Justify Your Trip to the Matching Gift Summit [Template for Higher Ed]

Fundraising conferences can offer transformative experiences for higher education advancement professionals, supplying opportunities for networking, skill development, and exclusive insights into industry trends. However, securing approval and funding for such trips often requires a well-crafted justification. And, if you’re interested in attending Double the Donation’s upcoming Fall 2024 Matching Gift Summit (hint: you should!), we’ve provided a handy template to help convince your boss of the value your trip would supply.

First things first…What is the Matching Gift Summit?

Matching gifts can be an incredible yet often untapped source of fundraising support for nonprofits, universities, and other fundraising organizations. In matching gift programs, corporations match donations that their employees make to charitable organizations. According to recent matching gift statistics, $2-3 billion is donated annually through matching gift programs, but an estimated $4-$7 billion is left unclaimed.

Double the Donation’s goal is to assist organizations in securing the matching gift revenue available to them. This includes resources provided in our Matching Gift Summit, matching gift automation platform, and more.

Specifically, the Summit is dedicated to sharing matching gift best practices, resources, success stories, and more to help higher education institutions manage this fundraising channel more effectively. Attendees will learn about forming strong business partnerships and earning valuable corporate sponsorships to support their projects, events, programs, and more.

And why should I represent my school at the event?

“Double the Donation’s Matching Gift Summit is invaluable for corporate philanthropy professionals. I would recommend this event to anyone who is interested in growing their matching gift fundraising. The Summit has served as an incredibly helpful resource for our team as we have implemented insights and learnings from the event into our matching gift fundraising strategy.”

— Ariana Romanelli, Lead Associate, Corporate Partnerships at Save the Children

If that’s not enough of a reason, attending Double the Donation’s Fall 2024 Matching Gift Summit is hands down the best way for your team to gain insights into emerging industry trends, identify and adapt to shared challenges in workplace giving, source insights from fundraising peers, and more.

The summit will offer uniquely insightful discussions focusing on enhancing corporate giving strategies, providing advanced techniques to optimize your programs and engage corporate partners more effectively. Plus, networking events provide opportunities to build meaningful connections with nonprofit leaders, CSR professionals, and industry experts alike.

Now, email your boss! Free template to justify your trip

Subject: Matching Gift Summit – Great opportunity for our team

Dear [insert manager’s name],

I’d like to get your approval to attend the Matching Gift Summit, Double the Donation’s premier matching gift event, in Atlanta, GA from October 1st – 3rd.

The event would be a win-win: my goal in attending is to make sure we’re getting the maximum dollars possible from matching gifts, plus attending would be a great professional development opportunity for me personally.

Here are some ways [your institution] would benefit from my attendance:

[If relevant] Making the most of our Double the Donation: since all sessions are dedicated to workplace giving and matching gifts I’ll learn more about how to use 360MatchPro to its full capacity.

Increasing our matching gift revenue: the event is designed to send professionals home with actionable next steps to raise more money via matching gifts.

Avoiding challenges: the summit brings together professionals from similar schools, I’ll be able to hear how others have managed the challenges we currently face.

Growing our network: This is one of the largest, if not the largest, gathering of professionals who specifically work on Matching Gifts, so I’ll have the opportunity to build our network with peers from other organizations.

Here’s an approximate breakdown of the costs:

Registration: $650

Airfare: [insert]

Hotel: $195 per night (if we secure the room block provided by Double the Donation at the Georgian Terrace- the conference location)

Any meals, not covered in conference pass: $50 (most meals are covered)

Total: [insert]

After the Matching Gift Summit, I’ll submit a post-conference report with major takeaways and learnings so I can share everything I absorbed at the conference with other team members, and potentially the larger organization.

Thank you for considering my request. Looking forward to your reply.

[NAME]