Let’s face it: matching gifts have massive potential. Still, turning that potential into consistent, long-term success requires more than just a few one-off campaigns or occasional reminders. If you want to truly maximize your revenue, you need a matching gift strategy that’s sustainable, scalable, and integrated into the core of your fundraising efforts.
That’s where we come in. This post is your no-fluff guide to building a matching gift program that doesn’t just work today but keeps working for you year after year.
We’ll cover:
- Starting With a Solid Matching Gifts Foundation
- Securing Leadership Buy-In for Matching Gifts
- Acquiring Team Member Buy-In for Matching Gifts
- Integrating Matching Into Your Existing Tech Stack
- Automating As Much of the Process as Possible
- Educating and Engaging Your Audience
- Ensuring Your Strategy is Scalable for Long-Term Success
By focusing on long-term infrastructure instead of short-term wins, your organization can unlock the full potential of matching gifts without overwhelming your team. Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to strengthen your existing approach, the following sections will walk you through each building block of a sustainable matching gift strategy.
Let’s start at the foundation: making sure you have the right systems, data, and tools in place to support lasting success.
Starting With a Solid Matching Gifts Foundation
Before you can build a thriving, long-term matching gift strategy, it’s crucial to begin with a solid foundation. Matching gifts are a powerful form of corporate philanthropy, but to unlock their full potential, your organization needs clear internal processes, strong data hygiene, and a commitment to education, both for your team and your donors.
Here’s what you can do to get started.
Understand the Basics of Matching Gifts
A matching gift is a donation made by a company to match an employee’s charitable contribution, often dollar for dollar. Many companies offer matching gifts, but if your organization doesn’t have a system to identify eligible donors or promote these opportunities, you could be leaving significant funding on the table.
The first step is making sure everyone on your team understands what matching gifts are and why they matter.
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Audit Your Current Process
Do you have a system in place to track matching gift opportunities? Are your donation forms optimized to collect employment information?
Take time to audit your current donor journey and identify where matching gift conversations can be naturally inserted—whether that’s through confirmation pages, follow-up emails, or annual campaigns.
Invest in the Right Tools
Technology plays a key role in establishing a strong matching gift foundation. Consider investing in a matching gift automation platform to help identify match-eligible donors, trigger personalized follow-ups, and even submit matching gift requests on behalf of donors.
By taking time to build this foundation, you set your organization up for long-term success. A sustainable matching gift strategy starts with structure—once that’s in place, scaling becomes far more achievable.
Securing Leadership Buy-In for Matching Gifts
One of the most critical—and often overlooked—steps in creating a sustainable matching gift strategy is securing leadership buy-in. Without the support of your executive team, it’s difficult to allocate resources, implement necessary tools, or build a culture that values and promotes matching gifts.
Here’s how to get your leadership on board—and why it matters.
Make the Business Case
Start by framing matching gifts as a strategic opportunity. Matching gifts are essentially “free money” that can significantly increase individual donations with minimal extra effort.
Share data on how much funding your organization may be missing out on, and highlight how even a small investment in tools or staff time can yield a strong return. Metrics speak volumes—especially to decision-makers focused on ROI.
Align With Organizational Goals
Connect matching gift opportunities to your broader development strategy. Whether your organization is focused on diversifying revenue, increasing donor retention, or deepening corporate partnerships, matching gifts can support those goals.
Demonstrate how a strong matching gift program enhances donor engagement and provides new entry points for corporate relationships.
Share Success Stories
Real-world examples help make the concept tangible. If your organization (or a like-minded peer) has seen strong results from matching gifts, showcase those outcomes. Illustrate how a focused effort led to increased revenue, greater donor satisfaction, or a stronger culture of philanthropy.
Success stories help leadership visualize what’s possible.
Position It as a Scalable Solution
Emphasize the sustainability and scalability of matching gifts. Unlike some fundraising strategies that require ongoing, high-touch efforts, a well-built matching gift program can be largely automated. Once systems and messaging are in place, the program can grow with a relatively low lift, making it a smart, long-term investment.
Ask for Specific Support
Leadership buy-in is more than passive agreement; it’s an active endorsement. Clearly articulate what you need from leadership: a budget for software, cross-departmental collaboration, or space in strategic planning conversations. The more specific your ask, the easier it is for leadership to say yes and champion the effort.
With leadership aligned and invested, your matching gift strategy can gain real traction. Their support can unlock funding, drive internal enthusiasm, and help embed matching gifts into the fabric of your fundraising operations.
Acquiring Team Member Buy-In for Matching Gifts
While leadership support sets the tone, your matching gift strategy truly comes to life through the rest of your team. Whether it’s frontline fundraisers, marketing staff, database managers, or volunteers, everyone has a role to play in identifying and encouraging matching gift opportunities.
That’s why acquiring team member buy-in is essential for long-term success. Here are a few things you can do to help!
Explain the “Why” Behind Matching Gifts
Start by helping your team understand the impact matching gifts can have—not just in terms of revenue but in donor engagement and stewardship. When team members grasp that matching gifts can double donations without asking donors for more money, they’re much more likely to prioritize them in their day-to-day work.
Connect Matching Gifts to Their Roles
Each team interacts with donors in different ways. Fundraisers can ask about employer giving during donor conversations. Communications staff can weave reminders into email campaigns and newsletters. Data managers can track employer info in your CRM.
When team members see how matching gifts align with their specific responsibilities, they’re more likely to take ownership.
Provide Tools and Talking Points
Equip your team with simple, repeatable resources. Provide email templates, call scripts, FAQs, and access to matching gift lookup tools. The goal is to remove the guesswork and make it as easy as possible for anyone on your team to mention matching gifts confidently and consistently.
Celebrate Early Wins
Recognition goes a long way. When a team member helps a donor secure a matching gift, celebrate it—publicly if possible. Highlighting these small victories reinforces the behavior and shows that their efforts are making a real difference. Consider tracking and sharing metrics, like total match revenue or number of matching gift submissions, to keep momentum going.
Make It Part of Your Culture
Ultimately, matching gifts should be embedded into your organization’s fundraising culture, not treated as an afterthought. Add matching gift education to new staff onboarding, include it in campaign planning checklists, and bring it up in regular team meetings. The more familiar and routine it becomes, the more naturally it will be integrated into daily work.
With team-wide buy-in, your matching gift strategy gains the consistency and enthusiasm it needs to grow. When everyone sees themselves as part of the effort, matching gifts become a shared opportunity rather than a siloed task.
Integrating Matching Into Your Existing Tech Stack
One of the most innovative ways to scale your matching gift efforts is by integrating them directly into the tools you’re already using. From donation forms to CRMs to peer-to-peer platforms, embedding matching gift functionality across your tech stack ensures that you’re identifying more match-eligible donors and automating the follow-up process—without adding manual work.
Choose the Right Matching Gift Tool
Not all matching gift platforms are created equal. When evaluating tools, prioritize those that integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, especially your donation platform, CRM, and peer-to-peer fundraising software.
Connect the Platform to Your Donation Forms
Your donation form is a high-traffic, high-intent touchpoint, making it a prime location for capturing employer information and prompting donors to check their matching gift eligibility. Look for tools that embed directly into your form and offer real-time search capabilities so donors can take action without leaving the page.
Sync With Your CRM
Integrating matching gift tools with your CRM ensures that donor data stays centralized and actionable. With matching gift status, employer information, and submission progress tracked in your CRM, your team can personalize outreach, report on results, and avoid duplicate efforts. It also opens the door to automated follow-ups and smarter segmentation.
Don’t Overlook Peer-to-Peer and Event Fundraising
Peer-to-peer campaigns, DIY fundraisers, and events are often missed opportunities for matching gifts. Integrating matching capabilities into your peer-to-peer and other event software allows you to prompt both donors and fundraisers to check for match eligibility, turning every participant into a potential matching gift multiplier.
By making matching gifts a natural part of your digital infrastructure, you’ll create a system that scales with your organization. The easier you make it for donors to complete the match process—and for your team to manage it—the more sustainable and impactful your strategy will become.
Automating As Much of the Process as Possible
A sustainable matching gift strategy isn’t just about promotion—it’s about efficiency. The more you can automate, the more you can scale without adding strain to your team.
From collecting employment information to screening for eligibility and sending timely follow-ups, automation is the key to turning matching gifts from a manual lift into a streamlined revenue generator.
For the best results, here’s what you should consider automating:
The Collection of Donor Employment Information
The first (and often most overlooked) step in the matching gift process is capturing employer data. By embedding an employer search field or dropdown in your online donation forms, you can gather this information directly at the point of giving.
Look for matching gift tools that offer autocomplete search functionality and real-time employer database connections to make this step quick and seamless for donors.
Matching Gift Eligibility Screening
Once you have employment data, the next step is determining whether a donor’s employer offers a matching gift program. Matching gift software can instantly screen employers against a vast corporate database, flagging match-eligible donors as soon as they give. This eliminates the need for manual research and ensures you don’t miss opportunities.
Personalized Follow-Up Outreach
Timing matters when it comes to encouraging donors to complete the match process. Automated follow-up emails, sent within hours or days of the original gift, can prompt donors to take the next step while the donation is still top of mind. Advanced platforms even allow you to personalize these emails with the donor’s employer name, matching gift instructions, and direct links to their company’s submission portal.
Tracking of Submission Status and Outcomes
Some tools can go a step further by tracking the status of matching gift submissions in real time. This allows your team to see which matches are in progress, completed, or need a nudge, without having to manually follow up. This visibility improves reporting accuracy, forecasts incoming revenue, and ensures no potential match falls through the cracks.
