Matching Gift Metrics Nonprofits Should Track

Maximize Matching Gifts
Total Individual Donations
Donations Flagged as Match Eligible
Matching Gifts Submitted
Verified Matching Gifts
Number of Matching Gifts Received

Measure Performance
Matching Gift Percentage
Value of Received Matching Gifts
Percentage Increase due to Matching Gifts

Your nonprofit should definitely be keeping track of the contributions that your donors give as well as the matching gift donations that their employers make. If your organization is simply accepting donations without collecting and analyzing the data, you won’t know which matching gift marketing strategies are working and which ones you should leave by the wayside.

Every organization has a different way of letting their donors know about matching gifts. When your matching gift team or coordinator looks at the data produced by the following metrics, they can determine which of your tactics are producing the best results.

Whether you just started receiving matching gifts or have been promoting them for awhile, your nonprofit can benefit from tracking these eight matching gift metrics.

Metrics to Maximize Matching Gifts

Total Individual Donations

It’s impossible to gauge your matching gift success if you don’t have a good starting point. It would be like constructing a house and forgetting to pour the foundation.

Knowing how many total donations your nonprofit receives on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis will help your organization going forward. When you have a comprehensive indication of what your donation flow is, you’ll be better prepared for measuring your matching gift success.

Matching Gift Metrics - Match Eligible Donors

Percentage of Donations Flagged as Match Eligible

Out of the donations that you’ve already received, you might know who your donors’ employers are based on what type of information you collect during the donation process.

You can use this data to determine which of your donors are eligible to have their donations matched. While it is unlikely that all of your matching-gift-eligible donors are doubling their donations, your nonprofit can benefit by knowing what percentage of your total donations have the potential to have their contributions matched by their employers.

Matching Gift Metrics - Matching Gifts Submitted

Number of Total Matching Gifts Submitted

While you might want to jump right into measuring how many matching gifts your nonprofit receives, it’s worthwhile to look at how many requests your donors are actually submitting.

You might find that you aren’t getting all of the matched donations that your donors are requesting.

This gap may boil down to:

Matching gift deadlines not being met.
The ineligibility of your nonprofit. Some companies have a select group or type of nonprofit that they match donations to.
Any other corporate stipulations.

While your nonprofit can’t do much to shift the matching gift deadlines or rules that companies have set up, knowing how many of your donors are submitting matching gift requests can give you a good idea of how many of them are at least aware that such programs exist.

Matching Gift Metrics - Verified Matches

Number of Verified Matching Gifts

Before your organization has access to the money from a matching gift donation, you must first verify that you have received it.

Once you know how many requests are being made by your donors, you can identify how many of those your nonprofit is actually verifying.

If you are only verifying a portion of the matching gift donations that your donors are submitting, then you could be missing out big time. Keeping track of this metric can be useful for filling in those gaps.

Matching Gift Metrics - Matches Received

Number of Matching Gifts Received

This is one of the most important metrics to keep track of. When your organization has verified the submitted matching gifts from your donors’ employers, you can finally count them as “received matching gifts.”

Tracking this metric over the months and years will help your nonprofit identify what strategies are working and which ones you should tweak.

For instance, if you notice that you receive more matching gifts after your year-end appeals have been made, take a look at the matching gift marketing strategies you used leading up to December 31st. If you aren’t already, implement those tactics for your fundraising all year round for greater matching gift success.

Note

Become a Matching Gift Expert! Grab our Free Ultimate Guide to Matching Gifts.

Metrics to Measure Overall Matching Gift Performance

Matching Gift Percentage

While it’s good to know how many matching gift donations your nonprofit receives, it’s important to put that number into perspective.

Calculating the matching gift percentage is easy. You simply divide the number of matching gifts received by the total number of donations. Multiply by 100 and you’ll have your matching gift percentage!

Knowing the matching gift percentage is equally if not more important than knowing how many matching gifts you received.

Additionally, keeping track of this particular metric over time helps your nonprofit see the growth or decline in your received matching gifts as they relate to your overall fundraising efforts.

Value of Received Matching Gifts

While you’ll already know the number of matching gifts that you’ve received, you’ll need to determine the value of those donations as well.

If you brought in 50 matching gifts but each one was only for $10, you may need to start targeting your larger givers and encourage them to look into matching gift programs.

Percentage Increase due to Matching Gifts

Finally, your nonprofit will want to determine the rate of increase of your individual donations that came about because of matching gifts.

Calculating this particular matching gift metric is helpful in finding out the value of your matching gift donations as they compare to the overall value of all of your contributions.

You simply have to divide the total value of your donations by the value of your received matching gifts to find out the percentage of increase due to matching gifts!