How should donors submit matching gift requests for multiple recurring donations?
As a nonprofit you'll often face scenarios where a donor signs up for a recurring monthly donation and works for a matching gift company.
In these cases one of three options can occur:
- Donors submit the expected annual total donation for the company to match at the time of initial commitment.
- Donors submit the monthly donation every month.
- Donors wait and submit aggregate donation once per quarter or year, depending on their employer's matching gift guidelines.
The most efficient of the three options is for a donor to aggregate their monthly donations (#3) and submit match requests for donations made over multiple months. It save the donor and nonprofit time.
Alternatively we hear from some nonprofits that they have donors that submit their matches every month (#2) like clockwork. While slightly less efficient for every party, the nonprofit still receives every matching gift check.
Submitting an expected annual total donation to a company to be matched (#1) has challenges. While each company has different guidelines, most companies match actual donations made by employees. They do not typically match amounts pledged, which is what occurs in scenario #1.
How can 360MatchPro by Double the Donation make recurring donation matching easier for your donors?
One strategy that proves effective for many organizations with a large number of recurring donations is to send an email to all of these donors towards the end of the calendar year. The messaging encourages donors to see if their employer will match their donation and submit a match request for all their recurring donations during the calendar year. The timing is important because many corporate matching gift programs' deadlines are in December.
The End of Year email stream in 360MatchPro does this outreach automatically for your organization.
Your organization can also configure 360MatchPro automated outreach to recognize recurring donors and treat them differently throughout the rest of the year. If your organization has a significant percentage of recurring donations, we would recommend reviewing the following settings:
- Email sending limits for recurring donations. Limit the number of emails sent to the same email address within a certain period of days. Used by organizations with many recurring donors to ensure they are delivering the right messaging at the right time, not too much and not too little.
- Related record detection. Recurring donors may not actively select their employer every time they give, especially if their monthly donations are set on an automated schedule. Organizations use this related record detection setting to assign historical employer data to new records, effectively keeping their matching gift eligible donors categorized correctly without the donor needing to do any additional work!
- Repeat Donors report. The Repeat Donors report highlights donors who have previously submitted a matching gift for your organization and now have un-submitted gifts sitting around. Since these donors submitted a gift before, they are highly likely to do so again, especially with a nudge from the organization! When an organization has many recurring donors, this report is essential for targeting matching gift submission messaging where it will be most effective.