Marketing Matching Gifts Archives

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Retaining matching gift donors is simple when you acknowledge them correctly with these tips.

Retaining Matching Gift Donors: 4+ Effective Strategies

June 19, 2015/in Learning Center, Marketing Strategies /by Adam Weinger

Thanking donors should be at the top of your priority list for your fundraising strategy. You should put a special emphasis on thanking donors who complete matching gift requests, because those that do took the extra time to fill out the necessary paperwork.

If you don’t show your appreciation for those who generously support your organization, they won’t be as loyal. In fact, they’ll be much more likely to start supporting other nonprofits that do thank them.

Ask yourself this: Is your organization taking the time to thank individuals who submit matching gift requests? Matching gifts are often an overlooked area in fundraising in general, and in donor recognition especially.

There are several strategies used to thank donors for their donations. They’re all designed around showing your donors that you appreciate their matching gifts. When coming up with an acknowledgement strategy, consider the following:

Letters and postcards
Email recognition
Newsletter recognition lists
Social media recognition

Nonprofits thank their supporters with the knowledge that a little recognition goes a long way when it comes to retaining donors. The same applies for matching gifts. If you acknowledge this valuable contribution, you increase the likelihood of that donor submitting a matching gift again in the future.

Ready to learn about some of these recognition strategies? Let’s get started!

1. Acknowledgement Letters and Postcards

Many nonprofits use tangible thank-you letters and postcards to recognize their donors when they make a donation. If the donor submitted the matching gift form at the same time as their donation, simply modify the letter you were originally going to send, and add a section thanking them for their matching gift.

If the matching gift form is submitted by the donor after you’ve sent a thank-you note, you’ll want to send a separate acknowledgement letter about how you appreciate the time they took to complete the match request. Not only do donors want to know that their form is being processed, but you’ll also stay fresh on their minds without asking for another donation.

Similar to acknowledgement letters, postcards are a cost-effective way to say thanks to donors for submitting a matching gift. Here’s a sample matching gift postcard sent out after the organization received the matching gift check. Oftentimes, these are sent once the check is actually received, many months after match forms are initially submitted.

Sample Matching Gift Postcard sent by the University of Michigan (Front Side)

Sample Matching Gift Postcard sent by the University of Michigan (Back Side)

If your nonprofit team doesn’t have experience with writing letters, no worries! There are plenty of free matching gift letter templates floating around the internet to help you get started.

2. Email Recognition

If changing your pre-formatted donor letters turns out to be a hassle or you don’t have the funds to send a separate matching gift acknowledgement card, why not automate the whole process with a dedicated email for matching gift donors? With the right automation system, you can use customizable templates and brand these emails to your organization. Plus, your team will save time!

The email doesn’t have to be long or complicated. All it takes is a few sentences thanking them for submitting a matching gift. Check out this example from North Carolina State University:

Be sure to highlight how important matching gifts are for your organization. That way, donors will feel appreciated and will know their impact (and continued support) is vital to the success of your organization.

Otherwise, you’ll face the possibility of losing valuable supporters, or at the very least, you won’t receive matching gifts from them in the future.

3. Newsletter Recognition Lists

If your organization sends out a regular newsletter, consider adding a section where you list the overall financial impact of matching gifts that you’ve recently received. Specify which projects have benefited because of matches and how they’ve benefited. That way, donors who have completed the match process will know exactly where their contributions are going.

It could even be as simple as stating the number of companies that matched gifts and saying how much extra money you raised through matches. Here’s an example of a graphic you can include in your newsletter:

If you want to take it a step further, outright name the companies which provided matching gifts as well as the specific donors who took the time to complete the process. While publicly acknowledging your donors, you’ll simultaneously increase awareness of matching gifts among your other donors.

Not only is this a great retention strategy, but it can start the matching gift conversation with other supporters, too!

4. Social Media Recognition

As society’s tech usage and reliance increases, so should your nonprofit’s web presence. You should start with your organization’s website (See examples here!) and branch out to social media.

Utilize your social media accounts to promote matching gifts by recognizing individuals by name who submit matching gift requests. Not only does this immediately acknowledge your matching gift donors, but it also alerts all your other followers about corporate giving programs.

