Beyond the Basics: Creative Matching Gift Campaigns That Work
Matching gifts are already a powerful tool for increasing donations. But what happens when nonprofits and companies move beyond the standard reminders and start getting creative? That’s where the real magic happens.
In this post, we’re diving into smart matching gift campaigns that break the mold and drive real results. From themed giving days to storytelling spotlights and gamified team challenges, these strategies go beyond the basics to spark donor engagement, boost match submissions, and build lasting support.
Specifically, we’ll cover:
- Innovative Matching Gift Campaign Ideas for Nonprofits
- Inspiring Matching Gift Campaign Ideas for Companies
Whether you’re a fundraiser looking for fresh ideas or a business aiming to energize employees around giving, these proven campaigns can help you take your impact to the next level. Feel free to click around to the section that most aligns with your goals and objectives!
Innovative Matching Gift Campaign Ideas for Nonprofits
Do you send matching gift emails to your supporters when they give? These reminders can offer an excellent starting point to your marketing, but there’s even more potential to unlock. By going beyond a simple call to action and incorporating more engaging, educational content into your outreach, you can deepen donor understanding, increase participation, and ultimately drive more matching gift revenue.
In this section, we’ll explore fresh, out-of-the-box campaign ideas designed to capture attention, spark curiosity, and make matching gifts feel like an exciting part of your fundraising.
Matching gift awareness drive
A Matching Gift Awareness Drive is a focused campaign designed to educate your supporters about the power of matching gifts. Many donors are unaware that their employers may offer to double—or even triple—their contributions.
Use this campaign to highlight how simple it is to check eligibility and submit a match request. Incorporate emails, social media posts, donor thank-you pages, and website banners to share facts, FAQs, and impact stats. The goal is to reach as many donors as possible with clear, accessible information that turns untapped matching opportunities into real revenue.
Matching Gift Month
Designated as “Matching Gift Month,” February is a great opportunity to give this important part of your fundraising strategy the attention it deserves. Use the month to run educational campaigns, share donor testimonials, and highlight the matching gift programs of popular employers.
February is ideal—it’s early in the calendar year, donors are thinking about finances and taxes, and it gives your team time to build momentum before year-end campaigns. Consider a themed weekly email series, blog posts, and internal challenges to keep energy high all month long.
Matching Monday
Start each week by spotlighting matching gifts with “Matching Monday“—a recurring campaign you can feature in your newsletters and on social media. Highlight one company with a matching gift program each week, or showcase real donor matches as examples.
This gives you an ongoing, branded opportunity to educate your audience in bite-sized pieces and keep matching gifts top of mind. Bonus: it’s a perfect excuse to thank employers and reinforce your corporate relationships publicly.
Text-to-match campaign
A Text-to-Match campaign makes it easier than ever for supporters to access matching gift information right from their phones. After a donation is made, send an automated SMS message with a link to your matching gift search tool or matching gift forms.
Mobile messaging is direct, immediate, and has a high open rate—perfect for reminding donors to take that extra step. This approach is especially effective for live events, giving days, and peer-to-peer fundraisers where donors are already engaging via mobile.
Matched donor spotlights
Featuring “Matched Donor Spotlights” is a great way to put a human face on matching gifts and drive increased participation with social proof. Share short stories about donors who successfully submitted a match—what inspired their gift, how easy it was to request the match, and the impact it had.
Use blog posts, short videos, social posts, or newsletter features to celebrate these donors and inspire others to follow their lead. This kind of storytelling builds trust, makes the matching process feel more approachable, and reinforces how donors can double their difference.
#MatchingWednesday
The day after a large-scale fundraising campaign like Giving Tuesday is a golden opportunity to follow up with a matching gift push. Branded as #MatchingWednesday, this campaign can help you make the most of the surge in donations from the day before.
Reach out to all Giving Tuesday donors to remind them to submit their match requests—and offer quick, clickable links to do so. Promote the campaign on social media with visuals, short success stories, and employer shout-outs to extend the momentum of Giving Tuesday while amplifying your results.
One-off matching gift fundraiser
Partnering with a company for a one-time, exclusive matching gift fundraiser is a win-win. The business gets to support a cause its employees care about, and your organization benefits from a boost in matched donations. This campaign works especially well when aligned with a shared mission, milestone event, or giving season.
Promote the opportunity through email, landing pages, and employee outreach. Highlight that gifts made during the campaign will be matched—dollar for dollar—for a limited amount of time for added urgency and excitement.
Year-end matching gift campaign
The end of the year is a peak season for generosity, making it the perfect time for a matching gift campaign. Donors are looking to give before the tax deadline, and a reminder that their gift could be matched often leads to increased motivation. Not to mention, many companies establish year-end matching gift deadlines, so the end of the calendar year is a perfect time to encourage completed matches.
For the best results, use countdown timers, bold visuals, and donation impact statements to create urgency. Send targeted follow-up emails encouraging match submissions from all donors who gave during the final months of the year. This is also a great time to spotlight match-eligible employers and promote automation tools to simplify the process.
Matching gift automation
Finally, integrating a platform like Double the Donation or HEPdata is a campaign idea that works behind the scenes but drives powerful results. Matching gift automation identifies eligible donors in real time, prompts them to submit their match, and follows up with them automatically.
Promote your use of automation as a donor benefit—letting them know that the process is fast, easy, and built right into your donation experience. Consider adding a short explainer on your donation form, a blog post about how it works, and email content that encourages donors to take full advantage of it.
Watch the video overview below to learn more:
Inspiring Matching Gift Campaign Ideas for Companies
A well-run matching gift program doesn’t just amplify donations. It strengthens your company culture, boosts employee morale, and reinforces your commitment to social impact. But to truly unlock that potential, companies need more than a policy—they need a plan that inspires action.
Here, we’ll highlight matching gift campaign ideas that go beyond the basics to actively encourage employee participation. These strategies are designed to foster generosity, increase engagement, and help your company make a meaningful difference—all while supporting the causes your team cares about most.
Affinity month matching gifts
Affinity months—such as Black History Month, Pride Month, or Women’s History Month—are powerful opportunities for companies to align their giving with causes that matter to employees. During these months, companies can boost engagement by offering enhanced matching gift benefits, like doubling the match ratio (e.g., 2:1 instead of 1:1) or increasing the maximum match amount for donations made to aligned nonprofits.
This shows support for employee values while driving higher participation in corporate giving programs. Promote the campaign through affinity groups, company newsletters, and internal social platforms to spread the word.
Employee giving challenges
Turn your matching gift program into a fun, team-building experience with an Employee Giving Challenge. Departments, locations, or teams compete to see who can generate the most matching gift activity—whether it’s submitting the highest number of match requests or raising the most funds through eligible donations.
To increase engagement, you can even offer prizes like catered lunches, donation credits to a cause of the winner’s choice, or company swag. These challenges create excitement, foster a spirit of giving, and boost employee giving while increasing the impact of your matching gift program.
Matched donor impact stories
Encourage employees to share their personal stories about making donations and seeing their gifts matched. These Matched Donor Impact Stories can be shared internally via newsletters, internal channels, or intranet features—and externally on company blogs or social media.
Hearing from peers about why they give and how easy the match process was can inspire others to participate. These stories humanize the program, showcase company values in action, and connect the act of giving to real-world impact.
Matching gift milestone celebrations
Celebrating internal milestones—like reaching a certain number of matching gifts or achieving a lofty participation rate—can reinvigorate employee interest and highlight the success of your program.
A milestone celebration might include a company-wide thank-you message, a visual dashboard of impact, a celebratory event, or a feature in the company newsletter. Recognizing collective achievement not only builds pride but reinforces the message that matching gifts are a core part of your company’s culture of generosity.
Giving season match push
The end-of-year giving season is the perfect time for a Matching Gift Push. Many employees donate during November and December for tax reasons and out of holiday generosity, making it the ideal moment to remind them of your matching gift program.
Run a multi-channel campaign (incorporating email, intranet, and manager reminders) encouraging employees to donate early and submit match requests before the year ends. Include deadline reminders, impact stats, and employer match highlights to motivate action before the clock runs out.
Matching gift auto-submission
Our final idea? Streamline the entire giving process with matching gift auto-submission, available through corporate social responsibility vendors integrated with Double the Donation. With auto-submission, employees no longer have to manually fill out submission forms or remember to log into the correct portal. Instead, everything is taken care of immediately after the donation—straight from the organization’s giving page.
This modern upgrade significantly boosts participation by removing barriers and demonstrating your company’s commitment to making giving easy and impactful. For the best results, promote this feature with how-to guides, short videos, and onboarding materials so employees know how to take advantage of it.
Watch the video overview below to learn more:
Final Thoughts & Further Reading
When it comes to matching gifts, creativity pays off—literally. By thinking outside the box and tailoring your campaigns to your audience, you can turn passive interest into meaningful action and significantly increase your fundraising revenue.
Whether you implement one of these ideas or use them as inspiration to build your own, the key is to make matching gifts more visible, accessible, and exciting.
Ready to go beyond the basics? Start experimenting, track your results, and, most importantly, make it easy and engaging for supporters to double their impact. With the right campaign, your matching gift potential is virtually limitless.
Interested in learning even more about corporate gift-matching and beyond? Check out these recommended resources:
- Get to Know the Basics of Corporate Matching Gift Programs. Discover everything you need to know about corporate matching gifts in this complete overview!
- Free Download: The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Matching Gifts. Take a look at our recommended marketing tips and tricks to raise awareness of corporate matching gifts.
- Corporate Giving Programs: The Ultimate Social Impact Guide. Explore broader corporate giving programs—and how your team can get involved—in this guide.
