Employees (or volunteers, for that matter) of any nonprofit should believe in their mission wholeheartedly. At the same time, team members across all roles and departments should be encouraged to further their good work in any way they can.

Why else would a person dedicate their life to any profession? Sure, some people might work for money alone, but in the nonprofit sector, the ultimate goal is often not a personal or financial one.

Rather, key objectives include delivering a positive effect on the world by helping solve problems and overcoming community roadblocks. This often involves providing a solution via goods or services where there once was a gap. The problem is that these solutions typically require a decent amount of funding to establish.

If you’re looking for new methods that your organization can use to collect increased funds, matching gifts are one of the best ways to go. And the first logical step in driving matching revenue is beginning with your nonprofit itself⁠—by marketing matching gifts to your internal team.

By incorporating the following matching gift marketing strategies into your overall nonprofit fundraising plan, you can ensure your team is doing the best job possible in acquiring matching gift funds. This should include prioritizing your:

• Internal Awareness of Matching Gifts
• Matching Gift Teams
• Matching Gift Fundraising Plan
• Key Matching Gift Fundraising Metrics

Remember, internal outreach encompasses all areas of your nonprofit’s “behind the scenes” efforts⁠—including paid staff members, volunteer teams, dedicated fundraisers, and so on.

Let’s dive in with key ways to market matching gifts to these critical teams!

Marketing Matching Gifts With Internal Awareness

One of the first steps you’ll want to take in order to market matching gifts to your nonprofit’s internal team is to increase awareness of the opportunities within your organization. Make sure that every team member is familiar with the concepts involved with employee gift-matching so that they can be better prepared to pass on the information to interested supporters.

When your team has a solid foundation of knowledge about matching gifts, your staff and supporters will naturally spread the word about the opportunities. Informing your internal staff about matching gifts reminds them to prioritize and elevate matching gifts every chance they get.

Here are a few best practices to consider when marketing matching gifts by increasing internal awareness:

• Host dedicated training sessions where you inform your nonprofit team about matching gift fundraising.
• Clarify where team members should turn to seek more information about donation-matching⁠—whether that’s a matching gift team leader, additional resources, etc.
• Incorporate matching gift training into your organization’s future onboarding initiatives to ensure new team members are being informed about the opportunities as well.

Internal promotion may be the most essential strategy for promoting matching gifts. Of course, you’ll want your fundraising team to understand and communicate the value of matching gifts. But don’t stop there! Make sure every person within your organization is trained on matching gift fundraising strategies⁠—from the board president to your custodial staff!

This can be as simple as informing your staff about matching gifts at your next organization-wide meeting. Then, implore your team to be mindful of these programs when speaking to both donors and prospects. Once the word about matching gifts is out, it can spread like wildfire from one trusted voice to another.

Marketing Matching Gifts With Matching Gift Teams

Strategies for marketing matching gifts to your internal team typically begins with establishing a dedicated matching gift coordinator and team. Once ready and equipped, these individuals will work to spread the word and prioritize the opportunity for everyone else involved with your nonprofit.

Sure, everyone should have basic knowledge when it comes to corporate gift-matching. But in order to fully implement the funding source in your overall nonprofit fundraising strategy, it’s important to form a dedicated matching gift team that goes above and beyond in pursuit of matching gifts.

Here are a few best practices to consider when marketing matching gifts by forming a matching gifts team:

• Identify a leader of your matching gift fundraising team to ensure matching gifts are promoted to donors and be there to answer questions about matching gifts.
• Pull individuals from your marketing, fundraising, volunteer coordinating, and other relevant departments.
• Make an effort to streamline your matching gift processes and implement a culture of matching gifts.

For the greatest results, a matching gift fundraising team should address specific roles in the matching gift process. This group of dedicated individuals is designed to get all of your matching gift efforts streamlined and bring in more corporate-matched donations than ever before.

Specifically, hiring a matching gift expert (or forming a team of matching gift fundraisers) will ensure that you have a point of contact for everything matching-gift-related. This can lead to better outreach and marketing strategies for matching gifts. There’s a real science to maximizing matching gifts, and it takes foundation in proper execution from a dedicated matching gift team.

Marketing Matching Gifts With A Matching Gift Fundraising Plan

With your matching gift team in place, it’s time to execute your efforts with a detailed fundraising plan. With determination and proper strategy on your side, your organization as a whole can benefit from a substantial increase in doubled donations.

To do so, be sure to first identify to whom you plan on marketing matching gifts⁠—and how you aim to do so. This step also involves determining exactly what information you’d like to share with donors. Consider the following questions:

Do you simply want to inform donors that matching gift programs exist? Shall you educate them on how to get involved? Would you like donors to know how matching gifts provide necessary additional funds for specific mission initiatives? Are you aiming to direct eligible donors directly to their companies’ matching gift program guidelines and instructions?

More than likely, your answer will involve a combination of each key topic. But don’t forget⁠—before you can craft your plan to communicate the above information to donors, you’ll need to ensure your nonprofit team is up to speed as well.

Here are a few best practices to consider when marketing matching gifts to your internal team by developing a detailed matching gift fundraising plan:

• Establish specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals for increasing matching gift awareness and revenue.
• Discuss matching gift opportunities with the tangible mission impacts in mind. Your team members care about your cause and will be increasingly motivated to seek donation matches when they can better visualize what’s at stake.
• Evaluate the most effective marketing opportunities for promoting matching gifts. Prioritize the outreach channels that will best serve your nonprofit (such as direct mail, social media, email, etc.) while keeping in mind that a multi-channel plan is typically the most ideal choice.

When you inform your staff about matching gifts, it essentially launches the domino effect, and, before you know it, soon, word has spread throughout your entire network about the power of matching gifts.

Be sure to articulate that submitting a matching gift will allow people to go the extra mile and do even more for your mission⁠—all without having to reach back into their own wallets. That should be the foundation of your matching gift fundraising plan!

Marketing Matching Gifts With Key Metrics

As you dive into marketing matching gifts to your nonprofit’s team by forming a marketing plan, sharing corporate giving content with donors, and incorporating matching gift training into ongoing staff management, don’t forget to also measure your results.

Here are a few best practices to consider when marketing matching gifts by tracking and recording key fundraising metrics:

• Keep track of the number and value of match-eligible gifts identified.
• Record the number and value of matching gifts received in a certain time period.
• Calculate your organization’s matching gift rate (i.e., the number of matching gifts received divided by the total number of individual donations).
• Make a note of the percentage increase on individual donations (matching gift value divided by the total value of individual donations).

By tracking, recording, and analyzing key fundraising metrics, you can easily evaluate your data. From there, you’ll be able to continuously improve your matching gift promotion strategies both internally and beyond your own team.

Remember⁠—there’s always room for improvement when it comes to optimizing your fundraising efforts. As you learn from past initiatives and aim for increasingly improved results, keep in mind that key updates can be made to better engage with your audience (not to mention your own internal team) at any time.

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Getting your nonprofit’s team on board with matching gifts is an essential prerequisite for effective matching gifts fundraising. Before you can market the opportunity to external supporters, it’s vital that your fundraisers are up to speed with all things matching gifts and ready to communicate the impact and importance of these programs to donors and supporters.

It all starts with marketing matching gifts to your internal team! Be sure to increase awareness of the programs, form a dedicated department devoted to amplifying matching gifts, and track and report key fundraising metrics throughout the process.

Ready to learn more about matching gift opportunities? Read up on these additional resources⁠—and be sure to share your findings with the rest of your internal team:

• Corporate Matching Gift Programs: The Definitive Guide for Growing Your Revenue. This detailed guide shares everything an organization needs to know about corporate gift-matching programs and how to get started with these initiatives⁠—from the basics to advanced techniques and tools to use.
• The Top Nonprofit Fundraising Statistics You Should Know. Browse this list of powerful fundraising statistics on topics such as matching gifts and other corporate giving programs, online fundraising, future trends, and more.
• Corporate Social Responsibility: A Comprehensive Guide. Matching gifts are a form of corporate philanthropy which falls under the corporate social responsibility, or CSR, umbrella. Dive into everything CSR with our guide on the topic!