Matching reward packages are a superb means for nonprofits to have interaction supporters, double donations, and leverage company companions. Nevertheless, a major lack of understanding might be holding your group again. And that’s the place advertising and marketing matching presents is available in!
From the donor’s perspective, submitting matching presents is a fast and straightforward course of. To your nonprofit group, advertising and marketing matching presents doesn’t need to be tough, both.
On this information, we’ll break it down as successfully as doable by overlaying the next subjects:
Your donors like to assist your trigger. And matching presents are one other highly effective means that they’ll achieve this!
Strategically incorporating company giving into your outreach will put you on the trail to reaching (and surpassing) your fundraising objectives. Let’s get began.
The Fundamentals: What Is Matching Present Advertising and marketing?
Matching reward advertising and marketing is the method a nonprofit or different fundraising establishment takes to proactively promote company or worker matching reward packages to its supporters.
This typically entails driving consciousness of program availability within the first place, reminding donors of their eligibility, and inspiring qualifying people to finish their finish of the matching reward course of.
When performed effectively, advertising and marketing matching presents permits donors—and the charitable causes they assist—to maximise the impression of their {dollars}.
The Worth of Successfully Advertising and marketing Matching Items
Mission-driven organizations want each greenback they’ll get to be able to fund their programming and day-to-day operations. Fortunately, matching presents are an efficient option to enhance a company’s income with out asking an excessive amount of of particular person donors.
As a nonprofit skilled, strategically selling these philanthropic alternatives can considerably enhance your group’s fundraising potential. Simply take into consideration what you could possibly do with double the funding.
In any case, the commonest motive why donors don’t submit match requests is that they don’t know their employer presents such a program. Latest research even estimate that…
- Over 26 million people work for firms with matching reward packages.
- Greater than 78% of match-eligible donors have by no means been made conscious of the chance by their employers.
- An extra 16% know their firm matches however are not sure in the event that they qualify or the right way to submit a request.
This ends in solely an estimated 10% of eligible donors in the end happening to finish the matching reward course of on behalf of the organizations to which they provide. And it’s a number one explanation for the funding hole we see every year—with $4 to $7 billion in matching reward funds going unclaimed on an annual foundation.
Advertising and marketing matching presents is a direct resolution to this important downside.
Plus, selling matching reward alternatives in donor outreach has even been recognized to lead to elevated particular person giving, as effectively! 84% of donors say they’re extra prone to donate if a match is obtainable, and 1 in 3 donors point out they’d give a bigger reward if matching is utilized.
So not solely do matching reward packages double donations, however additionally they encourage donors to extend their authentic reward—making the matched reward bigger, too!
Greatest Practices for Profitable Matching Present Advertising and marketing
Advertising and marketing matching presents is an funding, however sensible practices can permit your group to maximise its ROI. Profit from your efforts by implementing these tried-and-true suggestions and methods!
Prepare your inner group.
A nonprofit’s inner group needs to be a few of the group’s Most worthy matching reward champions. That mentioned, for those who’re seeking to enhance your advertising and marketing outcomes, it’s necessary to make sure that your personal group of paid employees and volunteers is in control beforehand.
Particularly, we advocate forming a devoted office giving group made up of members from advertising and marketing, volunteer, and different key departments.
This group will deal with and streamline particular roles within the matching reward course of—akin to managing CSR vendor portals, verifying donations, and extra. To not point out, you’ll all the time have somebody to reply donors’ questions on how or why matching presents matter and the right way to become involved.
Take into account your timing.
Matchable donations have lifespans, so it’s necessary to advertise matching presents to eligible donors earlier than the clock runs. A supporter can’t donate one 12 months and submit an identical reward request for that donation a couple of years down the road, which suggests the cadence of your messaging is essential.
For one of the best outcomes, we advocate sending your first matching reward promotions within the first 24 hours after a person donates to your trigger. This lets you re-engage supporters whereas your mission—and their latest donation—continues to be on the forefront of their minds and giving momentum stays excessive.
(Trace: automation software program that integrates together with your fundraising instruments can make sure you gained’t let any potential matches slip by way of the cracks—however extra on that later!)
One other well-liked possibility entails sending year-end matching appeals, which remind donors of impending company deadlines because the calendar 12 months involves a detailed. This time of 12 months, also called the giving season, tends to see elevated generosity anyway. So it’s the proper probability to ought to ramp up your promotions to new and unclaimed matching reward donors in regards to the alternatives—and the urgency—at stake.
Leverage multimedia parts.
It’s necessary to make your matching reward advertising and marketing efforts stand out to your viewers, and multimedia parts could be an effective way to take action. By incorporating photographs, graphics, movies, and extra associated to matching presents, you may extra successfully seize and retain your supporters’ consideration!
Make use of an omnichannel advertising and marketing technique.
Impactful matching reward advertising and marketing depends on a well-thought-out promotional plan. Usually, using a single outreach tactic isn’t sufficient.
As an alternative, omnichannel promotions empower your group to successfully break by way of the advertising and marketing muddle and strengthen connections together with your viewers. The extra acquainted your viewers is with the idea and availability of company matching presents, the extra possible they’re to partake. And the upper the income you may anticipate to see!
Key Matching Present Advertising and marketing Channels for Nonprofits
Talking of omni- (or multi-) channel advertising and marketing, how do you have to decide which mediums to make use of in your technique?
We’ve outlined the commonest channels—which embrace a company’s e mail, social media, on-line presence, SMS messaging, and unsolicited mail—beneath.
Electronic mail
Electronic mail outreach is an important part of on-line fundraising. To not point out, it’s considerably decrease value than its unsolicited mail counterpart and presents further advantages when it comes to sustainability as effectively.
Plus, it’s a flexible medium with a number of methods to have interaction supporters. These embrace:
Digital Newsletters
With sufficient house to include a fast blurb or perhaps a full article, digital newsletters are an ideal place to coach donors about matching presents. You would possibly even ship a quarterly biannual version devoted solely to matching presents!
Acknowledgment Emails
When your nonprofit receives a present, it’s best to all the time say thanks. And greater than possible, you may have some type of automated system in place to set off emailed donation receipts. So use these messages as a option to promote matching presents! Latest donations are recent on donors’ minds, and somewhat nudge saying that they’ll double their donations with out shelling out one other cent can go a great distance.
Devoted Match Emails
Sadly, many donors merely skim and discard (or simply discard) acknowledgment emails. That’s why you’ll wish to ship a follow-up e mail only for matching reward data to ensure it will get by way of. And these could be focused for every donor, offering company-specific particulars relating to the following steps and submission kinds, too!
Electronic mail Signatures
Likelihood is that your group sends a ton of emails. Once you incorporate matching presents in your e mail signatures, each message is an opportunity to advertise the chance. All you want is an easy blurb or a graphic (branded to your group!) about company giving. This will enhance consciousness and be the wanted push for donors to be taught extra or submit their matches.
The underside line is that whether or not you market matching presents in your e mail signatures, newsletters, acknowledgments, or separate match-specific messages, e mail permits you to showcase matching presents in a distinguished means.
Social media
Social media platforms like Fb, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are being more and more utilized by nonprofit groups to unfold their messages to wide-reaching audiences. These websites have turn into highly effective instruments for fundraising pushes and engagement alternatives—which suggests sharing matching reward data needs to be a no brainer.
In an effort to greatest attraction to your followers and encourage motion, it’s necessary to maintain up with present tendencies and practices. For instance, we advocate incorporating eye-catching graphics with brief and candy captions, hashtags, and extra.
Simply make sure to embrace hyperlinks to further sources—akin to your web site—the place donors can take a deeper dive into the subject!
Web site
Your nonprofit’s web site is the centralized hub for all data relating to your trigger and the right way to become involved. Unsurprisingly, it’s additionally an ideal place to market income alternatives like matching presents.
And there are a couple of key ways in which we advocate doing so.
Devoted Matching Present Web page
A devoted matching reward web page in your group’s web site could be a superb house to overview the matching reward alternative and a donor’s position inside it. The purpose is to present donors a centralized useful resource to study matching presents and to be spurred into related motion.
Take into account incorporating further particulars akin to inspirational matching reward statistics or annual matching reward figures. In case you subscribe to an identical reward service like Double the Donation, embrace your matching reward firm search software on this web page, too.
Enjoyable reality! 93% of the main peer-to-peer nonprofits host a devoted matching reward web page on their web sites and/or occasion pages.
Methods to Give Web page
Greater than possible, you have already got a Methods to Give web page in your group’s web site. As this is a perfect house for supporters to study all of their donation choices to your nonprofit, it’s necessary so as to add matching presents to the record.