All in all, automating these key parts of the process frees your team to focus on higher-value activities, like building relationships, securing major gifts, or developing corporate partnerships. Instead of chasing down donor information or manually sending emails, your staff can work smarter, not harder.
Educating and Engaging Your Audience
Even the most robust matching gift program won’t succeed if your donors don’t know about it or don’t understand how to take advantage of it. That’s why ongoing education and engagement are essential.
By consistently promoting matching gift opportunities across your communication channels, you empower more donors to double their impact with minimal effort. Here’s how you can do so!
Make It a Core Message
Don’t treat matching gifts as a side note—make them part of your core donor messaging. From your website and donation forms to email newsletters and annual reports, regularly remind donors that their employers may match their contributions.
Use Clear, Simple Language
Avoid jargon and keep it straightforward. Many donors have never heard of matching gifts before, so your messaging should emphasize how easy it is: “Did you know your gift could be doubled by your employer at no extra cost to you?”
Simple, benefit-focused language helps demystify the process and encourages participation.
Add Visibility Across Multiple Channels
Promote matching gifts wherever donors engage with you. For the best results, this should include a combination of:
- Donation appeals that showcase matching gifts as a powerful way to double a donation’s initial impact.
- Thank-you emails with employer search tools or direct links to matching gift info.
- Social media posts highlighting matching gift success stories or company partners.
- Website pages dedicated to explaining the matching process and how users can check their eligibility.
- Printed materials like direct mail and event signage, especially for donor-centric campaigns.
The bottom line is this: the more often a donor sees information about matching gift opportunities, the more likely they are to act on it when the time comes.
Share Stories and Results
Donors are more likely to engage when they see real impact. Share testimonials from donors who successfully submitted matching gifts or show how matched donations helped fund a specific project.
Real-life examples create trust and demonstrate that the effort is worth it for a match.
Make the Process Easy
The more friction you remove from the process, the more likely donors will complete a match. Include step-by-step instructions, a searchable employer database, and support contact information for the best results.
After all, a donor may want to submit a match but get stuck—your job is to make sure they don’t give up.
By making matching gifts a consistent and compelling part of your donor engagement strategy, you’ll unlock more funding, deepen donor loyalty, and reinforce the idea that every gift, no matter the size, can go even further.
Ensuring Your Strategy is Scalable for Long-Term Success
Creating a matching gift program that works today is important, but building one that can grow with your organization is what ultimately sets you up for long-term success. A scalable strategy allows you to expand your reach, increase your revenue, and adapt to evolving donor behavior without constantly reinventing the wheel.
Check out these tips to do so:
Lean on Data and Reporting
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Use your CRM and matching gift tools to track key metrics like match-eligible donors, follow-up rates, match completions, and revenue generated.
Establish regular reporting routines so you can identify trends, spot gaps, and continue to refine your strategy over time.
Future-Proof Your Tech Stack
Choose tools and platforms that can grow with you. Whether it’s a CRM that supports deeper automation or a matching gift plugin that integrates with peer-to-peer fundraising and events, your tech should be flexible enough to support expansion without requiring major overhauls down the line.
Keep Donor Experience Front and Center
As you scale, never lose sight of the donor journey. A scalable program should still feel personal and easy to navigate.
Continue to test messaging, optimize your touchpoints, and gather donor feedback to ensure the matching gift experience remains frictionless as your volume grows.
Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration
Sustainable success depends on collaboration across departments—development, marketing, IT, and leadership. Make matching gifts part of organization-wide planning, campaigns, and conversations. When everyone understands how they contribute to the program’s growth, scalability becomes a shared goal.
Revisit and Refresh Regularly
Scalability isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it” exercise. Periodically assess your strategy to ensure it’s keeping pace with new opportunities, technologies, and donor expectations. A regular review cycle helps you stay agile and ready for whatever comes next.
By laying the groundwork for scale, you position your matching gift strategy not just as a short-term revenue boost but as a lasting tool for fundraising growth. With the right systems, tools, and mindset, your organization can continue to capture more matching gift dollars year after year.
Final Thoughts & Further Reading
Matching gifts aren’t just an add-on; they’re a powerful part of a well-rounded fundraising strategy when treated with intention. By laying the groundwork now, you’ll create a program that delivers real impact for your team, your donors, and your mission.
Sustainability in matching gift fundraising isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing things smarter and more consistently. With the right infrastructure, automation, and internal alignment, you can build a program that grows over time and deepens your relationship with donors.
Ready to commit to a matching gift strategy that lasts? The long-term payoff is well worth the effort.
Keep learning! Check out these additional recommended resources to grow your knowledge on matching gifts, corporate giving, and more:
