How does Double the Donation work outside of the U.S.?

How does Double the Donation work outside of the U.S.?

While the majority of our clients are in the U.S., Double the Donation has clients across the globe in countries like Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Every company creates its own matching gift guidelines, and Double the Donation presents those guidelines as originally written. Because matching gift programs first developed in the U.S., many of these programs are written in terms of $USD and include American contact information, even when they are presented to employees abroad. However, more and more companies are taking their programs international.

Several international companies clarify in their program guidelines that employees in every region of their business qualify for matching gifts, though the actual matching gift program and contact information is specific to the centralized office in the U.S..

Some examples of such program guidelines:
  • General Electric: “Donations should be made directly to the charity using any currency accepted by the charity. When registering for a match to a non-US charity on the Matching Gifts website, you can indicate what currency was used, and the system will convert the amount to US dollars for matching purposes.”
  • The Moody’s Foundation: “Moody’s Matching Gift program provides a dollar-for-dollar match of the tax-deductible portion of individual gifts made by Moody’s employees in the US, UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Singapore offices up to USD $2,500 to approved eligible organizations that are tax-exempt, nonprofit, or government programs.”
  • Home Depot: This program is written as, “The Home Depot Foundation will match individual associate gifts ranging from $25 to $500 per charity, per year on a dollar-for-dollar basis for full-time and part-time associates.” These guidelines specify that employees in the U.S. and Canada are eligible, though they are only presented in terms of USD.

Some companies based in foreign countries have matching gift guidelines written in terms of their native currency, but they articulate a commitment to matching gifts made in foreign currencies. For example:
  • UBM: “Each staff member is eligible to claim up to £500 (or its equivalent in your local currency) in the calendar year.”

Though international nonprofits are eligible for matching gifts, there is a higher percentage of match-eligible donors in the U.S. than any other market.

Our Database: Our database does include information on international companies, though most of the 20,000+ companies in our database are based in the U.S. because of the abundance of match-eligible donors there.

Our database includes strong coverage of employers in Canada with matching gift programs. However, compared to the U.S. population, a smaller percentage of the Canadian population are working for companies with matching gift programs. An organization with 10,000 U.S. donors will raise much more in matching gifts than an organization with 10,000 international donors.