Here’s an example from the Kittens Rescue Club, where they thank their matching gift donors and start the conversation with other supporters:

When you establish social media pages for your nonprofit and regularly post updates, your supporters will feel motivated to share your well-written posts, allowing you to reach the largest possible audience. Save time, raise awareness, and increase donations — all with a single tweet or status update.

5. Matching Gift Database: How Double the Donation Can Help

Matching gifts are a key part of an effective fundraising strategy, and so is recognizing your donors who complete the match process. With the right matching gift database in your tech toolkit, you’ll instantly recognize corporate giving opportunities by seeing which of your donors are match-eligible, and you’ll know when to show appreciation to them. That’s where Double the Donation comes in.

Here’s how Double the Donation’s matching gift and volunteer grant database works:

Your team embeds the tool on your nonprofit’s website or donation page.
Donors search their employers, either before or after they donate.
They instantly receive results (e.g. available guidelines and forms).

When you embed Double the Donation’s matching gift plugin across your website and fundraising channels, you’ll pinpoint eligible donors and maximize your potential revenue.

Larger nonprofits may benefit even more from 360MatchPro by Double the Donation, which recognizes match-eligible donors through email screening. From there, these donors will be encouraged to submit match requests through automated email reminders, pushing their match to completion.

By keeping up with donors’ eligibility and their match-completion status, you’ll know when to reach out to them to ensure they know about their opportunities. Plus, once their match goes through and your organization receives the check, your team can properly thank them. Whether that’s through an acknowledgement letter, a direct email, a newsletter, or a social media post is entirely up to your organization.

Without your generous donors, your nonprofit wouldn’t be able to continue working toward its mission. When your donors take the time to submit match requests to their employers, make sure to acknowledge them. Otherwise, you’ll likely lose their loyalty.

Reinforce their actions and stay fresh on their minds by outwardly thanking them. Plus, public recognition helps promote these valuable revenue opportunities to donors who wouldn’t otherwise know about them.

If your donor can potentially double their impact without reaching back into their own pockets, in most cases, all you have to do is make them aware and guide them through the process. Make sure your supporters receive the recognition they deserve. By using these different strategies, you’ll boost your revenue and retain your vital supporters all at once!

Learn about several ways for marketing matching gifts.

Marketing Matching Gifts: The Complete Guide

March 21, 2015/in Learning Center, Marketing Strategies /by Adam Weinger

Earth may have always been spherical, but it took the Greek philosopher Pythagoras until the 6th century BC to dispel the myth of a flat world. Likewise, matching gift programs exist, but a lack of donor awareness could be holding your fundraising back.

The most common reason why people don’t submit matching gift requests is that they don’t know if their employer offers such a program. Corporate giving is a big deal, and promoting these revenue opportunities to donors can substantially increase your donations.

In fact, mentioning matching gifts in fundraising appeals results in a 71% increase in response rate and a 51% increase in the average donation amount. Not only do matching gift programs double donations, but they also encourage donors to increase their original gift, making the matched gift larger, too!

Nonprofits need every dollar they can grab, and matching gifts are an effective way to increase your fundraising without demanding much out of donors. Submitting matching gifts is an easy 5-minute process, and marketing matching gifts doesn’t have to be difficult, either.

To boost matching gift revenue, focus on your outreach via:

Website
Email
Social media
Internal promotion
Direct mail
Matching Gift Database

Incorporating corporate giving into your outreach strategy can put you on the path to reaching your fundraising goals. Let’s get started!

1. Website

As with any modern organization, your website is the first impression someone has of your nonprofit. Make it count.

A website is much more than just a homepage, and with donors often choosing the convenient route of donating online via credit cards, you have endless opportunities to promote matching gifts.

Your website is your home on the internet, and it’s where you’re required to host people every day. While many visitors are strangers, the goal is to impress everybody and to make sure that all parties leave feeling satisfied and looking forward to their next visit.

The best time to promote matching gifts is when your donors are actually making their donations. There’s no time like the present, and if people are already in giving moods, then why not inform them about how they can give twice as much?

Depending on the size of your organization, there are a few common ways to promote matching gifts online.

Dedicated Matching Gift Page

As you learn more about corporate giving, share this knowledge with your supporters. That way, they’ll know their impact can be multiplied without reaching back into their own pockets.

Donors require a landing page where they can learn about matching gift programs and discover if their employers participate in corporate giving. A dedicated matching gift page can communicate relevant facts, such as matching gift statistics or annual donation numbers, and also allow donors to search for information.

It could even be as simple as stating what matching gifts are. If you subscribe to a matching gift service like Double the Donation, include relevant tools on this page, too.

Dedicated Matching Gift Page from Goodwill

A functional website is necessary for every organization, because it’s a great place to market revenue opportunities like matching gifts. All nonprofits should accept online donations, so incorporate matching gift marketing alongside regular donation calls-to-action on your website.

The goal is to give donors a place to both learn about matching gifts and to be spurred into action to submit the necessary forms. Learn more about creating a dedicated matching gift page before creating your own!

Ways to Give Page

A Ways to Give page is where people learn about all of their donation options to your nonprofit. From regular donations to fundraisers to matching gifts, there are a ton of ways to support your organization, and you want to advertise them all.

Additionally, people will be more likely to give if you accommodate their preferences by offering multiple donation options!

Ways to Give Page from Center for Puppetry Arts

Don’t forget to include matching gifts on your Ways to Give page. Instead of making donors research their employers on their own, give them the tools they need, because this can lead to a major increase in fundraising. Learn how to create a Ways to Give page or revamp your current page to better market matching gifts.

Navigation Bar

In addition to using dedicated matching gift pages, you can tell donors about these programs across your website. By including a section specifically about corporate giving, you allow users to access that information anywhere on your website.

Plus, if someone’s browsing your website and has never heard of corporate philanthropy, simply seeing there’s a page about it may spark curiosity.

Navigation Bar on the Homepage of Lafayette Partners in Education

Banner ads function as proverbial advertisements on any webpage, and a link in your navigation bar allows donors to intuitively discover matching gifts. The links should lead to a dedicated matching gift page, where you can inform donors about all the nitty-gritty matching gift details.

Implementing matching gift promotion across your website is a major step in boosting your revenue. Don’t overlook it!

Blogs

Organizations often use blogs to keep supporters updated on their efforts. Blogs tell your nonprofit’s story, so why not also share ways for donors to double their donations so that you can keep telling that story?

They’re a great way to start the conversation about corporate giving while also evoking emotion in readers. For instance, tell in-depth stories about the importance of matching gifts while educating people on how to submit the necessary forms.

Even just including a graphic that advertises matching gifts on the side of a blog post can help to increase awareness.

Posting insightful stories about matching gifts is a straightforward promotion strategy. In fact, some matching gift services (like Double the Donation) offer prewritten matching gift articles that you can use.

Takeaway: Your website is the one place where most donors come to learn about your mission and, ultimately, make a donation. Promoting matching gifts on your website is a great way to encourage donors to give more and make a matching gift request.

2. Email

Email outreach is a vital component of online giving. Email provides instantaneous outreach to donors, so you can essentially say, “Hi. What’s up? Have you thought about matching gifts today?” Then, people can reply just as quickly. Snail mail cannot keep pace, and at $0.55 a stamp, why would you pay to slow down?

Acquiring matching gifts through email is a lot like a game of chess. There are multiple pieces that all do different things, and while one piece could win the game all on its own, it’s more likely that a focused strategy and a team effort will produce optimal results.

Success hinges on a well-paced, steady procession of the right moves, not reckless bombardment of emails. There are a few ways you can effectively market matching gifts through email, and we’ll walk you through them.

Newsletters

With enough space to write a little blurb or even a full article, newsletters are a great place to educate donors about matching gifts. In fact, you can even send a newsletter dedicated to matching gifts.

When newsletters have one goal, readers are less likely to get distracted by other information. That way, you ensure no one will miss the important announcement. Otherwise, when designing your newsletter, make sure to prominently feature each announcement in its own section.

Email Newsletter from CASA

Remember, a newsletter dedicated to matching gifts is the best strategy, but splitting space with another topic or including a matching gifts graphic in a newsletter about another topic can work, too. Loyal donors read your newsletter, so it’s a good place to provide in-depth information about the benefits of corporate giving.

Acknowledgement Emails

When your nonprofit receives a gift, you should always say thank you. Your donation ackowledgement email is also a great time to promote matching gifts. The donations are fresh on donors’ minds, and a little nudge saying that they can double their donations without shelling out another cent can go a long way.

Plus, you can automate this type of email and ensure every donor receives this important announcement.

Acknowledgement Email from the Kitten Rescue Club

Well-designed acknowledgement emails thrive because you can provide links to dedicated matching gift pages using text or graphics. They catch the eye of readers and allow you to engage with them.

Email Signatures

Chances are that you send a ton of emails. Every message is an opportunity to promote matching gifts. An email signature typically includes contact information, but it’s also a great place to promote matching gifts.

A simple blurb or a flashy graphic about corporate giving can increase awareness and be the needed push for donors to take a quick five minutes to submit matching gift requests. Before doing this, learn how to use your email signature to promote matching gifts.

Takeaway: Whether you market matching gifts in your email signatures, newsletters, or acknowledgement letters, emails allow you to showcase matching gifts in a prominent way.

3. Social Media

People flock to social media to discover the internet’s best content. You don’t need to produce viral posts every day, but if you want to promote matching gifts, you do need to provide compelling and engaging information on a consistent basis.

There are as many social media outlets as there are stars in the universe (give or take a few), so it’s best to focus on the sites most relevant to promoting your matching gift program: Facebook and Twitter. Both platforms require a nuanced approach.

Why should you focus on matching gift marketing efforts on social media? How do you maximize your social media efforts? Can this all be done without shelling out a sizable sum for featured advertisements? Social media is a vital, contemporary marketing approach through which you will see results without breaking the bank. You just have to be aware of the most up-to-date best practices.

Facebook Post from the National Kidney Foundation

Whether or not you employ a matching gift service, a simple tweet or Facebook post can spread the word to donors. When revamping your social media strategy, learn the best practices for posting about matching gifts on social media.

Year-End and New-Year Appeals

Donations have lifespans, so you need to promote matching gifts to eligible donors before the clock runs. In other words, a supporter can’t donate in 2016 and submit a matching gift request for that donation in 2019. Each company has its own deadline, so stay up-to-date on your donors’ employers.

Year-end and new-year appeals remind donors of impending matching gift deadlines. This time of year, known as giving season, is when your nonprofit should be most active in promoting matching gifts. To reach the widest audience, social media is a great way to spread the word to your supporters.

End of Year Appeal from the Kids & Art Foundation on Twitter

While these appeals can be made via social media, email appeals allow you to chronicle the exact deadlines and provide more depth about the importance of submitting matching gift requests before it’s too late.

Takeaway: Social media is a great way to keep people up-to-date on your nonprofit’s campaigns. However, this medium can also be used to promote matching gifts. Just be sure to link to a place where donors can learn more information.

4. Internal Promotion

Employees of any nonprofit should believe in their organization’s mission wholeheartedly, and they should be encouraged to discuss their good work.

Why else would a person dedicate their life to any profession? Yes, some people work for money, but in the nonprofit sector, the ultimate goal is not to make a profit. Rather, the goal is to deliver a positive effect on the world. Here’s how the process works:

By following this straightforward process, you can ensure your team is doing the best job possible acquiring matching gift funds.

Remember, internal outreach encompasses all areas of your nonprofit, including staff, donors, volunteers, and so on.

Matching Gift Team

To fully implement matching gifts in your fundraising strategy, form a matching gift team. First, identify a leader. Then, pull people from marketing, volunteer coordinating, and all departments in order to streamline your matching gift processes and implement a culture of matching gifts.

With someone in charge of the process, you ensure that matching gifts are promoted to all donors. Plus, there will always be someone to answer donors’ questions about how or why matching gifts matter.

With your matching gift team in place, it’s time to execute your strategies. There are the typical marketing mediums, such as email, social media, and print advertising, but don’t forget about word of mouth.

By knowing more about matching gifts, your staff and supporters will naturally spread the word about corporate giving. Informing your internal staff about matching gifts reminds them to tell both each other and supporters about matching gifts. While your website, emails, or social media accounts might grab someone’s attention, nothing spurs a person to action quite like spoken assurance from a trusted face.

Strategies to internally promote matching gifts all start with a dedicated matching gift coordinator or team, but these people need to spread the word and share the responsibility with everyone who is involved with your nonprofit.

A dedicated matching gift staff addresses specific roles in the matching gift process and is intended to get all of your matching gift efforts streamlined. That way, your nonprofit will bring in more corporate-matched donations than ever before.

Internal promotion may be the most effective strategy for promoting matching gifts. When your entire team of supporters knows about matching gifts, these individuals can spread the word to your community. Before forming your team, learn more about matching gift team execution.

Takeaway: Hiring a matching gift expert (or team) will ensure that you have a point of contact for everything matching gift related. This can lead to better outreach and marketing strategies for matching gifts.

5. Direct Mail

While electronic communication is a quick outreach strategy, some donors prefer communication via direct mail.

Direct mail includes letters, postcards, paper inserts, newsletters, and return envelopes. All of these might sound like archaic forms of marketing, but when you’re marketing matching gifts both online and offline, you’re reaching a wider audience, which means more matching gifts.

Is paper marketing out of date? No, it’s not. In fact, there are a number of donors who prefer the personal touch of tangible mail. Plus, you don’t have to handwrite every letter or envelope. Take the following postcard for example:

Matching Gift Postcard from the University of Michigan

When people read paper mail, as opposed to email, they might be reading the same content, but interaction with physical ink and paper does something to help people better remember what they’re reading. Common sense would advise that you don’t just want people to read about matching gift programs, but that you want people to remember them.

The debate between paper communication and technological communication has raged on for years, and the dispute is analogous to deciding between print versus online marketing. Nonetheless, employing both types of marketing works best.

Takeaway: Your matching gift marketing strategy should include direct mail. Some donors will prefer learning about corporate philanthropy programs by reading something tangible.

6. Matching Gift Database

Employing a matching gift database opens the door to a multitude of revenue opportunities. With Double the Donation’s matching gift platform, you can embed this industry-leading matching gift database directly on your website and donation forms.

With Double the Donation, donors can easily discover whether they’re match-eligible. All it takes is incorporating the tool across your online fundraising channels. By adding Double the Donation to your tech toolkit, you’ll boost your revenue opportunities. Specifically, the tool:

Enables donors to search over 20,000 companies.
Provides all available information and forms on companies’ programs.
Allows your nonprofit to recognize match opportunities instantly.
And more!

For larger nonprofits with an already-existing matching gifts solicitation strategy, an automated tool may be the way to go.

For example, 360MatchPro will automatically discover whether a donor is match-eligible. Then, the software will send marketing communications to match-eligible donors informing them of available matching gift or volunteer grant opportunities. For nonprofits looking to grow their matching gifts solicitation, this is a great solution.

Think the software might be a good fit for your organization?

Start a free trial of our matching gift database!

Marketing matching gifts means using a variety of strategies in order to increase fundraising. Simply employing one outreach tactic is not enough. Plus, using more outreach channels means higher revenue opportunities.

Get started implementing these strategies in your fundraising strategy. Then you can hold a hulking sphere of cash and use it to do some good for the world!

Nonprofits: How to Increase Donor Awareness about Matching Gift Programs

August 25, 2014/in Learning Center /by Adam Weinger

Here at Double the Donation, we often write about the benefits of corporate giving programs, but we also touch upon marketing these programs to your donors. Informing individuals about the possibility of literally doubling donations via matching gift opportunities is step one to extra financial support, but step two is ensuring that these marketing efforts are working!

We’ll touch upon some common marketing efforts to get your donors ramped up to submit that matching gift request form to their employer, but also how to tell if your strategy is working.

Marketing Matching Gift Programs

Getting your donors aware about matching gift opportunities is the biggest obstacle your organization will have to overcome in order to receive more funds through these programs. There are billions (yes, billions!) of unclaimed dollars from corporate giving programs because donors are just simply not aware that they can ask their employers to match donations to eligible nonprofit organizations.

Here are three easy and effective marketing strategies to raise donor awareness about matching gift programs.

Include Matching Gift Information in Acknowledgement Letters

If your nonprofit organization is not already including information about matching gift opportunities in donor acknowledgement letters, then it’s a super easy way to start your marketing campaign. When an individual donates money to your organization, the hard part is done. Now you just need to get them to submit a matching gift request form to their employer – but how do you get them to do that?

Include a blurb about matching gifts in your acknowledgement letter. You’ve already got a committed audience, and since the acknowledgement letter doubles as a tax receipt, you can almost guarantee that the donor will read the letter to skim over key points. Make sure you emphasize that requesting a matching gift from their employer is easy and effective. Direct them to your Double the Donation webpage to allow them to check in just a couple of quick steps if their employer offers a matching gift program, and the steps they need to follow to do so.

It can be as simple as this: “Did you know that many corporations offer employee giving programs where they match donations to [your organization’s name]? The tax deductible component of your membership is normally eligible to be matched as well. Check with your employer today to see if they provide matching gifts!”

Make sure to mention that many companies now offer the opportunity to submit these forms online, so that makes the request that much easier. Your odds that a donor requests a matching gift from their employer are so much better if they’ve made a gift recently, so make sure your acknowledgement letters are timely!

Strategically Place Matching Gift Information on Donation Web Pages

As with the above method, you want to make sure to include matching gift information in places that your donors (actual and potential) can see and process quickly. If an individual is on your organization’s donation page, then chances are that they didn’t end up there by accident. This is a great place to let them know that once they commit to the donation, then asking for a match from their employer will only take a few extra minutes. Donors are more likely to pull the trigger when they know it won’t be a long and arduous process, especially once they’ve already made a gift.

Put blurbs about matching gift opportunities on your donation pages, including on the “Donate Now” pages, and especially on the “Thank you for donating!” pages. It would be great as a “Next Steps” option.

Engage Your Donors on Social Media

Does your organization have a Facebook page? Twitter? YouTube? All of these are great places to let your donors know how grateful you are for their commitment to your organization’s mission, and a great place to let them know that they can literally double their donation by simply requesting a matching gift from employers. First and foremost, say thank you! This is a crucial part to ensure that they keep reading and engaging with your organization.

Post stories about how the money raised for your organization is helping grow your mission. Include asides about how matching gifts can doubly impact the cause! Facebook is a great place for short posts about matching gifts; Twitter is great for quick and succinct blurbs with links; and YouTube is a great place to submit a video thanking your donors for their contributions and extra efforts in matching gifts!

With social media, the marketing possibilities are endless.

Measuring the Impact of Marketing Efforts

The best advice we have on measuring your marketing impact is to create a chart. Create a graph of some kind (whatever your boss prefers, whether it’s a bar graph, a pie chart, or a nifty line chart in Excel) with the total amount of matching gifts received last year versus this year. Or last month versus this month. Use any time span that can really show you a difference between your pre- and post-marketing efforts. Can you see a discernible difference in the number of matching gifts being sent in?

Of course you can download our free Microsoft Excel Matching Gift Tracker and Dashboard >

You can also create a survey (there are many free online software tools) that allow you to send a thank you email to a donor who had submitted a matching gift request. Ask them how they learned about matching gifts, and include all of your marketing efforts, as well as an “Other” box with a free response option. This will help you realize which efforts are worth investing more time in (or at least focusing more on in the future), and which may be fruitless.

Your organization will also be able to identify if a majority of matching gifts are coming from one company in particular, or from a wide array of employers. This is notable because if your matching gifts seem to be coming from one employer, then it’d be a good idea to publicly recognize it as a valuable donor and partner to your organization.

