What does matching donations mean?

Matching donations is a practice used by charities to gamify an annual giving day and motivate their supporters to donate. Match funding utilises large donations made by corporate sponsors or philanthropies who act as “Donor Matchers”. When these generous organisations agree to give large sums of money, it is used to match community donations dollar for dollar.

In some cases, a donor matcher will only agree to give the charity a specified amount if the community collectively donates the same amount. When this happens, the community feels even more urgency to donate during the annual giving day to ensure that the donations are matched and the charity receives the matched amount.

Donations can be matched and multiplied by different amounts depending on how much the donor matchers give. It is up to the charity who is holding an annual giving day to approach potential donor matchers for funds to use in matching. Once they have acquired one or more donor matchers, the charity will hold its “Matched Giving Day” on an online fundraising platform like mycause.com.au, and share the campaign with the community.

An example of a Matched Giving Day is Lighthouse Foundation’s annual 4UP Day. This annual giving day pooled funds from many donor matchers in order to multiply each community donation by four. During the charity’s 2019 giving day all donations were matched four times to raise over $1,227,000 through a multimedia approach, using email, social media and a volunteer phone room to contact all past and potential donors.

Lighthouse Foundation utilised mycause.com.au’s services and advice to hold their matched donation annual giving day and to maximize the amount of community donations they received to the campaign. To learn more about holding a Matched Giving day for your charity go to fundraising.mycause.com.au/matched-giving-day-campaigns

For more details, talk to our team.