Everyone loves a bargain. That’s why we so often see commercial advertising that’s entirely focused on low prices. Like Half-Off Sales and Buy One, Get One Free.
A bargain is one of the most dependable ways marketing has to overcome inertia – that sense we often have that we’ll get around to buying that thing eventually. It gives us a reason to do it now.
If only there were such a thing for charitable donations!
Good news: There is something you can do to make a donation into a “bargain.” It’s easy. Anyone can do it. And it works.
It’s a matched giving offer. It’s a deal for donors where someone else will “match” their donation, increasing the impact of what they give. Here’s what a match offer can do for your fundraising:
- It typically drives a big jump in response rate, sometimes as much as 50%.
- Often a higher average gift.
I don’t know of any other simple, straightforward fundraising message that has that much immediate positive impact.
A successful match offer has four elements:
- The granter
A match starts when someone agrees to match the giving of others, usually a large sum meant to challenge other donors. Sometimes it’s a very strict agreement, where the granter tells an organization, “If you raise $10,000 from your donors, I’ll match that amount with another $10,000.”
In its strictest version, the granter will not give their $10,000 if the organization fails to raise $10,000. More commonly, the granter is “challenging” the other donors, and will give their donation either way. In this case, the match is a sort of symbolic challenge, rather than a “raise it or lose it” challenge.
Granters sometimes come from foundations or other institutional funders, but you can raise them from your donors, especially major and mid-value donors. They love being catalysts for other donors. You can go to one large donor, or pool donations from several donors. Board members often love this as a way to give.
The ask to these donors might go like this:
We are asking good friends like you to help launch a new campaign. Your gift, along with the gifts of other generous supporters, will form a matching grant fund. Once this fund is in place, we will challenge other donors to follow your generous lead by offering to match their contributions dollar-for-dollar —out of the fund you help to create.
Then, when you go to your other donors with the match, it starts this way:
- The ShopMart company will match your donation.
- Our Board of Trustees will match your donation.
- Mr and Mrs Jonathan Goodpeople will ….
- A friend who wants to be anonymous ….
- A group of friends who want to be anonymous….
- The Match Fund
That $10,000 we mentioned earlier really matters. It needs to be a specific amount, because it is the “scarcity factor” that helps make a match offer compelling. It implicitly challenges donors to give now — before the Match Fund is “used up.”
You should say this explicitly too: “Give now, while matching funds are still available!”
How much should the fund be? There’s no “too much” for donors. In a way, there’s no “too little” either, but there’s an ethical challenge you should consider: If your campaign is expected to raise more than $100,000 and the fund is $5,000, the vast majority of donors who were motivated by the match won’t be matched! It’s best to have a fund that’s at least in the ballpark of what you’re likely to raise in your match campaign.
- The multiplier
Typically, matches are one-for-one: For every dollar given, the granter gives a dollar. There are several ways of expressing that to donors:
- Every dollar you give will be matched by $1.
- Every dollar becomes $2.
- Double the impact of your giving.
There’s no reason the multiplier has to be one-to-one, though. The granter could give $2 for every dollar. Or three, four, on up. I’ve done matches of 20 to one and higher, and I have some evidence that higher multipliers do even better than the standard one-for-one.
- A deadline
There’s another scarcity factor beyond “donate now while matching funds are available”: a deadline. “Gifts matched until 1 July.” It may seem redundant to have two reasons to hurry up and give – and I’ve seen match appeals do well without a deadline – but the more you can do to help overcome the donor’s inertia, the better off you’ll be.
When you marshal these four elements, you have a match offer.
While a match does so much for your fundraising, it might seem like that’s all you need to do to raise funds: scratch up a match and ask people to give.
Not enough. You’re still raising funds from human donors, and that means you’re asking people to step up and help solve a specific problem. The match just makes their solution more compelling.
As always, make sure you articulate what their gift will do – along with the fact that it will multiply. That is, you still need a fundraising offer – a donor-sized solution to a problem. You:
- Feed twice as many hungry children!
- Double your gift to feed the children!
- Every dollar you give will become $2 worth of lifesaving help!
Trumpet the match everywhere
People don’t read. They skim. So be sure you talk about the match in every possible way. Talk about it over and over in your letter. Every headline should mention it. In direct mail, include lifts that are all about the match. Make it unmissable.
In fact, put it on the outer envelope (or subject line). It’s usually not a great strategy to give away the offer before you’ve had a chance to sell it. But with a match, that doesn’t hold true. You’ll get people reading your message if you tell them their giving can multiply.
Do the math for the donor
An amount of money doubling is about the easiest math possible. My donation of $50 becomes $100 to help. In a match appeal, every time you mention an amount you’re inviting them to give, also tell them what it will be when matched.
Can you overdo match appeals?
Some people think match offers are a non-renewable resource, like fossil fuels. Use it up, and it’s gone. That’s not my experience. Match offers are a very renewable resource. You can keep on using them. I’ve had clients who did match appeals in the mail nearly all the time – 12 or more appeals a year. It doesn’t wear out.
3 ways to muck up a match offer
I’ve done so many match offers through the years; I’ve found just three ways to make it ineffective:
- Make the match multiplier less than two. “Every dollar you give will become $1.50.” It doesn’t work. It’s like you don’t have a match at all.
- Describe the match in a way that sounds more like you mean, “Give twice as much” than “Your gift will double in impact.” Don’t say “Double your donation.” Wrong message!
- Make it confusing. It’s possible to make your language so legalistic and opaque that it loses that simple “bargain” power and becomes a mental puzzle.
Go out there and get some matching funds for your donors!
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Related Blog Posts:
- 11 Ways to Beat the Odds and Raise a Lot of Money
- Matching Gift Appeals: How Many Is Too Many?
- Here’s an Easy Tool that Can Turn You into a Fundraising Genius
