Portal Management: Matching Gift Portal Vendors
Intro
When the match eligible donor submits their match to their employer, you as the nonprofit will receive either a verification email or non-verification based on the matching gift vendor. Since each matching gift portal has a unique process, it is best to develop a plan of action for your team to consistently check for and verify matching gift funds.
Best Practices:
- We recommend registering with the most common corporate vendors:
- Benevity - Access at https://causes.benevity.org/
- YourCause - Access at https://nonprofit.yourcause.com/login
- CyberGrants - Access at https://impact.cybergrants.com/frontdoor/
- Consistent Log-in Credentials: Using the same email address/username for all portals will help maintain access and prevents the loss of portal access. It also standardizes the matching process and prevents donor confusion.
Note: It is not recommended that your organization repeat passwords for every portal. Rather, consult your organization's password policy. A password vault can be a helpful way to keep track of credentials for multiple portals.
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Master list of portal links: Using an account tracker will further help maintain access to portal accounts. It will also help ensure portals are being checked regularly. Note, your organization can determine active vendors by searching the company in 360MatchPro. This can be done by clicking on the company name in the Donations tab and examining the URL link in the Matching Gift Information section. If the URL contains a partner name (Benevity, YourCause, Brightfunds, CyberGrants, Easy Match, etc.) that will indicate what partner the company uses. See the below images for more information.
- Define ownership for portals: Assign a specific team member to regularly check the portals for matches or match-verification requests. This ensures each portal is being regularly checked.
- Determine a strategy for proactively checking portals: When developing a strategy, it is important to consider: team bandwidth, whether an action is required from your organization (ex: Benevity does, Cybergrants doesn't), companies with high volume (sponsors, partners, etc.), and confirmation deadlines to ensure no gifts are missed.
- Record matches in 360MatchPro: As your organization receives match notifications, update statuses in 360MP. Additionally, you can easily check if matches were initiated but have not been verified within a portal. This gives you the opportunity to follow up on these unreceived disbursements.
- Update donors on the match status (Acknowledgement /Reconciliation): Thank your donors for submitting their match and let them know funds were received. If a match has not been received, follow up with the donor to confirm that the match was properly submitted.
- Educate staff on portals: This will help staff better assist donors and drive more matches to completion.
- Collaborate with vendors: Build relationships with the vendors you use most often. This will make any problem solving easier if issues arise.
Unknown Donor List
There are going to be matches in the portals where it's difficult to locate the original donation. This could be because the donor chose to remain anonymous, or because the donation was made via Facebook.
If your organization is using 360MatchPro to track the status of matches (highly recommended) records that come in offline (i.e. direct mail, etc.) may not reflect an accurate status. As requests are confirmed within the portal, it can be helpful to add records to an unknown donor list if it is not clear where the donation originated. This list can be assigned to a team member who then researches internal systems to attempt to locate the record.
If the donation record is found, the organization can confirm the gift. If the record is not found (or if they determine the gift is ineligible for a match per IRS guidelines), the organization will reject the gift. If rejecting the gift is a mistake, this gives the donor an opportunity to reach out to your organization which can ultimately lead to locating the donation and confirming the request. Or it gives the organization an opportunity to explain why it was rejected. See the below images for more information.
FAQs
Q: What do we, as the nonprofit organization, do if a donor attempts to submit their match, but our nonprofit organization does not appear in the list of organizations presented to the donor?
A: We recommend registering as a nonprofit with the most common corporate vendors to ensure your organization is an approved nonprofit organization that the company will make a match to. Each company has their own guidelines, but a great place to start is to register with the three most common corporate vendors. See below:
- Benevity - Access at https://causes.benevity.org/
- YourCause - Access at https://nonprofit.yourcause.com/login
- CyberGrants - Access at https://impact.cybergrants.com/frontdoor/
Within your 360MatchPro account, you’re able to see which companies your donors have reported they work for through the use of our matching gift tools. We also indicate which vendor that company uses, as well as corporate contact information so you can follow up with the company directly.
Q: How can I track the matching gift funds we receive?
A: Apart from tracking the matching gift funds you receive within your CRM, you can track the matching gift funds your organization is set to receive by using our Promise Creation feature. Some 360MatchPro integrations support the creation of Promise records (sometimes also known as matching gift records) in the partner platform. Click here to learn more about Promise Creation.