Should we thank the company that provided the matching gift check or funds?

This article explains that we typically do not recommend thanking the company that provided the matching gift funds.

When a nonprofit receives a matching gift check one of the first things they wonder is whether they should send a thank you or acknowledgement letter to the matching gift company.

At Double the Donation we maintain a database of thousands of companies with employee-matching gift programs and have asked many of the corporate contacts whether they prefer to receive thank-you letters or not.

The overwhelming majority of companies request that nonprofits do not send them thank you or acknowledgment letters.

Many companies with matching gift programs, they're issuing checks to thousands of nonprofits each year. While they understand the reason you'd want to send a thank-you letter, they prefer that you do not for two reasons:

They receive so many thank you letters that they just get thrown out or shoved in a pile with 100 other thank you letters that came in that month
They prefer your organization spend the time and money on activities that further your mission rather than on a thank you letter to them.

Please note: Double the Donation builds and sells fundraising software to nonprofits to help you raise more money from employee matching gift programs. We do not manage the matching gift funds for corporations. You should not be mailing any thank you letters to us.

Many organizations thank their donors for submitting a matching gift request, which we highly encourage! Stewardship can encourage donors to submit matching gift requests again in the future. Learn about how 360MatchPro enables your organization to automatically thank donors for submitting a match request using the Thank You email stream.