There are a variety of ways to market matching gifts to your donors, and several other ways to measure the impact of these marketing efforts. Too much money goes unclaimed by nonprofit organizations due to a lack of awareness on the part of the donors about corporate giving programs. This shouldn’t be the case! Make sure you’re educating your constituents on a consistent and appropriate basis, and you could be well on your way to a high increase in the number of matching gift requests submit.

For more tips on how to to keep up with your marketing efforts and better retain your donor base, check out this webinar from Aplos.

Nonprofit and Corporate Relationships Matching Gifts

Leverage Matching Gifts to Strengthen Nonprofit-Corporate Relationships

April 23, 2014/in Learning Center, Marketing Strategies /by Adam Weinger

We recently had a reader ask Double the Donation about how to strengthen relationships with corporations that offer generous matching gift contributions to their organization. She said she wished she had more ways to reach out to these companies post-matching gift donation to show them how a strong relationship could provide some great public relations benefits.

This is a great point! When corporations offer matching gift donations to a nonprofit organization, they may not realize how positive of an impact the contributions are having on the work of the nonprofit. It’s important for nonprofits to leverage matching gifts into positive PR for both you and the corporation to ensure future collaboration, and therefore, a stronger nonprofit-corporate relationship.

Suggestions of “Extra Thanks” for Generous Matching Gift Donations

Does your organization have one corporation in particular (or even a few!) that really stands out in the field of matching gift donations? It’s important that this company knows how big of an impact they are having on the work you do, and sometimes a simple, albeit wonderful, acknowledgement letter (that acts as a tax-deductible receipt, too) is not going to emphasize your thanks enough. So, what else can you do?

Press Releases

A simple and highly visible form of extra thanks is a press release to local publications. This could include information about the circumstances of the donation, how big of a matching gift partner they are (if, for example, you have many donors who work for one company that offers matching gifts on a recurring basis), and the kind of programs and nonprofit work the donations help progress.

And don’t forget to highlight the company on your own website. It’s not only positive publicity for the company but also encourages your other donors to see if their employers will match their donations.

The important thing here is that the company or companies providing matching gifts to your nonprofit organization are getting a public, positive recognition for the donations they make. They are more likely to donate in other capacities in the future, as well, when they see the kind of public acknowledgement they can get by donating to your organization.

Social Media

This one is seemingly a no-brainer, but it’s always amazing what kind of far-reaching impacts a Facebook or Twitter post can have on relationships. By thanking a corporation for their generosity with matching gifts and including the positive impact they are having on the community, your nonprofit is taking an extra (and again, simple) step to show the company and the public how thankful you are for their commitment to the cause.

Here’s a sample thank you post from the Children’s Craniofacial Association:

In case you can’t read the text on the image it says

It’s #ThankfulThursday & CCA thanks @Corning Inc. for the Foundation Matching Gifts Program, doubling employee donations to CCA!

It was retweeted four times and favorited six times, including from the main Corning account.

Donation Page Acknowledgements

On your website’s donation pages, you could include information about some of the benefits of matching gifts (for your donors), and also mention some of the top-giving companies in the area. This shows many donors the commitment of their employers to the community, which in turn increases the chances an individual will donate to your cause and also ask their company for a matching gift. Increasing the number of eyes that see a corporation’s name in a positive light also increases the likelihood of forming a stronger relationship with a company. Positive PR for a company (by a nonprofit organization) is a huge key for ensuring future collaboration.

Event Recognition

This is another easy way to recognize some of the major community players in the matching gift arena. Even if these companies are not sponsoring your charitable event, just mentioning the impact they are having on the work you do (without outshining the actual corporate sponsors, of course) is going to make a difference. Every company wants a positive image in the community because this increases their like-ability, and therefore their success. When your nonprofit organization is a key factor in increasing their success, the bond between the two will be stronger than ever.

Creating a Stronger Relationship

The above suggestions are just a few extra ways to say thanks to the corporations who have a strong commitment to matching gift donations. When a company sees the effort your nonprofit organization is putting forth to thank them for their generosity, it increases the chances of future giving, whether it’s with more matching gifts, grants, or even some form of sponsorship.

Make sure you’re saying thank you – it really can make all the difference!