How to Maximize Success With Your Double the Donation Account

Double the Donation serves as a premier fundraising tool for over 8,000 nonprofits and schools seeking to eliminate the challenges of identifying and pursuing workplace giving revenue. In the past year, our clients have identified over $500 billion in match-eligible donations. Plus, we’ve tracked more than 1 million clicks on calls to action that directed supporters straight to their workplace giving submission forms.

But is your organization making the most of its workplace fundraising tools?

We’ve curated a list of recommended practices to help teams like yours maximize success with their Double the Donation accounts. This includes:

• Setting up your core integrations
• Optimizing your organization’s website
• Implementing smart email automation
• Ensuring thorough, team-wide training
• Leveraging high-value supporter outreach
• Establishing a system for ongoing progress tracking
• Making the most of payroll giving
• Registering with leading CSR vendors
• Optimizing your organization profile
• Taking advantage of our free marketing resources
• Uncovering broader sponsorships

With 94% of companies planning to strengthen (and diversify) their corporate giving strategies over the next few years, now is the perfect time to revamp your organization’s efforts and make the most of this growing opportunity. That’s why Double the Donation’s suite of workplace giving solutions turns collected employment data into actionable insights, helping you identify and pursue funding to grow your total revenue through matching gifts, employee volunteerism, payroll giving, sponsorships, and more.

Best Practice: Set up your core integrations.

The foundation of success with any fundraising tool is a seamless connection with your existing software. Luckily, Double the Donation supports 100+ turnkey nonprofit platform integrations, enabling teams to get up and running quickly without requiring significant staff time for implementation.

By connecting your full tech stack with Double the Donation, you can unlock more revenue and ensure no funding opportunity slips through the cracks.

Here are the core integrations you should set up (if you haven’t already).

1. Donation form: By adding our plugin directly to your giving page, you provide a frictionless experience that prompts donors to search for their employers while already in a charitable mindset. This ensures you have the information you need to drive the request to completion immediately post-donation.
2. CRM: Your customer relationship management system holds the history of your supporters, allowing you to screen your entire database of offline gifts and historical donors.
3. Volunteer management system: Nonprofit supporters can provide immense value through their donated time, too. Connecting your VMS with Double the Donation Volunteering is essential to uncover volunteer grant and volunteer time-off opportunities during event registration.

Our search tool integrated into a donation form

Our search tool integrated into a volunteer registration form

Your target should be to pass 90% of your total contributions through the Double the Donation system. This ensures that no match-eligible donor (or volunteer) is overlooked.

Many organizations find that “turnkey” integrations enable them to get up and running quickly, eliminating the manual research typically required by advancement offices. This automation is essential for growing revenue without requiring significant additional staff time.

Best Practice: Make your website a hub for workplace giving info.

Visibility is the foundation of a successful workplace giving program. However, research shows that more than 78% of eligible donors remain unaware of their company’s workplace giving programs. Because supporters can’t take advantage of benefits they do not know exist, your website must serve as a central hub for this information.

That’s why Double the Donation clients receive three embeddable workplace giving plugins that make it easy for supporters to discover their eligibility. Each plugin allows supporters to access the database and immediately see information on their company’s specific programs and next steps.

Check out this example of one client (University of South Carolina) using all three of our plugins on their website:

By keeping these tools front and center on your website, you provide a clear path for donors to follow, turning potential interest into actual funding.

We recommend building dedicated landing pages for matching gifts and payroll giving. By embedding your respective plugins, you create a permanent home for this information where supporters can find details at any time. Additionally, you’ll want to embed your volunteering plugin directly onto your organization’s main volunteer page, ensuring that volunteers are immediately prompted to check for corporate benefits as they engage with your cause.

Best Practice: Optimize email automation to encourage conversions.

Email automation is a core feature of Double the Donation’s platform, allowing you to send customized, engaging follow-up messages. To maximize success, we recommend activating all available email streams. These include:

• Match-Eligible ⁠— Alerts donors identified as eligible for matching. By providing direct links to their company’s forms, you make it simple for them to double their impact.
• Identification in Progress ⁠— Engages donors who have not identified their employer, guiding them to your match page and encouraging them to check their eligibility. This allows you to capture valuable employment data, turning unidentified supporters into qualified opportunities.
• Thank You ⁠— Offers gratitude to build long-term loyalty. When appreciated, supporters are more likely to give and get their gifts matched again.
• End-of-Year ⁠— Creates a helpful sense of urgency, reminding donors to submit requests before many companies’ year-end cut-offs. This is crucial for capturing last-minute funding that would otherwise go unclaimed.

For those using the volunteering module, you can also leverage automated streams to notify supporters of volunteer grants or VTO. This keeps the conversation going after engagement and ensures your team receives the full benefit of their time.

To inspire brand trust and avoid spam filters, set up your account to send from your organization’s own domain (e.g., giving@yournonprofit.org) rather than a generic third-party address. We also recommend refreshing your content at least once, but ideally twice, a year to keep your emails relevant and timely. Use email variables to personalize the experience, such as adding the donor’s name to the subject line or calling out their specific employer in the body.

Best Practice: Go above and beyond for top eligible supporters.

While automation handles the bulk of your outreach, high-value opportunities sometimes require a personal touch. The “Eligible But Not Submitted” report (available within both the Matching and Volunteering modules) is your guide to low-hanging revenue.

This intuitive report highlights donors who are confirmed as program-eligible but have not yet completed their request. These individuals have already signaled their intent to support your mission. By providing a human touch, you show that you value their contribution beyond just the financial gift or volunteer hour.

For your top donors, consider a direct phone call or a personalized email from your development director. This extra step shows the donor that their impact is valued and can be significantly amplified with just a few minutes of their time.

The same logic applies to volunteers. On a monthly or quarterly basis, review supporters in the “Waiting for Volunteer” stage. Reach out to them to encourage the submission of their volunteer grant requests, as these often go unclaimed simply due to a lack of awareness or forgetting the deadline.

Best Practice: Identify and communicate payroll giving programs.

Payroll giving is a high-potential donation channel that allows employees to donate directly from their salary, often on a pre-tax basis. It provides a predictable, recurring income stream for your nonprofit and leads to higher donor retention rates.

The best way to identify candidates for this program is to look at donors who have already engaged with your matching gift efforts. These individuals have already demonstrated an interest in leveraging their employer’s philanthropic programs to support your cause, making them ideal targets for payroll giving.

To streamline your outreach, Double the Donation identifies these potential participants for you. All you need to do is log in to the platform and regularly check the Payroll Giving Dashboard. This centralized hub surfaces specific opportunities where your donors work for companies that support payroll giving.

Once you identify these individuals in the dashboard, you can reach out to explain the ease and efficiency of enrolling in their company’s payroll deduction scheme. By focusing your efforts on these high-intent supporters, you can transform one-time matching gift donors into long-term, recurring contributors.

Best Practice: Pre-register with leading CSR vendors.

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) vendors manage the giving portals for thousands of companies. Registering with these vendors is essential to increase your visibility and streamline processes for both your donors and your team.

Key benefits of doing so include:

• Increased Visibility: Employees can easily search for and find your nonprofit within their company’s giving portal.
• Simplified Processes: It automates fund verification and disbursement, speeding up the time to receive revenue.
• More Revenue: Being verified on platforms like Benevity, CyberGrants, or YourCause increases your potential for matching gifts and payroll donations.

We suggest designating a team member to regularly monitor these portals and respond promptly to verification requests to avoid unnecessary delays.

Best Practice: Set up (or update) your Organization Profile.

To leverage Double the Donation’s groundbreaking auto-submission technology, you must have a complete and accurate Organization Profile. This technology allows donors at select companies to submit their matching gift requests directly from your donation form or thank-you page.

Completing all required and optional fields (and uploading the required IRS determination letters) is the only way to enable this functionality. Auto-submission significantly saves donors’ time and has been proven to increase the number of completed matches by eliminating the need for donors to find and log in to a separate corporate portal.

If your profile is outdated, you risk missing out on this “hands-free” revenue. Take 15 minutes this quarter to ensure your mission statement, branding, and documentation are up to date.

Best Practice: Leverage our customizable marketing resources.

You don’t need a professional design team to create high-quality marketing materials. Double the Donation provides free access to a library of email graphics, social media templates, and video content to help you spread the word about your workplace giving initiatives.

To access these customizable marketing templates, simply log in to your account and navigate to Resources > Marketing Assets. We’ve organized the templates by module (providing a number of graphics across the Matching, Volunteering, and Payroll hubs) so you can find the specific resources you need to promote each program effectively.

Keep in mind that organizations that promote workplace giving across multiple channels identify 77% more eligible donations than those that do not. Using these pre-made resources makes it easy to integrate workplace giving messaging into every touchpoint of your donor journey.

Best Practice: Track progress to identify revenue opportunities.

Clean and up-to-date data is the lifeblood of a high-ROI workplace giving plan. Tracking your supporters as they progress through the workplace giving process allows your organization to forecast future revenue and identify “sticky points” where individuals may be dropping out of the conversion funnel.

You should regularly update donor and volunteer stages to reflect their progress through the lifecycle. For example:

• Mark supporters as Pending Payment once their match or volunteer hours have been verified by the company.
• Update to ‘Match Complete’ or ‘Volunteer Grant Complete’ once the funds are actually received.

This systematic approach ensures no gift slips through the cracks and allows you to accurately measure your return on investment.

Best Practice: Use our tools to uncover broader sponsorships.

Your supporter employment data, powered by Double the Donation, can be a goldmine for identifying potential corporate sponsorships. There are two primary ways to uncover these opportunities:

1. Supporter Representation: If you notice a group of employees from a single company is giving to or volunteering with your cause, use that overlapping audience as your key to get in the door. Reach out to that company’s community affairs department and highlight your mission’s existing commitment from their staff.
2. Sponsorship Directory: Use Double the Donation’s sponsorship directory to find companies that already offer corporate grants or in-kind donations to nonprofits. The platform even supplies direct application links to submit professional requests that align with their giving priorities and your mission.

Passionate employees can serve as internal champions, advocating for your cause and making warm introductions to their HR or CSR contacts.

Best Practice: Train your team on workplace giving.

Obtaining internal buy-in is a critical step in a successful strategy. Everyone, from leadership to volunteers, should understand how these programs can become a sustainable and scalable source of revenue.

Training your staff ensures they can communicate effectively with donors about their eligibility. When your entire advancement team is on the same page, your organization is better positioned to drive success and eliminate the legwork often associated with manual match tracking.

FAQs About Maximizing Your Double the Donation Account

To ensure your team is fully equipped to succeed, we have addressed some of the most common questions regarding the ongoing management and expectations of your workplace giving account.

Have even more questions? Check out our complete FAQ page here.

Do I need to use all of these best practices to succeed?

No, but they are designed to work together. While you will see a lift from integrations alone, organizations that adopt a multichannel marketing strategy and leverage all three Double the Donation plugins typically see the greatest increase in total workplace giving revenue over time.

How much staff time is required?

The Double the Donation system is designed for maximum automation. Initial tasks, such as setting up integrations or your organization profile, occur only once. Ongoing management, such as quarterly reviews or top donor follow-ups, typically requires only a few hours per month.

What kind of revenue growth can we expect?

Results vary by organization size and donor base. However, nonprofits that consistently apply these suggestions often see a 20% to 50% increase in matching gift revenue within their first year of usage.

Wrapping Up & Next Steps

Maximizing success with your Double the Donation account is about turning static data into active revenue. By implementing these recommended best practices, you position your nonprofit to capture every possible dollar of workplace giving support.

Remember, your client success representative is always available to help. If you have questions or want a review of your marketing strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team. Let’s work together to ensure your mission grows with every donation or hour gifted.