Can we exclude individual companies or companies that don't match to our type of nonprofit?

Can we exclude individual companies or companies that don't match to our type of nonprofit?

Our default, which we strongly recommend clients keep, is to display all companies in the search results and allow the donor to read the information in the matching gift and volunteer grant description fields.  
We occasionally hear from nonprofits who get a question or request from a company or donor to clarify that the company does not match to the organization. The proper method to include or exclude individual companies from individual nonprofit organization search results is something we've spent a lot of time and energy discussing.

Our default, which we strongly recommend clients keep, is to display all companies in the search results and allow the donor to read the information in the matching gift and volunteer grant description fields.  

For those of you wondering why, it's a little complicated as there are pros and cons to each approach:
  • If you exclude companies then:
    • You get questions from donors saying "My company offers a matching gift program. Why isn't my company listed?" This creates a bad donor experience and can in theory prevent donors from making their original gift as they start emailing you.
  • If you include all companies then:
    • You occasionally have donors who submit match requests to their employer when they aren't eligible. The benefit is that we've seen companies switch their programs to be more open to better align their giving programs with employees' charitable causes and some of our larger nonprofit clients actually have processes in place to follow up with these companies to say "20 of your employees work with us and want you to support our cause...Have you considered expanding your program guidelines?"
The other complicated piece is that each company creates their own program guidelines and chooses both the information they share with us and how they categorize organizations that they match to. With less than 100% clear guidelines that align across every company and nonprofit we either have to:
  1. Categorize with an eye for being overly broad - This results in donors thinking they may be match eligible when in fact they're not.  (At the end of the day, donors who aren't eligible don't get their donations matched and our nonprofit client raises as much in matching gifts as possible.)
  2. Categorize with an eye for being overly restrictive - This results in donors not realizing they're match eligible when in fact they're not. (At the end of the day, donors who are eligible don't get their donations matched and our nonprofit client raise less money from matching gifts)
With all of our exclusion options we've made the decision to categorize overly broad.

If you really want to exclude a company you can by:
  • Managing your exclusions through your 360MatchPro account
  • Emailing support@doublethedonation.com with an individual company name that you'd like to exclude from your search results and we'll make that change for you.

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