February is a time to rejoice love and happiness—and matching items. That’s why it’s been dubbed the official Matching Reward Month. This 12 months, we suggest taking the chance to scale up your matching present promotional efforts accordingly.
We’ll cowl every part it is advisable to know to rejoice company giving and drive motion (and matches) this February.
What’s Matching Reward Month?
Matching Reward Month is an annual celebration of company donation-matching, usually used to extend consciousness and utilization of match applications. Held in February annually, Matching Reward, or Match Month, is a chance to acknowledge the affect that company philanthropy choices like matching items and extra can have on nonprofit fundraising teams.
Many mission-focused organizations and colleges take time to raise their matching present fundraising and actually push the initiatives ahead. Should you’re in search of new and thrilling methods to amplify your mission’s efforts, you’ve come to the appropriate place.
Analysis signifies that an estimated $7 billion in matching present income goes unclaimed by qualifying nonprofits and their donors annually. That’s funding that must be going to organizations like yours to help in higher pursuing your trigger. And it’s why we’re sharing seven standout concepts for celebrating Matching Reward Month this 12 months to assist shut the hole.
These embrace:
- Giving your inner staff a refresher course
- Sharing on social media
- Encouraging non-eligible donors to advocate for brand new applications
- Pursuing one-off matching present program alternatives
- Following up on beforehand made donations
- Together with matching items in workers e-mail signatures
- Making matching simple
Able to convey your matching present fundraising to the following degree this month? Let’s bounce in with our high suggestions.
7 Highly effective Methods to Have a good time Matching Reward Month This Yr
These sensible advertising and engagement concepts inhabit a enjoyable sense of novelty this month. However they’re additionally impactful for long-term engagement in your group’s total technique.
For the perfect outcomes, we propose integrating a number of of the next actions—each this month and past.
1. Give your inner staff a refresher course.
Earlier than ramping up your group’s matching present efforts for Match Month, it’s a good suggestion to have a look inward. Hopefully, your inner fundraising staff must be well-versed in matching present data. However maybe you’ve had a number of new staff members be part of since your final group coaching, or perhaps your workers (and volunteers!) may simply use a refresher.
The answer? Begin off Matching Reward Month proper with your individual staff. Take the chance to reiterate the significance of company matching present applications. Present entry to academic sources (tip: we’ve some unbelievable free eBooks, weblog posts, and webinars at Double the Donation). Apply asking frequent matching present questions, guaranteeing that each one people have the information and property to reply them.
With regards to driving matching present income, your inner staff encompasses your best property. Make sure that they’re able to advocate for the alternatives as greatest they’ll!
2. Share on social media.
Your group seemingly has no less than one, however seemingly quite a lot of profiles on well-liked social media websites. Whether or not it’s a Fb web page, an Instagram profile, or perhaps a TikTok account, your strategic net presence can go a good distance towards advertising matching items on-line. And what higher time is there to get began (or elevate your technique) than throughout Matching Reward Month?
Contemplate sharing the next forms of content material in your nonprofit’s social profiles:
Photographs and movies
Social media platforms have gotten more and more visual-focused. If you wish to seize—and preserve—your viewers’s consideration as they scroll via their feeds, analysis signifies that incorporating eye-catching photos and movies is the best way to go. The truth is, research present that image-based social posts obtain 2.3 instances extra engagement than these with out, and posts with video content material can see as much as 10 instances larger engagement ranges.
That stated, Matching Reward Month is an optimum time to provide and share matching present advertising movies and imagery. Or get began with our pre-made social media graphics right here:
Business analysis
Spotlight key statistics that successfully display the potential that company matching brings. Double the Donation has compiled a few of our favourite figures right here, together with an outline of unclaimed funding and a variety of taking part corporations.
Success tales
Use social proof to drive success on social media by sharing tales of earlier matching present successes. This may imply highlighting a complete sum of matching present income (e.g., our group collected greater than $50,000 in matching present funds from donors such as you) or together with particular examples of prior match donors (Sarah from Residence Depot secured a company match on our behalf equaling $5,000, bringing her complete contribution worth to greater than $10,000).
When your followers see the affect that different matching items have had, they’ll be extra prone to take steps to take action themselves.
Affect
Your supporters care in regards to the affect your group (and, by extension, their donations) brings. Reiterate that donation-matching applications allow donors to double their affect with out reaching again into their very own wallets. Should you can put it by way of tangible affect (e.g., feed two shelter cats for the price of one), even higher!
Understand that you’ll wish to hyperlink again to further sources from all your social media posts. If you have already got a built-out matching present net web page (which you need to), contemplate driving visitors to the web page for supporters to be taught extra in regards to the alternative.
You possibly can even add a bit of blurb about Matching Reward Month to your net web page, as Case Western Reserve College has right here:
3. Encourage non-eligible donors to advocate for brand new applications.
Sadly, not all corporations match worker donations (although new applications are added every single day). And a few employers are seemingly thinking about getting began—they could simply want a bit of push to take action.
Fortunately, your present (non-match-eligible) donors will be a few of your greatest champions for uplifting new matching applications. Typically all it takes is an e-mail from a philanthropic worker to get the ball rolling for a brand new company program. And Matching Reward Month will be the right time to start laying a basis.
Contemplate sharing a template like this to offer a baseline for supporters contemplating advocating in your behalf this month:
Topic line: Request for a company matching present program
Hello [manager or HR representative name],
I’m writing to request the addition of a company matching present program at [company name].
1000’s of corporations throughout the globe have established worker matching present applications, agreeing to match items made by their staff to qualifying nonprofit causes with their very own company donations.
That is an especially useful program to host for each celebration concerned—together with the corporate, its staff, and the nonprofits they assist. Should you’d wish to take steps to ascertain an identical present program for the corporate, Double the Donation has offered quite a lot of detailed guides that stroll company leaders via the method.
Thanks on your consideration!
P.S. — February is Nationwide Matching Reward Month, so it’s a good time to get began!
We’ve even written a devoted weblog put up on the subject. Be at liberty to ship this text—The way to Advocate for a Matching Reward Program to Your Employer—to your donors to information them via the method of proposing applications for his or her corporations.
4. Pursue one-off matching present program alternatives.
Most corporations that match worker donations agree to take action to most nonprofit causes. Nonetheless, if a company has an present partnership with a company, they might search a one-off (or distinctive) matching present program that’s unique to the trigger.
In some instances, such a providing will be an ongoing sponsorship alternative. But it surely additionally could also be restricted to a selected time frame—corresponding to Matching Reward Month! Thus, February (and/or the weeks main as much as February) generally is a nice probability to start pursuing such a relationship.
Understand that a one-off match initiative could also be shaped with an organization that doesn’t but provide a whole matching program. (For instance, Carl’s Pc Firm doesn’t have a longtime matching present program however agrees to match donations solely made to Atlanta College.)
Nonetheless, another choice is partnering with an organization that does provide a standard matching present program—however desires to match donations to your group at a better price. (Carl’s Pc Firm matches worker donations to all 501(c)(3) nonprofits at a dollar-for-dollar price and matches items made to Atlanta College at a 2:1 ratio.)
Both kind of program will be useful to your trigger, your donors, and your company companions.
5. Observe up on beforehand made donations.
Your group’s work selling Matching Reward Month may very properly drive quite a lot of new donations—and matches—to your trigger. However one other technique you possibly can make use of includes following up on beforehand made items and inspiring still-eligible donors to submit their requests retroactively.
For instance, Match Month falls only a few weeks after the year-end giving season, when most organizations see elevated giving. Lots of these donations should qualify for company matching, even into the primary few months of the brand new 12 months. The truth is, tons of corporations set beneficiant matching present request deadlines—usually permitting as much as a 12 months after the preliminary donation is made.
Take the chance to remind eligible donors about their employers’ matching present applications and the way they’ll get entangled.
6. Embrace matching items in workers e-mail signatures.
That is maybe our easiest suggestion for celebrating Match Month, however it may be significantly efficient when paired with a few of our different high concepts. We suggest including a fast line mentioning matching present alternatives to all your staff members’ e-mail signatures.
Greater than seemingly, your group sends a ton of emails—from donation appeals to thank-you messages and even nonprofit programming outreach. By incorporating matching items in automated signatures, you need to use every bit of communication together with your trigger as a technique to promote donation-matching.
When you may add a easy blurb beneath a person’s identify and make contact with data, making it stand out can produce nice outcomes. For that purpose, contemplate getting a graphic made and added to every individual’s signature.
You possibly can even use the area to hyperlink to further sources the place recipients can be taught extra.
7. Make matching simple.
Our last thought for celebrating Matching Reward Month is one that may profit your group properly past the 28 (or 29) days of February. Plenty of our earlier suggestions contain elevating consciousness of program alternatives within the first place. Now, we propose going a number of steps additional and driving matches by simplifying the processes concerned.
In spite of everything, donors love matching items. They love getting the chance to multiply their contribution affect. However even your most devoted supporters danger not following via when the method required to take action is simply too difficult or time-consuming.
That’s why we suggest fundraising organizations make use of matching present software program to streamline and simplify the method. For instance, 360MatchPro by Double the Donation empowers nonprofits to:
- Determine eligibility with the business’s most complete database of matching present firm data and corresponding search software;
- Present employer-specific matching present program tips (minimal and most donation quantities, qualifying staff and nonprofit causes, match ratios, and extra) and direct hyperlinks to on-line submission varieties;
- Allow progressive auto-submission capabilities for choose donors, permitting them to finish the match request course of instantly from the group’s giving web page;
- Set off automated and personalised matching present follow-up messaging to remind donors about matching present availability and subsequent steps.
Not solely does this profit your donors by making matching applications extra accessible, but it surely additionally ensures extra back-end effectivity on your inner staff and ends in matching present income development of greater than 61%.
Wrapping Up
Matching items have the potential to raise your group’s fundraising, bringing your total group affect to new heights. This Matching Reward Month celebration generally is a unbelievable alternative to jumpstart or scale up your efforts. But it surely’s definitely not the one time to pursue this funding supply.
As you goal to drive consciousness of—and participation in—the applications this February, do not forget that the worth of a long-term matching present technique can increase your fundraising for the months and years to return. And the guidelines and practices outlined above will help!
Searching for extra useful matching present sources? Take a look at our different advisable weblog posts to proceed studying:
