Author: Katrina

There are many ways to raise money to fund your mission, corporate fundraising is a little known trick. 

Most non-profit organizations have mastered in person fundraising, but many have not maximized corporate fundraising. Of course your giving page has common payment options, but what do you know about matching?

Employer matching is one of the easiest and best methods to increase your donations up to 20% without much effort! Add it now.

$10 Billion in missed opportunities.

Corporate matching programs are giving programs in which the company matches donations made by employees to eligible nonprofit organizations.

There are several reasons as to why donors don’t personally seek to have their donations matched by their employer:

• Employees don’t know about matching programs.
• Employees don’t know how to request a match.
• Employees are busy and forget to complete the process.

Did You Know

Over 65% of fortune 500 companies offer employer matching

but only 1 in 5 employees is aware,

and only 7% actually complete the process!

So what should you do!?

Use matching gift tools to automate the process for you and your donors. The simpler the process for them, the more likely they will complete it. The first step is adding a match search widget on your donation page. By adding this to your donation process, in just a few clicks the donor can double or even triple their donation! The added value of the match will often cause them to donate a larger amount and become a recurring donor!

• Step 1:  have your donor go through the donation process and add an employer search widget to it.
• Step 2: Review your database and verify if their company has a matching program. With this information, you can inform your donor they have the opportunity to double their original donation with a few simple steps (according to their organization’s policy).
• Step 3: Your donor contacts their employer and requests a match. 
• Step 4: The employer reviews the request, and sends you the match.

Of course, having this process automated will reduce the time invested, as well as increase the amount of funding received.

Making things easier for your donor will incentivize them to follow through the process, and also save you time.

Final Tip – Make sure to thank your donors

No one is ever required to donate. When someone does, it means they truly care about your cause, and sending them a thank you message or gift will make the donor feel appreciated and more likely to donate again or share your cause with more people. The reason why donors don’t return is sometimes tied to not feeling appreciated.

Around 13% don’t donate again if they aren’t thanked, and 9% because they forget they ever donated to you in the first place, and both can be solved by just replying “thank you”. A lot of NPOs don’t do this, so go above and beyond to make your donors feel appreciated. They are the ones driving your mission.

About Amply

Amply is an end-to-end employer matching solution for non-profit organizations. Oftentimes this process is left behind due to the time one has to invest, but Amply has automated it and made it customizable to your needs

Schedule a demo here and we’ll talk about what we can offer and what you need in more detail.

Amply, the leading corporate matching provider for non-profits, launched a free version of its popular automated matching solution. Non-profits can get access to the free tool by registering on giveamply.com. The tool helps donors find their employer match policy to raise more for the causes they care about.

“Matching has been broken for decades and we want all nonprofits to take advantage of these corporate fundraising opportunities,” said Neil Shah, co-founder of Amply. “This is our way of giving back to the community with quick and easy tools.”

Since 2010, Amply has raised over $40 million in corporate gifts for their 4,000+ non-profit subscribers. Their tools raise up-to 10% more in online donations while reducing nonprofit staff’s time in managing corporate fundraising.

Here’s how it works–

1. Sign-up at giveamply.com and register your non-profit
2. Select the ‘free’ plan.
3. Use our unique URL for corporate matching or embed on your donation forms. You will also be able to integrate onto your donation forms with our pre-integrated partners.
4. Donors will be able to review instructions for matching and companies will send matching gifts straight to you.

The Amply Widget is free forever and is part of Amply’s 1% profits giveback pledge.

Amply offers advanced paid features such as email customization and white labeling, custom reminders, uploading offline donation, APIs for custom integrations, and analytic reporting for an annual license. See www.giveamply.com for more information or schedule a demo today.

About Amply: Amply was founded in 2010 and is the first fully end-to-end automated matching solution for nonprofits. Over 4,000 nonprofits trust Amply for corporate matching. Amply offers dozens of integration options across all your CRM and donation platforms. Schedule a demo today.

Matching programs make donors feel great about the value they’re offering nonprofits. These programs also enable companies to donate funds in a meaningful way and in support of nonprofit organizations. Everybody wins with matching gifts, but it can be extremely difficult for nonprofits to administer these programs and capitalize on all corporate matching opportunities, leading to missed opportunities. 

The startling reality is that nearly 7 billion in corporate matching dollars are left on the table each year. And from a psychological standpoint, 1 in 3 donors would increase their giving amount if they knew corporate matching applied to their donation.

Amply is pre-integrated with over a dozen donation processing and CRM platforms, so you can centralize all your matching and status data.

To provide additional assistance in maximizing your matching gift donations, we have identified some proven tactics you can use to boost donations that qualify for matching and increase the amount raised. 

1. Educate your donors

First and foremost, nonprofits must educate donors about matching gifts in a clear and concise manner. Donors are busy people. They’re juggling home, business and philanthropy all at once. And they’re probably on your website to just get the job done.

You only have a few seconds to educate your donors about corporate matching programs. Make it clear and concise so that your donors will take advantage of the opportunity. Once they select the option for matching, make the next steps apparent and easy-to-follow to ensure you get those matching funds. Plus, the more obvious you can be about corporate matching and what’s available to the donor, the more likely they’ll be to increase their donation.

Additionally, donors need reminders about matching gifts. Even if donors have given to your organization before, they might not remember to input information for corporate matching. And, if the donor makes an offline gift, they’ll need to provide information about their employer to ensure that gift is matched. 

2. Add company search feature to your website

A simple way to ensure you maximize matching gifts is to have a search feature on your website where donors can input their company name and learn if their donation is eligible for corporate matching.  You should add the is website or a vanity URL to all offline fundraising channels and make it accessible from your homepage.

Using a matching gift widget like Amply can ensure you never miss matching gift opportunities and your donor doesn’t skip over the information because it’s too complicated. By answering just a couple of questions, donors can amplify their gift through corporate matching and your nonprofit can increase online revenue 10-20 percent on average. 

3. Use Amply’s auto-complete forms and instant follow up 

Furthermore, matching gifts must be simple for the donors. If your matching gift process takes additional follow-up after your donor has sent their gift, you’re less likely to collect these funds. You have to make the matching gift process incredibly simple for the donor.

Amply has digitized all paper forms to simplify the form submission process to an easy sign and go system. This way there are fewer boxes a donor has to complete in the form and no additional follow-up is required by you or your donors.

4. Update your profile with matching gift vendors

It is important to build quality relationships with corporate partners. Take the time to update your profile on sites like Guidestar, which companies use to offer giving choices to employees.  Other matching gift vendors like Benevity and YourCause also have a basic profile for your organization.  Make sure you log on to claim your nonprofit and update your profile on those sites. 

Consider adding information about the impact your organization has in the community and why a donor should support your work.  Make a plan to review your profile quarterly, especially for companies you see make up a good portion of your corporate support.

5. Engage your matching gift donors to grow corporate partnerships

Another benefit of corporate matching gifts is that you’ll have more background and information about donors and the places they work. Having employee support is a great first step to getting other support from a company. Using Amply’s Top Company List gives you a personalized quick reference for companies that should become a regular part of your special event and Gala solicitations. Reach out to your donors to help navigate their companies for greater support, such as corporate sponsorships or volunteering opportunities. 

A donor who donates to your cause regularly has a passion for what you do and might be seeking additional ways to get involved. Invite them to an event, rally or volunteer opportunity to learn more about your organization. The more involved they get, the better you can solidify your relationship with them. And once you have a relationship with the individual, you can work to learn more about their corporate social responsibility team to grow closer to the organization as a whole.

6. Plan and grow your fundraising

Finally, it’s important to keep close tabs on corporate matching funds to reduce processing time and offer clarity to your leadership team about what resources you can expect and where there may be opportunities for growth. Connect with your Board members and leadership donors to see where they work and use our corporate databases to inform them of possible matching gift opportunities. The more you know about your donors, the better you can connect them with meaningful ways to give and use matching as a way to “step up a donor” to the next leadership donor level. 

Contact Amply to learn more about how we can help you collect more donations through corporate matching and track every dollar that comes into your organization.