This will incorporate a fast matching reward blurb that hyperlinks to your extra built-out match web page for added data. Relying on how your Methods to Give web page is structured, you would possibly even have the ability to embed your matching reward software right here as effectively!
Navigation Bar
When you’ve developed in-depth matching reward web site content material, ensure it’s straightforward to search out out of your web site’s house web page. Our suggestion? Add your matching reward web page to your web site’s navigation bar!
Incorporating a hyperlink to your matching reward web page in your main website menu (or a drop-down “Giving” submenu) permits donors to intuitively uncover the chance. If a person browses your web site and has by no means heard of company philanthropy, merely seeing there’s a web page about it could actually spark curiosity.
Blogs
Does your group host weblog content material in your web site relating to organizational updates, fundraising wins and efforts, and extra? In that case, make sure to share an article or two devoted to matching reward alternatives!
Weblog posts are an effective way to start out the dialog about company giving whereas additionally evoking emotion in readers. For instance, you would possibly display the significance of matching presents by way of tangible impression tales whereas educating your viewers about the right way to submit the required kinds.
Double the Donation even presents prewritten matching reward articles that you need to use to get began!
Donation Course of
The perfect time to advertise matching presents is when your donors are actively supporting your group. There’s no time like the current, and persons are already in a giving temper. Why not inform them about how they can provide twice as a lot?
That’s why advertising and marketing matching presents immediately inside your donation course of is a should. Particularly, your on-line giving web page could be a important software for accumulating employment data—which ought to then inform your customized outreach technique.
All it’s essential do right here is embrace a short point out of matching presents in your donation type. Contextualize your request for employer knowledge as a way of figuring out match eligibility standing. You’ll be able to even say one thing alongside the traces of, “Hold a watch out for added data relating to matching reward alternatives after you submit your reward.”
From there, we additionally advocate highlighting matching presents in your donation affirmation display screen!
With an identical reward software, you may present automated insights based mostly on the employer a donor chosen on the earlier web page. This could embrace firm minimal and most donation quantities, match ratios, qualifying nonprofits, worker varieties, and direct hyperlinks to on-line submission kinds.
On-line Adverts
As a fundraising group, you possible intention to maintain your advertising and marketing prices low, so you could have passed over paid commercial channels altogether. Nevertheless, on-line search advertisements could also be out there to your group without charge by way of in-kind sponsorships like Google’s promoting grant.
The Google Grant gives advert house as much as $10,000 per 30 days to qualifying nonprofits. If eligible, your group can promote your on-line matching reward content material on related search engine outcomes pages totally free!
This can be a nice option to enhance your mission’s visibility to a wider viewers, inspiring new and current donors alike to assist your trigger by way of matching presents and extra.
Textual content message
SMS textual content messaging is an underrated type of outreach that may produce large outcomes by assembly your supporters the place they’re—on their cell gadgets! Thus, it is smart that it may be a key part of a well-rounded matching reward digital advertising and marketing technique.
We advocate utilizing customized texts as a option to nudge match-eligible donors towards submitting their requests. Nevertheless, you may even ship organization-wide SMS blasts to extend common consciousness of matching presents—and encourage all supporters to look into the chance.
Junk mail
The controversy between paper communications and on-line means has raged on for years. Whereas digital outreach is fast and straightforward, some donors nonetheless choose to remain in contact by way of unsolicited mail. Nonetheless, using each forms of advertising and marketing channels in tandem works greatest.
In case you’re concerned with incorporating bodily mailings in your matching reward advertising and marketing technique, this would possibly embrace a mixture of printed matching reward letters, postcards, paper inserts, newsletters, return envelopes, and extra.
Since unsolicited mail prices can shortly add up, nevertheless, we advocate retaining snail mailings on your highest-value donor segments.
Constructing Out an Impactful Matching Present Advertising and marketing Toolkit
Nearly any trendy advertising and marketing endeavor depends on expertise with which to plan and perform the technique. And oftentimes, the better-equipped the expertise, the higher the outcomes (and the ROI).
The identical is true in relation to selling matching reward alternatives to your viewers. Thus, it’s important that you just empower your group with the correct instruments in your toolkit. Right here’s what we advocate!
A Matching Present Automation Platform
Using devoted matching reward software program opens the door to a mess of impactful advertising and marketing—and income—alternatives.
