Double or triple the size of your donor’s gift – at their employer’s expense

Imagine Joe Bloggs gives $50 to his favourite charity. Joe works for ABC Company. Joe overhears some colleagues talking about a new program where the human resources department has created an initiative to match all employee contributions to charitable organisations 2 for 1. All Joe has to do it get a form from the intranet, fill it out, and submit it to the charity. Joe takes pride in the fact that he works for ABC Company and ABC Company believes in the charitable involvement of its employees. This has proven to be an all around win – a win for the company, a win for the employees, and an even bigger win for the charity.

Imagine XYZ Charity has done some work on its database and has spent a considerable amount of time tracking where their donors work. The charity has also done some research to learn whether those employers have existing matching gift programs. XYZ Charity proactively reaches out to their donors to seek matching gifts when contributions are made.

You don’t have to imagine. Both scenarios are plausible. Yet, both are not happening at the rate they should. Employee matching gifts have not yet taken off in Asia-Pacific in the way they have in the US or the UK. But, you have a chance to make that happen.

Develop a matching gift program to launch in the New Year. Better yet, get one going before your Christmas appeal by:

• Track employers for all your donors as a relationship in your organisation’s CRM
  • Gain this insight direct from the donor via surveys, conversations and other channels
• Research the employers to determine whether these employers match giving of their staff
  • Learn this information from company websites and from other sources
  • Multi national companies, in particular, tend to match gifts
• Track the matching gift ratio and other details in your CRM
• Add matching gift language to your organisation’s website
  • Check out US charities to see examples
• Add language to your receipts and acknowledgement letters to ask donors whether their employees will match their gift
• Proactively ask about matching gifts in your appeal letters

The above include easy steps to take immediate action.

Together, we can drive change to increase the number of employers matching gifts in Asia Pacific and, at the same time, increase the number of gifts matched!