Year-End Fundraising and Matching Gifts: It’s Not Too Late!

As you likely know, the end-of-year fundraising season is a critical time for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. What better way to maximize such an impactful opportunity than with matching gifts?

To recap, corporate matching gift programs generate significant fundraising revenue and increase individual and corporate engagement alike when companies agree to match their employees’ charitable donations to nonprofit causes. However, recent studies show that $4 to $7 billion in available matching gift funding goes unclaimed each year, leaving tons of corporate revenue on the table. And the #1 reason for this gap is a lack of knowledge about the programs!

This holiday fundraising season, set your organization up to make the most of matching gifts by increasing donor awareness. And Double the Donation is here to help! In this guide, we’ll cover:

• The Correlation Between Matching Gifts and Year-End Giving Success
• Top Strategies to Implement for Impactful EOY Gift-Matching
• Other Ways to Scale Corporate Involvement at Year-End
• How Automation Frees Up Fundraising Time in December
• Frequently Asked Questions About Year-End Donation Matching

⁠Ready to dive deeper into fundraising research and learn more about strategic donor appeals, retroactive outreach, automated email streams, and the software that can power it all? Let’s get started!

The Correlation Between Matching Gifts and Year-End Giving Success

End-of-year fundraising and matching gifts are each vital components of a successful nonprofit funding strategy. And the two complement each other to produce a seamless and impactful engagement plan.

After all, more donations flowing during the holiday season means more potential for matching gifts. Meanwhile, promoting matching gift opportunities leads to more⁠ (and larger⁠) donations in the first place!

Not to mention, donation-matching opportunities also provide a great way to differentiate your appeals and retain your organization at the forefront of donors’ minds.

Let’s take a closer look at some statistics that illustrate the power of year-end fundraising and matching gifts.

Top Strategies to Implement for Impactful EOY Gift-Matching

Now that you understand the importance of matching gifts and their relevance during the holiday fundraising season, you might wonder what actionable next steps you can take to get started. Luckily, these expert tips should help!

1. Set up matching gift software ASAP.

While you might worry that it’s too late to get started with any new software this year⁠, that’s simply not true. In fact, the end of the year is typically the time you rely on fundraising software the most. You already have a lot on your to-do list, and the right tools empower your team to make the biggest impact with the least effort.

Matching gift software, for example, can significantly enhance fundraising results with minimal operational lift, allowing nonprofits and schools to raise more while retaining time and resources for other critical year-end efforts. Specifically, this type of solution empowers organizations by automating the processes involved with identifying match-eligible donors, triggering tailored follow-up messaging, and tracking match funding to completion.

Luckily, implementing matching gift software can be quick, easy, and massively effective, making it essential as the end-of-year season approaches.

The moral of the story? Tight turnaround times for software implementation are entirely possible when you need to get up and running quickly⁠ as year-end giving ramps up. We recommend prioritizing tools with easy setup⁠ (including ready-built integrations with your existing solutions⁠), a positive user experience, innovative functionality, and an extensive, regularly updated company database.

Our recommendation: Get started with the leading matching gift software provider.

Double the Donation is consistently rated as #1 in the industry. See for yourself in the overview video below!

Click here to request a personalized demo.

2. Train your internal team on matching gift fundraising.

The matching gift knowledge gap often extends to an organization’s internal fundraising team, too. Unfortunately, this can cause matching gift opportunities to slip through the cracks and available corporate funds to go unclaimed. So getting your staff on board with matching gifts ahead of the year-end fundraising season can go a long way.

The better equipped team members are to share information about matching gifts, the more effectively they’ll advocate for and inspire program participation. For that reason, Double the Donation provides many educational resources to support internal matching gift training, including blog posts, live and on-demand webinars, downloadable resources, and more. But our top recommendation is our online Matching Gift Academy, which is even free for current clients.

3. Highlight the potential for matching gifts in end-of-year appeals.

You might have already drafted your year-end fundraising appeals, or you may be working on them right about now. Either way, consider incorporating a blurb about matching gifts!

As the statistics above show, donors are more likely to give (and to give in larger amounts) when they know a match is available. Thus, matching gifts can be exactly what you need to coax on-the-fence supporters into becoming end-of-year donors. And it often starts directly within the donation request itself!

Each of these scenarios represents additional funding generated for your cause specifically thanks to matching gifts. And there are a lot of “Jeffs” and “Alexes” in the world to consider!

4. Verify that your fundraising systems are fully integrated.

Year-end is the busiest fundraising period of the year. If your tools aren’t properly connected during this time, many supporters will miss out on corporate matching, ultimately creating significant revenue leaks. Here are two essential steps your team should take before giving season officially arrives:

Connect Campaign-Specific Giving Forms

Nonprofits often launch temporary pages or specialized forms for high-volume events like Giving Tuesday, end-of-year appeals, or holiday donation drives. Make sure your Double the Donation integration is active on every online donation form. In addition to your primary website giving flows, this should include:

• Giving Tuesday campaign pages
• End-of-year donation forms
• Peer-to-peer fundraising sites

When your temporary forms include the streamlined employer search tool and confirmation page plugin, every donor can easily check their eligibility right when their giving intent is highest.

Sync Your CRM/Donor Database

You’ll also want to make sure your constituent relationship management system or donor database integrates seamlessly with your workplace fundraising tools. Syncing your CRM ensures that data flows automatically between your systems without any manual entry. This connection allows Double the Donation to capture information from offline gifts and trigger personalized email follow-ups to eligible donors.

5. Leverage our end-of-year email streams.

Another significant roadblock in matching gifts is that nonprofit fundraising staff simply lack the time to manage and promote these efforts. In fact, Nonprofits Source reports that 80% of nonprofits struggle to establish workplace giving strategies with limited staff and resources.

Luckily, that’s where automation comes in!

Automated email streams ensure that every donor receives matching gift outreach in a timely manner, and that no donation falls through the cracks, even when your team is juggling 100 different end-of-year tasks. That way, you can reallocate the time you would have spent issuing year-end matching gift reminders to other fundraising and mission-related tasks.

For the best results, you’ll want to provide donors with as much employer-specific information as possible. This should include donation minimums and maximums, match ratios, submission deadlines, and direct links to their company’s online request forms. The good news? Your automation system can gather all that data so that you don’t have to!

“We like to use Double the Donation’s end-of-year emails because even though we have employer matching connected on our donation forms, many people overlook it. These emails serve as a reminder to donors to check with their employer to see if their donation can go further.” – Freestore Foodbank

6. Scale your mass matching gift marketing at the end of the calendar year.

Marketing matching gift opportunities can be simple. All you have to do is incorporate a few reminders about matching gifts in your social media, email, text, and other appeals. Consider something like this: “Make your year-end donation go further this year with company gift-matching. See if you’re eligible here.”

Then, link back to your matching gift web page so interested supporters can easily access additional information.

Fun fact: Double the Donation offers pre-made and customizable social media graphics and messaging templates in-product, allowing our users to get a head start on effective promotional strategies!

7. Look into year-end-specific giving programs.

Most businesses with matching gift programs agree to double the donations their employees make year-round. But sometimes, a company launches a limited-time initiative that runs only at certain times of the year. The most common timeframe includes year-end matching gift programs.

For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offers a unique giving season match from mid-October through December each year, available to its thousands of employees worldwide. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. offers employees a generous donation stipend to contribute to their favorite nonprofits on Giving Tuesday. That’s in addition to the $1,000 year-long match and end-of-year giving programs!

8. Consider custom matching gift partnerships.

Unfortunately, some companies still haven’t established matching gift programs for their employees. But they might be willing to when presented with the opportunity⁠. In that case, we recommend reaching out to employers to propose custom (or “one-off”) matching gift initiatives.

Custom matches give businesses unfamiliar with matching gifts an easy way to get acquainted with the effort on a limited basis. If a company agrees to offer such a program, it’ll essentially encourage philanthropy by matching employee gifts made exclusively to your organization. And because custom matches typically occur within a defined time frame (e.g., a month), the giving season is a popular time to organize one.

Other Ways to Scale Corporate Involvement at Year-End

Corporate matching gifts are a major driver of year-end revenue, but they’re not the only way businesses can support your cause during the holiday season. Expanding your institutional partnerships through diverse workplace and corporate giving initiatives helps your organization unlock additional resources, build deeper community ties, and engage more corporate supporters.

Here are four effective ways to scale corporate involvement beyond traditional matching gifts.

#1: Encourage Volunteer Grant Requests Prior to Year-End Deadlines.

Many corporate volunteers do not realize that their service hours from throughout the year can earn your nonprofit cash grants. Like matching gift submission windows, corporate volunteer grant deadlines often align with the calendar year and reset on December 31.

Remind your dedicated volunteers to see if their companies offer “Dollars for Doers” grants and, if so, to log their accumulated hours before the year ends. By taking a few minutes to submit their service hours in their company portal, your volunteers can unlock corporate grant checks that boost your year-end fundraising totals. Automating this outreach with Double the Donation ensures no volunteer grant dollars are left on the table when deadlines arrive.

#2: Mine Your Database for Q4 Sponsorship Opportunities.

While year-end matching gifts rely heavily on individual donors, corporate grants and in-kind contributions offer another way to secure major support. One of the best ways to find ideal corporate partners is to look directly inside your donor database.

By auditing your CRM to see where your dedicated supporters, volunteers, and board members work, you can uncover invaluable connections to corporate funders and even gain warm introductions to those companies’ community relations teams and CSR leads. Reaching out to a company with an existing supporter in your corner makes it much easier to secure year-end grants and other high-value partnerships.

#3: Recruit Holiday Season Corporate Service Groups.

The holiday season is a peak time for corporate team-building activities. Local companies often look for hands-on group service projects where their employees can give back together. For the best results, clarify what kinds of service projects your organization can facilitate! Convoy of Hope’s partnerships page, for example, includes the following statement:

“Convoy provides the opportunity to volunteer by building school kits for children, hygiene kits for disaster survivors, seed packets for planting vegetable gardens, and much more. Special volunteer opportunities ranging from one-hour sessions to all-day events are available.”

By hosting organized holiday volunteer group opportunities, your organization gains valuable support. In addition to completing vital operational tasks, recruiting corporate volunteer groups can also open the door to direct corporate funding.

#4: Promote Recurring Payroll Giving Enrollment for the New Year.

Year-end is an ideal time to encourage corporate employees to set up recurring payroll deductions for the upcoming calendar year. Payroll giving allows workers to donate to your nonprofit directly from their paychecks, often on a pre-tax basis. When you promote payroll giving during year-end, you offer supporters an easy way to extend their commitment beyond a one-time holiday gift.

And with Double the Donation’s payroll giving module in your nonprofit’s toolkit, you can easily identify supporters who qualify for these programs and provide them with clear instructions for enrollment. Plus, you’ll have access to customizable marketing templates like this one:

#5: Partner on a Corporate Challenge Match Campaign.

A corporate challenge match is a powerful way to create urgency and double your fundraising momentum during the year-end push. In a challenge match campaign, a corporate partner pledges a specific pool of funds to match all donations your organization receives within a set, time-bound window.

Unlike standard employee matching gifts that rely on individual requests from workers at a specific company, a challenge match typically applies to all donations from your broader network until the pledged pool is reached. This setup gives your year-end appeals a strong incentive, as donors know their contributions will make twice the impact during your campaign (or three times the impact if they also qualify for a match from their employer!).

How Automation Frees Up Fundraising Time in December

We know that the end of the year is a crucial time for nonprofit fundraisers, and matching gifts can seem like just another thing on your already full plate. But they don’t have to be! By automating the matching gift process from start to finish, your team can raise more without lifting a finger, freeing up invaluable fundraising time during the giving season.

Interested in learning how you can do so? Check out this short clip from a webinar replay to see how our automation tools can help you…

• Eliminate manual employment data research.
• Simplify the employment data collection process.
• Cut time spent researching matching gift companies.
• Reduce manual outreach efforts.
• Track metrics in an easy-to-understand way.
• Integrate into your existing fundraising tools.

With the right automation systems in place, your team can spend less time managing matching-gift logistics and more time focusing on what truly matters: engaging donors and maximizing year-end fundraising. By streamlining the process, you’ll save precious hours and increase your chances of securing more matches, ultimately boosting your fundraising total. Plus, automated systems ensure no match goes unnoticed, so your team can work smarter, not harder, this holiday season.