With Double the Donation’s matching reward platform, you may embed this industry-leading database software immediately in your web site and donation kinds. This fashion, supporters can simply uncover whether or not they qualify for matching and obtain detailed insights relating to their firms’ packages to get began.
Extra particularly, 360MatchPro:
- Mechanically screens for match-eligible donors by way of a number of identification strategies;
- Allows donors to pick out their employer from over 24,000 firms and subsidiaries to uncover qualifying matches;
- Triggers customized advertising and marketing communications, informing supporters of accessible matching reward or volunteer grant alternatives;
- Gives direct hyperlinks to employer-specific matching reward request portals and on-line kinds to simplify the submission course of for donors.
And the outcomes are nice! In truth, latest findings present that leveraging an identical reward automation software like 360MatchPro will increase matching reward income for nonprofits by a mean of 61%.
Get began! Request a demo of the automation platform right here.
Integrable Fundraising Applied sciences
Matching reward software program can go a great distance towards optimizing advertising and marketing efforts and bringing consciousness to donors. But it surely depends on an ecosystem of fundraising expertise integrations to offer a seamless expertise for nonprofits and their donors.
Fortunately, Double the Donation integrates with 90+ of the {industry}’s largest expertise suppliers, empowering organizations to streamline matching presents with ease. These embrace:
- Donation instruments — Integrating matching reward software program together with your donation instruments (together with those who energy your common fundraising kinds and peer-to-peer giving pages) permits you to incorporate an organization search software immediately throughout the giving course of. From there, you may gather invaluable donor employment data and encourage actionable subsequent steps out of your affirmation display screen and follow-up emails!
- CRMs — Once you join your matching reward software together with your group’s constituent administration system, you may allow your software program to display screen incoming information for match-eligible donors. As soon as supporters are marked as possible qualifying for company matching, the expertise can set off customized and automatic outreach that goals to extend consciousness of match alternatives and drive extra out there matches to completion.
- CSR platforms — In case your matching reward platform integrates with CSR (or company social accountability) instruments, you may profit from tighter relationships with the businesses supporting your group. For instance, Double the Donation’s auto-submission capabilities allow qualifying donors to submit their matches in seconds immediately from a company’s giving expertise.
? Get began by looking out our native integrations right here.
Bonus! How Corporations Can Market Matching Items to Staff
Tons of firms provide matching reward packages, however the extent to which they promote the alternatives to their staff can range drastically. In truth, the aforementioned research point out that solely 19% of firms embrace substantial data relating to matching reward packages of their simply accessible employee-facing supplies.
That’s why increasingly nonprofits are taking a proactive strategy to matching reward promotions. It additionally means there’s a major alternative for firms to ramp up their inner advertising and marketing of the packages amongst staff.
This may be performed in a wide range of methods, akin to:
- Worker handbooks — An organization’s worker handbook is a superb place to retailer the small print of its matching reward program, together with an official matching reward coverage (just like the one outlined in this free template!).
- Teamwide communications — Inside communication channels, akin to e mail blasts or newsletters, provide an important alternative to advertise matching presents and supply related updates on modifications or developments.
- Firm web sites — Sharing company giving data on a enterprise’s web site is a straightforward option to promote the chance to qualifying staff. Plus, it could actually define the choices for different stakeholders—together with traders, shoppers, nonprofit companions, and extra.
- Onboarding supplies — Together with details about an identical reward program in new worker orientation supplies helps make sure that staff are conscious of this system from the beginning.
- Office incentives — Leveraging recognition or distinctive rewards for taking part in matching presents may also help promote this system and encourage staff to become involved by giving again to their communities.
Matching reward firms get the highest return on their funding when staff take advantage of out there programming. In the end, elevated advertising and marketing efforts by firms, along with nonprofit advertising and marketing pushes, are prone to lead to strengthened philanthropic partnerships that profit all events concerned.
Wrapping Up
All in all, advertising and marketing matching presents entails utilizing a wide range of promotional and engagement methods to extend consciousness relating to the chance and in the end drive extra matches to completion.
Efficient advertising and marketing entails a multifaceted strategy—so get began implementing these methods in your fundraising technique as quickly as doable. It’ll be a win-win on your group, its donors, the businesses supporting your efforts, your mission beneficiaries, and extra.
In your mark(eting)…get set…go!
Fascinated about studying extra about advertising and marketing matching presents to your viewers? Take a look at our beneficial additional studying:
