Corporate Matching Gifts for Schools: A Beginner's Guide

Familiarize yourself with matching gifts and open the door to doubling your school donations.

Most schools have one or two major fundraisers they host yearly—whether it’s the annual student carnival, an auction for parents, or the holiday cookie dough sale that everyone in the community loves. But what about the months in between? In addition to hosting annual fundraisers, there are ways for schools to bring in plenty of valuable donations no matter what time of year it is.

If you’re looking for a new fundraising idea that provides your school or school group with a boost in donations throughout the year, it’s time to zero in on matching gifts. We’ll break down everything you need to know about this low-effort, high-reward fundraising method, including:

• What Are Corporate Matching Gifts?
• Matching Gift Benefits for Schools
• Eligibility Guidelines to Know
• Promoting Matching Gifts

Familiarizing yourself with matching gifts opens the door to doubling or even tripling donations for your school. Let’s dive in so you can start leveraging this impactful fundraising idea.

What Are Corporate Matching Gifts?

Double the Donation defines corporate matching gifts as “a type of philanthropy in which companies financially match donations that their employees make to nonprofit organizations.” These initiatives are typically part of broader corporate philanthropy programs that aim to engage customers and employees through giving back to the community.

Every company sets its guidelines, but many businesses match gifts to schools, higher education institutions, and nonprofits. So, if any of your school’s donors work for companies with these programs (which is likely!), your school can effectively double its donations.

Here’s how the process typically works:

1. A donor makes a regular donation to your school.
2. The donor finds out if they’re eligible for employer matching gifts or not based on where they work.
3. If eligible, they submit a matching gift request to their employer.
4. Their employer verifies the gift’s eligibility and sends your school an additional donation.

Since the donor is in the driver’s seat here, your school needs to explain the matching gifts, why they should request them, and how to do so. But once they submit a request, all your school has to do is wait for the additional donation to come in!

Matching Gift Benefits for Schools

There are many reasons to learn more about matching gifts and promote them to your donor base. By prioritizing matching gifts in your school’s fundraising activities, you can:

• Raise more for your school at no additional cost to parents and other donors.
• Increase your year-round fundraising potential, even in between fundraisers and over the summer and winter breaks.
• Start building relationships with local businesses, opening the door for potential corporate partnerships and sponsorships in the future.

The best part is that matching gifts don’t just benefit your school—they benefit everyone involved. The companies that give matching donations get reputation boosts from participating in corporate philanthropy, and donors can double their impact on your school without changing their budgets.

Eligibility Guidelines to Know

Are you excited to tap into this fundraising opportunity now that you understand the benefits? Before you dive in, make sure you know the basics of matching gift eligibility guidelines. Since these guidelines vary from company to company, it’s crucial to understand what they mean and which ones your donors need to pay special attention to.

The most important guideline that parents and donors should look for is which type of organizations are eligible for matching gifts. Some companies don’t match to schools or school groups at all, while others may have slightly different rules for donating to schools rather than nonprofits. If a donor requests a match and their employer doesn’t match gifts to schools, the request will get denied.

Along with organization-type guidelines, you should also be familiar with:

• Match ratios: Companies will match gifts at different rates, including 1:1, 2:1, or 0.5:1 ratios. A 1:1 ratio means that if an employee donated $100, their employer would donate an additional $100, totaling $200 for your school. In this scenario, a 2:1 ratio would mean the company donates $200 instead, totaling $300 for your school.
• Minimum/maximum donation sizes: Some companies only match gifts within a specific range, such as $50 up to $1,000. Donors should check that their gift fits within their company’s minimum and maximum before they request a match.
• Employee eligibility rules: Are part-time employees eligible for matching gifts or just full-time workers? What about retired employees or employees’ spouses? Each company should list its eligibility requirements so that employees know.

Altogether, these guidelines may look something like this:

Every company should list these guidelines within its employee handbook, company portal, CSR platform, or another resource. However, these can be difficult for donors to track down, especially if time is an issue.

That’s where matching gift software comes in handy. With this tool, you can access a database of thousands of corporate matching gift programs and their guidelines—and you can make it easy for donors to find the information they need right from your donation page.

Promoting Matching Gifts

Now comes the final and most important aspect of matching gift basics: determining how to promote matching gifts to students’ parents, family members, and other members of your school’s community. You can do this in a variety of ways, but start with these essential strategies:

• Create marketing materials and resources for donors about matching gifts. This might include a page on your school’s website about matching gifts, a series of informational flyers you email parents, or a video on your school’s Facebook page explaining how they work.
• Emphasize the additional impact donors can make. Use fundraiser storytelling strategies to show donors what doubling their regular donations could do for your school. For example, you might explain how requesting a matching gift helped one parent’s donation fund purchase 50 new textbooks instead of 25.
• Incorporate matching gifts into existing campaigns. Matching gifts can also be part of your annual events and fundraisers! Just include a reminder to request a match on any promotional materials or make an announcement about matching gifts at your event.
• Reach out to donors personally after they give. If you know that a donation is eligible for a matching gift (such as if you know the donor works for a company with a robust matching gift program), send them a personal email to let them know about the opportunity, which will encourage them to request a match later if they don’t do so during the donation process.

You can streamline many of these steps by using matching gift software to automate your matching gift communications. That way, you won’t have to remember to manually send a follow-up email each time someone donates without requesting a match. These solutions also help you track matching gift metrics, monitor which requests get completed, and more.

Plus, some platforms even help you drive matches to completion by submitting donors’ requests to their employers for them. re:Charity’s guide to matching gift auto-submission explains that this feature allows donors to request a match by simply entering their corporate email address on your donation page and checking a box!

Don’t forget to thank all the donors who request matches from their employers! Tell them you appreciate them taking extra time to raise more for your school. The more you promote matching gifts and thank those who participate, the faster your school can access the benefits of an ongoing matching gift campaign!

Author Bio

Adam Weinger is the President of Double the Donation, the leading provider of tools to nonprofits to help them raise more money from corporate matching gift and volunteer grant programs.

Double the Donation's robust solution, 360MatchPro, provides nonprofits with automated tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. 360MatchPro integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts.