success of these events and show companies how their employees’ contributions are making a real difference.
As Fernando Lorence, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at JPMorgan Chase, shared, “ERGs within companies can be a valuable entry point for nonprofits looking to engage with companies for volunteer opportunities.”
ERGs are groups within a company that are typically focused on a shared characteristic or cause, such as race, gender, or community involvement. They often have a dedicated pool of motivated employees who are eager to give back to the community.
By understanding the values and focus areas of these groups, nonprofits can form tailored, targeted volunteer opportunities that resonate with these employees. Session presenters emphasized the importance of maintaining communication with ERGs and finding ways to align nonprofit missions with the interests of these groups.
4) Proactive engagement is key.
To maximize the impact of corporate volunteerism, nonprofits must take a proactive approach to engaging with companies. For this reason, Fernando advised nonprofits not to wait for companies to approach them, but rather to research companies, understand their volunteer culture, and pitch relevant volunteer opportunities.
For large organizations, it’s essential to understand which departments or business units are responsible for different types of volunteer programs.
Jim Starr, President & CEO of America’s Charities, emphasized, “It’s crucial to align a company’s volunteer programs with its strategic priorities, such as community growth, small business support, and youth development.”
Companies are more likely to participate in volunteer initiatives that align with their mission and focus areas, so nonprofits should tailor their proposals accordingly.
Actionable Insight: Don’t wait for companies to come to you; instead, research potential partners and proactively pitch relevant volunteer opportunities.
5) Virtual and on-site opportunities go hand-in-hand.
The future of corporate volunteering will be a combination of both virtual and on-site opportunities.
Beth Amodio, President and CEO from One Warm Coat, shared, “Offering both physical and virtual volunteer opportunities has significantly expanded our nonprofit’s reach.”
While traditional coat drives remain popular, the organization has also adapted by offering virtual drives at times when in-person engagement was on hold. This flexibility allows corporate volunteers to participate in ways that suit their schedules, preferences, and locations.
Beth further emphasized the importance of making volunteer opportunities local to employees, as this strengthens their connection to the community they are serving. Even for virtual events, having a local impact, such as providing coats to a specific region, increases the sense of connection between volunteers and the cause.
Data is a valuable resource when managing corporate volunteer programs.
As Joni Celiz, Director of Institutional Development from Martha’s Table, discussed, “Our team uses tools like Double the Donation to identify which companies offer volunteer time off (VTO) or volunteer grants.”
By tracking this data, nonprofits can then target the right corporate partners and encourage them to use these benefits for volunteering activities. Joni also explained that identifying which companies already offer VTO and other volunteer incentives helps nonprofits maximize engagement and participation.
Sara Herring, National Operations Manager from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, noted, “Using CRM systems to track volunteer hours, matching gifts, and other corporate engagement efforts is crucial for maximizing impact.”
Tracking this data enables nonprofits to efficiently manage volunteer activities and leverage the information for future outreach.
7) Marketing corporate volunteer opportunities is a must.
Marketing is an essential aspect of corporate volunteer engagement. Marlene Lee and Joni Celiz both highlighted the importance of making volunteer opportunities visible and accessible. Whether through emails, event QR codes, or social media engagement, nonprofits need to ensure that corporate employees know how to get involved.
Marlene, Development Coordinator at Alex’s Lemonade Stand, shared, “Our team uses omni-channel marketing, including email, social media, and digital ads, to engage a wide audience.”
People consume information in different ways, so having consistent messaging across multiple channels ensures that employees can easily access volunteer opportunities. Joni also pointed out that using QR codes on event and promotional materials makes it easy for employees to access volunteer information and sign up directly from their phones. The easier it is to get involved, the more likely people actually will!
Wrapping Up
Corporate volunteering offers nonprofits a wealth of opportunities to engage with companies, build lasting partnerships, and maximize their impact. By understanding the evolving landscape of volunteerism, proactively engaging with corporate partners, and using data and effective marketing strategies, nonprofits can tap into the full potential of corporate volunteer programs.
The key to success lies in creating sustainable, long-term partnerships with companies that align with your mission, offering a combination of virtual and on-site volunteer opportunities, and leveraging technology to streamline the process. As corporate volunteering continues to grow in importance, nonprofits that embrace these strategies will be well-positioned to harness the full power of employee engagement and make a meaningful impact in their communities.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD_Corporate-Volunteering-Insights-From-the-Recent-Summit_Feature.png5501450Kyra Englehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngKyra Engle2025-11-13 19:57:442025-12-09 19:20:247 Corporate Volunteering Insights From the Fall 2025 Summit
Matching gifts are an untapped resource for many nonprofits. They provide an opportunity to maximize fundraising efforts by leveraging corporate dollars, and when done right, they can significantly boost revenue.
At the recent Workplace Fundraising + Volunteering Summit, several experts shared their best practices for driving matching gift revenue, offering actionable insights for nonprofits looking to raise more through matching gifts. Let’s dive into six key takeaways that can help nonprofits supercharge their matching gift strategies.
Detra Foster is the Senior National Matching Gift Operations Lead at the American Heart Association. With years of experience in fundraising and workplace giving, she is dedicated to expanding the impact of matching gifts and workplace giving.
Stacy DeVivo serves as the Assistant Director of Information Processing at Lehigh University, where she leads efforts to enhance the university’s matching gift program. Stacy has developed innovative strategies that increase participation in matching gifts.
Karen Bergin is the Senior Director of Global Employee Engagement at Microsoft. There, Karen has helped Microsoft raise billions of dollars for nonprofits worldwide. Her team focuses on empowering employees to support causes they care about, with matching gifts playing a critical role.
Annemarie Dillon is the Director of Workplace Giving and Matching Gifts at the American Cancer Society. With extensive experience in nonprofit fundraising and matching gifts, Annemarie has played a key role in streamlining and expanding ACS’s matching gift initiatives.
As nonprofits continue to explore new ways to amplify their fundraising efforts, matching gifts remain an underutilized opportunity that can yield significant returns. With the right strategies in place, organizations like yours can tap into the full potential of workplace giving programs, unlocking a steady stream of additional revenue. Let’s begin.
1) Register with CSR platforms.
One of the first steps nonprofits should take to increase their matching gift revenue is to register with leading CSR platforms. These dedicated software solutions, such as Benevity, YourCause, and CyberGrants, are commonly used by corporations to manage employee giving and match donations. By registering with these platforms ahead of time, nonprofits become eligible to receive matching gifts from the companies that use them.
Laurel Palmer, Director of the Kalamazoo College Fund, shared that partnering with these platforms is vital for raising matching gifts. She emphasized the importance of ensuring your nonprofit is listed and optimized on platforms like Benevity to access matching gifts from a wide range of corporate partners. By doing so, nonprofits open the door to significant contributions from employees of companies already engaged in matching gift programs.
If you’re not already listed on these platforms, Benevity is a great place to start. Many large companies, including keynote speaker Microsoft, use Benevity to manage their employee-giving programs, making it a critical tool for boosting workplace donations. Getting listed on these platforms not only provides access to these funds but also integrates your organization into a well-established and trusted giving process.
We recommend establishing an up-to-date account with each of the major CSR platforms, along with other CLMA-certified solutions. Here are a few popular names to help you get started:
When it comes to matching gifts, centralizing your processing can make a world of difference in terms of efficiency and accuracy.
“Centralizing our matching gift operations helped streamline our efforts, reduce errors, and ensure that all matching gifts were properly tracked and credited.” – Annemarie Dillon, Director of Workplace Giving and Matching Gifts at the American Cancer Society
Before centralization, the American Cancer Society had local chapters handling matching gift confirmations, leading to process inconsistencies and missed opportunities going unclaimed. By consolidating the process at the national level, however, they were able to improve communication, set clear roles, and ensure accurate tracking across the organization.
For smaller nonprofits, starting small by centralizing matching gift communications can be a first step. As Sara Herring from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation explained, even something as simple as creating a dedicated matching gift email address or inbox can be a game-changer. This allows for better communication and organization, reducing the chances of missing out on matching gift opportunities.
3) Tell engaging, impact-driven stories.
Incorporating storytelling into your matching gift campaigns can significantly boost engagement and donor participation. Stacy DeVivo of Lehigh University shared how a compelling donor story about a couple who met at the university and are passionate about supporting their alma mater through matching gifts resonated with their audience.
As Stacy DeVivo, Assistant Director of Information Processing at Lehigh University, shared, “A compelling donor story about a couple who met at the university and are passionate about supporting their alma mater through matching gifts really resonated with our audience.”
By showcasing real-life examples of how matching gifts have made a difference, nonprofits can build stronger emotional connections with their supporters. This personal touch has measurable results. Lehigh University saw a 430% increase in email click-through rates and a 563% increase in web traffic after sharing the donor story. In other words, storytelling humanizes the matching gift process and motivates donors to engage with the program.
For nonprofits, communicating stories of real donors or corporate partners can inspire others to follow suit in matching gifts. Highlight the personal impact that matching gifts have on your mission, and share those stories across your communication channels, including email, social media, and on your website.
4) Leverage seasonal campaigns.
Another key insight from the summit was the importance of leveraging seasonal campaigns to drive matching gift participation. For example, Detra Foster from the American Heart Association shared how matching gift marketing aligns well with the timing of major fundraising events like Giving Tuesday and year-end giving campaigns.
At Lehigh University, Stacy DeVivo’s team capitalized on the Match Month opportunity (also known as February) by promoting matching gifts through social media, email, and custom graphics. Additionally, they utilized Matching Wednesday, a campaign initiative following giving day Giving Tuesday, to sustain momentum and encourage additional giving.
For nonprofits, aligning matching gift appeals with these high-traffic giving days creates urgency and encourages donors to take advantage of matching opportunities before the year ends. Whether it’s Giving Tuesday, Year-End Giving, or Match Month, seasonal campaigns provide an excellent platform for promoting matching gifts. By timing your campaigns around these major events, you can maximize the impact of matching gift opportunities and create a sense of urgency that motivates donors to act. Don’t forget to remind donors of the matching gift deadline around these key dates!
5) Ensure effective matching gift tracking and attribution.
Tracking and attributing matching gifts can be one of the biggest challenges for nonprofits. As Jessica Otto Guay from the Pan-Mass Challenge explained, many nonprofits face difficulties when donations come in bulk, without clear breakdowns of which donations are being matched. Annemarie Dillon echoed this point, sharing how her team has become adept at tracking down matching gift donations through detective work, including cross-referencing payments with donor records and checking remittance slips.
Effective data management is crucial in ensuring that matching gifts are attributed to the correct donors. Sara Herring from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation recommended using CRM systems to track and organize matching gifts. They use a unique identifier system to ensure each donation is correctly categorized and attributed, and they flag matching gift data early in the process to avoid confusion later.
By implementing clear tracking systems, using CRM tools, and developing processes for handling bulk donations, nonprofits can reduce errors and ensure donors are properly credited for their contributions. This not only helps with reporting but also strengthens donor relationships by accurately acknowledging their participation.
Looking ahead, Detra Foster from the American Heart Association shared her thoughts on the future of matching gifts, particularly in terms of technology and evolving donor behavior.
“The future of workplace fundraising will likely involve integrating AI and generative tools to personalize outreach and improve marketing strategies,” she pointed out.
These tools could help nonprofits create more effective, targeted campaigns that resonate with donors.
Another key trend is the rise of corporate volunteer programs, in which employees’ volunteer hours are converted into financial contributions to nonprofits. Microsoft has been at the forefront of this trend, offering $25 per hour for every hour its employees volunteer.
As Karen Bergin, Senior Director of Global Employee Engagement at Microsoft, stated, ‘This volunteer time donation model is an exciting avenue for nonprofits to explore, especially as more companies invest in volunteer programs.”
As the landscape of workplace giving continues to evolve, nonprofits must stay adaptable and leverage new technologies to streamline processes, personalize outreach, and engage employees in new ways. Whether through AI, volunteer time conversion, or more personalized marketing strategies, nonprofits should continue to innovate and adapt to the changing dynamics of workplace giving.
Wrapping Up
Matching gifts are a powerful, yet often underutilized, tool for nonprofits looking to maximize their fundraising efforts. By following the actionable insights shared by experts during the summit (such as registering with CSR platforms, centralizing matching gift processes, telling engaging stories, leveraging seasonal campaigns, ensuring accurate tracking, and looking to the future), nonprofits can significantly boost their matching gift revenue and deepen their relationships with donors.
It’s important to remember that matching gifts are not a one-time effort, but an ongoing process. By staying organized, collaborating across teams, and continuously refining strategies, nonprofits can create a sustainable and effective workplace giving program that drives long-term success.
https://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD_Actionable-Matching-Gift-Insights-From-the-Recent-Summit_Feature.png5501450Kyra Englehttps://doublethedonation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DTD-horizontal-logo-300x63.pngKyra Engle2025-11-13 19:44:362025-11-14 15:43:366 Actionable Matching Gift Insights From the Recent Summit
According to the latest Giving USA report, corporate giving has reached an all-time high, signaling a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits and schools to tap into workplace giving programs. Yet, workplace giving remains an underutilized avenue for many organizations. By strategically engaging with these programs, however, fundraisers can unlock new levels of growth and support, ensuring they continue to innovate and thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.
At the recent Workplace Fundraising + Volunteering Summit, industry experts shared actionable strategies for nonprofits and educational institutions to make the most of these programs. Here, we explore six key insights that can help social causes raise more through workplace giving. These include:
As the Senior Fundraising Manager at Global Impact, Gillian is dedicated to fostering relationships between organizations and corporate partners, ensuring that workplace giving plays a central role in achieving both parties’ philanthropic goals.
Laurel Palmer serves as the Director of the College Fund at Kalamazoo College. Over the years, she has developed effective strategies that bridge the gap between alumni engagement and donor support, leading to substantial growth in Kalamazoo’s matching gift initiatives.
Erica Tolentino is a Senior Manager of National Operations at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. With a passion for matching gifts and employee giving engagement, Erica works tirelessly to enhance the foundation’s workplace giving programs.
As nonprofits and schools face increasing competition for corporate donor attention and support, workplace giving programs offer a unique and scalable opportunity for growth. These strategies not only help fundraisers maximize revenue but also provide a structured approach to developing sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships.
Let’s begin.
1) Collaborating Across Departments:
One of the most significant insights from the summit was the importance of collaboration across departments within nonprofits and schools. As Erica Tolentino, Senior Director of National Operations at the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, explained, “Successful workplace giving programs require cross-department collaboration.” At her organization, the matching gift team works closely with events, fundraising, volunteering, and marketing departments to integrate matching gift information into various campaigns.
Erica also emphasized the importance of creating resources that simplify the matching gift process for both staff and donors.
“We developed email templates for common matching gift questions, FAQs, and a Workplace Giving Toolkit,” Erica Tolentino, Senior Director of National Operations at the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, shared.
These resources not only reduce confusion but also make it easier for volunteers and staff to engage in matching gift activities, driving increased donor participation. This collaboration creates a unified approach that maximizes efficiency and enhances the donor experience.
Another valuable takeaway was the importance of fully utilizing existing workplace giving platforms. Gillian Wagner, Senior Fundraising Manager at Global Impact, encouraged nonprofits and schools to optimize the tools available through workplace giving solutions like Benevity, Your Cause, and Double the Donation. Together, these platforms provide fundraisers with powerful tools to track donations, engage with corporate partners, and automate thank-you messages.
At Kalamazoo College, for example, Laurel Palmer shares how they use Double the Donation’s workplace giving widget on their website to encourage donors to check if their companies offer matching gifts.
From there, by ensuring their free profiles are fully updated on CSR platforms like Benevity and Your Cause, the school has streamlined the process of identifying matching gift opportunities, making it easier to track and engage with workplace donors.
Gillian also emphasized the value of automation in workplace giving, noting that while these programs require sustained effort, automation helps ease the workload. In other words, automated thank-yous and communication systems can ensure that workplace donors are regularly acknowledged without overwhelming the fundraising team.
3) Enlisting Multi-Channel Engagement for Workplace Giving:
Engaging workplace donors effectively requires reaching them through multiple channels, ensuring that your message resonates with them no matter how they prefer to receive information. Kalamazoo College has mastered this strategy by incorporating a combination of communication methods, each designed to reach a broad spectrum of workplace donors.
One key element of the college’s multi-channel approach is its website. Kalamazoo College uses its main site not only to provide detailed information about workplace giving opportunities but also to include tools that make the giving process as seamless as possible. By integrating a matching gift lookup tool into their donation page, the college allows donors to easily check if their employers participate, making it effortless for them to initiate or increase their donations.
Kalamazoo College also utilizes direct mail to reach workplace donors. To enhance the impact of direct mail, the college has included QR codes in its mailers, allowing recipients to quickly scan the code and access online resources, including details about matching gifts and donation forms. This small yet powerful addition makes it easier for donors to take action immediately, thereby increasing conversion rates.
Email campaigns also play a pivotal role in Kalamazoo’s workplace giving strategy. Email provides a direct, personalized method of communication. Regularly scheduled email communications keep supporters informed about upcoming giving opportunities while also promoting the value of matching gifts. Kalamazoo College leverages automation within these email campaigns to send timely reminders.
Social media is another key component of Kalamazoo’s multi-channel engagement strategy. The college taps into the power of platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to spread awareness about workplace giving. Engaging content, such as testimonials from alumni and employees who have benefitted from workplace giving, helps to humanize the process and shows potential donors the tangible impact of their contributions.
4) Leveraging Employer Data to Enhance Outreach:
One of the most effective ways to boost workplace giving is by leveraging employer data to identify potential matching gift opportunities.
As Laurel Palmer, Director of the College Fund at Kalamazoo College, explains, “At Kalamazoo College, we used Double the Donation to cross-reference our donor database with workplace giving data, helping us identify spouses or partners of alumni who could access matching gift programs.'”
This strategic use of data helped the college enhance its outreach and tailor its messaging to specific companies, making its appeals more targeted and effective.
By identifying companies where they had a high concentration of alumni, Kalamazoo College was able to engage directly with these employees and encourage them to take part in the college’s Giving Tuesday campaign. This data-driven approach helped the college maximize matching gift opportunities and raise more funds.
One of the challenges that many nonprofits and schools face is ensuring that workplace donors are properly acknowledged.
As Gillian Wagner, Senior Fundraising Manager from Global Impact pointed out, “Most workplace giving platforms send a tax receipt without any personal messaging or branding from the nonprofit.”
This lack of acknowledgment can lead to donor disengagement. Instead, organizations need to establish a clear, consistent process for thanking workplace donors and ensuring they feel appreciated for their contributions.
Gillian also stressed the importance of creating a personalized acknowledgment system, saying, “Workplace giving isn’t about immediate conversions or instant donations. It’s about building long-term relationships.” Acknowledging donors promptly and personally helps build trust and encourages ongoing participation.
For nonprofits and schools that are new to workplace giving or looking to optimize their efforts, Gillian advised starting small and testing strategies. “Start with a small group of corporate partners or high-value donors, test your strategies, refine your processes, and then scale up as you gain more confidence,” she said. For the best results, organizations should focus on experimenting with different engagement methods and communication strategies to identify what resonates best with workplace donors.
Laurel shared that Kalamazoo College used this approach by focusing on a small group of donors who were most likely to engage with matching gift opportunities. Once they gained more experience, the school’s development team expanded its efforts and continuously optimized its strategies. This step-by-step approach allows nonprofits and educational institutions to test the waters without overwhelming their resources and ensures that they can scale up their efforts once they’re confident in their process.
Wrapping Up
Workplace giving presents a unique opportunity for nonprofits and schools to tap into a steady stream of revenue, build lasting relationships with donors, and enhance their overall fundraising efforts. By collaborating across departments, utilizing existing platforms, engaging donors through multiple channels, and leveraging employer data, organizations can maximize their workplace giving programs.
It’s important to remember that workplace giving is a long-term strategy. Schools and nonprofits must focus on building strong relationships with workplace donors through consistent acknowledgment, personalized communication, and targeted outreach. And while testing and scaling efforts may take time, the results can be well worth the investment.
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