Matched Giving is when a partner, sponsor or charity itself, decides to match donors' donations by a set multiplier. For example, if I donated $10 to a fundraiser's page, it would be matched with another $10 donation. Therefore, the fundraiser receives $20 in donations to their page.
Matched Giving creates a real excitement around donating. Charities can set an amount to be matched and either a set timeframe for it to run or until the funds run out. Due to donors and fundraisers seeing their efforts matched in real time, Matched Giving days are extremely popular and successful.
Matched Giving is a great way to increase donations by tapping into the FOMO when applying it to Peer 2 Peer campaigns.
This article explains how to enable and use Matched Giving across different fundraising areas of your site.
Covered in this article:
The very first step in adding matched giving to your site is to create a matched giver. Adding a matched giver allows you to set up some basic rules around things like:
Open the Matched Giving module listed under Fundraising and click the New Matched Giver option.
Enter your matched giver’s name and then update the rest of the settings:
This allows you to specify the max amount that the matched giver will donate. When this amount has been reached the Matched Giving option will not appear on the page.
We recommend setting this to 90% of what you have available to allow for an influx of donations towards the end of your campaign and avoid going over your allocated amount to match.
More donations can be matched if required afterward by completing an offline donation import.
This allows you to control the level of matching. 1x means that for every $1 donated the matched giver will donate $1 also. This can be increased to 2x, 3x, 4x, etc so that for example with 2x matched giving, the matched giver will donate $2 for every $1 donated.
This allows you to set the maximum amount that is matched per donation. This setting is optional but allows you to prevent a large donor from taking up a large portion of your Matched Giving allowance.
Set the start and expiry dates and times for the matched giving. The start time will dictate when the donations will start to be matched. The expiry date and time will set the end of the Matched Giving if the funds have not already been allocated. Once the status is set to Live, Matched Giving will turn on and off, depending on these start and expiry times.
This allows you to set the donation prefix that gets generated for each matched donation, allowing you to easily recognise which matched giver it belongs to. The original donation being made by the donor will adopt the prefix of the page or event.
For use with Peer 2 Peer-based sponsored donations. This allows you to display a message on fundraisers pages, introducing how Matched Giving works to the potential donor.
Each matched donation will create a matched donation record. If using Matched Giving on an appeals page or on fundraisers pages, then this is where you can specify how each donation tile will look.
These will be used for generating the donation records, allowing you to easily identify matched donations when looking at your Donations module.
For use with Peer 2 Peer based sponsored donations, this allows you to decide on whether the matched donations are to appear on the fundraising pages and if so, with what display details.
The following steps show you how to enable Matched Giving throughout your site once your matched giver(s) have been added.
For matched sponsored donations (donations made to a fundraising page) you can either enable these at platform level, which would then add them to ALL fundraising pages, or you can enable Matched Giving at event level for specific events.
To enable it across your entire site simply navigate to:
Platform Setup > Fundraising options > Matched Giving
For specific events, simply edit the event you want to enable Matched Giving on and choose:
Donation Defaults (in the middle nav) >Matched Giving tab
In both cases, tick the Enable Matched Giving checkbox, choose your matched giver, provide a name to appear as the beneficiary of the matched donations and then tick whether you want the countdown timer to appear on the page. If enabled, the countdown clock will show a countdown timer, counting down to the expiry time and date specified within the Matched Giver settings.
Your event’s fundraising pages should now display the matched giving option similar to below (If the current time is past the set start time).
For donation pages and crowdfunding pages you will see similar options under Donation Settings when editing a page.
For donation pages and crowdfunding, you can hover over the donation section and click to edit. The below options will appear where you can enable Matched Giving, choose the giver, add in the receiver name and add in the countdown.
Each time a donation is “matched” a second donation record is generated using the details provided when creating the matched giver. These will be accessible in the main Donations area and clearly visible due to the name and prefix of the donation records. You can also access all of the matched donations by viewing the matched giver record in the Matched Giving Module.
There may be instances where a donor has missed out on the matched giving timeframe and their donation was not matched. However, you want to manually add a matched donation for their original donation. This can be done individually or in bulk.
To add an individual matched donation, add an offline donation by navigating to:
Donations > +New Donation
Create the donation, and choose who to assign it to. Set the donor name and email to that of your matched giver. (More information on adding offline donations here.)
Once saved, edit the new donation > Donation Details (left hand white nav) > And choose the matched giver from the dropdown > Save
Once saved, this will then take that donation amount from your matched giving pot.
To import multiple matched donations, navigate to:
Donations > Advanced Options > Import Donations
Here you can download a template to populate. As mandatory, you need to add in First name, Last name, Email Address (Use those details of your matched giver), Donation Amount, Receipt Type, Donation Type (Matched).
To ensure you match correctly, you also need to populate the field 'Matched Giver ID' with a number. To get the matched giver ID, navigate to your Matched giving module and click into the matched giver. The URL of the page you are on will be site_url/management/matchedgiving/create?id=1 - this number at the end is the ID number.
Once all the fields are added, you need to upload the file and tick 'Mark as Paid', then Save. This will then import all those donations and take the donation amounts from the matched giver you specified.
Note: When downloading the CSV, do not rename any fields, re-arrange them or delete them. It's fine to have empty fields when importing.
For reporting, matched donations are essentially offline donation records, so whilst these will contribute to your event or appeals total and appear in Donations reports, they will not appear in your Transaction report as no transaction has taken place.
If you’d like further help, please pop in a support ticket from your Funraisin admin, and our team will assist you.
