DTD Best Practices for 360MatchPro
When your organization is fully set up with 360MatchPro, meaning you have completed the following steps:
1. Integrating your donation platform and/or CRM
2. Enabled the automated outreach: At least 2 emails in the match eligible email stream and 1 email in the unknown company email stream
3. Configured email sending so all of the matching gift emails come from your organization's domain
4. Add our plugin on a dedicated matching gift page on your website
There is an opportunity for you to see much success with 360MatchPro moving forward and see a significant ROI in matching gift revenue in year 1 (20% -50% increase in matching gift revenue). However, this is achieved by following our Best Practices and driving those matches to completion. Below are our 5 Best Practices we highly recommend following to see that significant ROI in matching gift revenue each year:
1. Passing in at least 90% of individual contributions (offline and online donations)
This can be achieved by doing the following:
- Donation form(s) and CRM integrated with 360MatchPro
Staff Time Required: This requires minimal ongoing staff time.
The key is to spend time initially ensuring you’re passing nearly all your donations (90% - 100%) into 360MatchPro, our matching gift tools are integrated into your donation experience, and that your 360MatchPro account is fully set up with our automated, personalized follow-up emails enabled to encourage more donors to submit their matches.
What you need to do for online donation forms: Add our streamlined search tool onto all of your online donation forms
Placing the search tool on your donation form increases the utilization of the tool. When our search tool is on the donation form, donors are 2.5x more likely to use the tool and identify their employer resulting in more donors identifying them as match eligible while giving. We can then provide those donors with the correct matching gift forms in the matching gift email after they give their donation.
Learn more here about the benefits of adding our streamlined search tool on the donation form.
What you need to do for offline donations:
Capturing offline donations gives these donors the opportunity to indicate who their employer is. If the donor is match eligible, 360MatchPro can provide those donors with the correct matching gift form so they can easily initiate their matching gift request.
2. Follow up with Top Opportunities
A Top Opportunity in 360MatchPro is defined as a donation record that is match eligible and there is a form available in our database. You can focus on a subset of these top opportunities within your 360MatchPro by actively reaching out to these donors, ultimately to drive those matches to completion.
Staff-time required: This requires a dedicated person(s) to log into 360MatchPro consistently (monthly/quarterly) to review a subset of Top Opportunities.
Top Opportunities: Within 360MatchPro, the staff person will review Top Opportunities by going to Views --> Top Opportunities. 360MatchPro will provide a list of donors that are match eligible that work for a company with a matching gift form available.
Learn more about Top Opportunities here.
What you need to do for this approach: If your organization has an individual that can log into 360MatchPro consistently on a monthly/quarterly basis
- Follow up with donors that are in the "Waiting for Donor" status. Learn more about statuses here.
- Filter donation amount in descending order and take the Top 10-20 donors to follow up with by emailing those donors as a final reminder and/or calling those donors personally then following up with an email.
- Make sure that there are no more follow-up emails scheduled to be sent to those donors (set the date range to one month prior to the current date).
3. Update donors to "Pending Payment" or "Match Complete"
The nonprofit organization has a dedicated staff person or team that focuses on the consistent follow-up to those donors match identified and tracking the full lifecycle of the matching gift process for their donors. So what is the lifecycle of a matching gift and how does 360MatchPro track that cycle?
The lifecycle of a Matching Gift:
Donor Makes a donation to your organization
Donor initiates matching gift request with their employer
Option A - Non-verification (Benevity, YourCause, Brightfunds)
Option B - Verification (CyberGrants/Easy Match).
The nonprofit receives the matching gift funds
Staff Time Required: This requires a dedicated person or team that logs into 360MatchPro consistently (weekly/monthly) to update statuses in 360MatchPro based on the responses from donors and the correspondence with the matching gift company after the matching gift request is submitted by the donor.
What you need to do for this best practice approach: When the match-eligible donor submits their match to their employer, you as the nonprofit will receive either verification email or non-verification based on the matching gift vendor. If your organization receives a verification email from a vendor like CyberGrants or Easy Match, a team member can change the status of that donor to "Pending Payment". Please keep in mind that not all companies will require verification so the "Pending Payment" isn't often used.
When the nonprofit receives the matching gift funds (typically within 1-3 months), the team member can log in 360MatchPro, search for the donor, and change the status of the donor to "Match Complete." Most of our clients that take this approach, use the "Match Complete" status only when they receive funds.
Want to learn more about donor statuses? View this article here.
Now when you consistently track the lifecycle of a matching gift through 360MatchPro, the statistics in your account will be an accurate representation of the matching gift funds received. See the example that shows a breakdown by status. You can see below that in the past year, the nonprofit organization updated statuses to both "Pending Payment" and "Match Complete."
Learn more about using statistics in 360MatchPro.
This is the only way you can see in 360MatchPro when funds have been received if your organization manually updates the statuses to "Pending Payment" and "Match Complete."
4. Portal Verification
Although 360MatchPro doesn't automatically track when your nonprofit receives matching gift funds, our matching gift software can give you more insight on match-eligible donors and donors that have initiated their matching gift request to their employer. Below is guidance on developing an internal plan on how to handle portal management:
- Consistent Log-in Credentials
- Master list of portal links
- Define ownership for portals
- Determine a strategy for proactive checking portals.
- Record matches in 360MatchPro.
- Update donors on the match status (Acknowledgement /Reconciliation).
- Educate staff on portals.
- Collaborate with vendors
We'd recommend being a registered nonprofit organization with the Top Matching Gift Companies that your donors have identified they work for; you can view this list by going to "Dashboard" --> Top Companies. For each company, we will often provide a link to the corporate vendor used and/or the contact information for the company.
Staff Time Required: This requires a dedicated person or team that logs into your portals consistently (weekly/monthly) to review if any matching gifts are fund in the corporate vendor portal or need your organization's verification.
5. Market Matching Gifts in every fundraising opportunity with your donors.
To spread awareness of matching gifts to your donors, we recommend incorporating matching gifts in all fundraising opportunities. Employing multiple approaches to identifying match-eligible donors results in 77% more identified match-eligible donations. We'd recommend incorporating matching gifts in at least 5 locations throughout your overall fundraising and communication to donors.
Here are some of the recommended locations to market matching gifts
For more examples and marketing resources, log in to your 360MatchPro account and Navigate to Resources --> Marketing Assets (on the left-hand menu).
Additional resources to take advantage of as a 360MatchPro client:
- On-demand Webinar Training
- In-app support articles & training videos
- Comprehensive Knowledge Base