How to Set Up a Nonprofit Challenge Match: Best Practices, Strategy and Timing

One of the most widely known matching opportunities for nonprofits is campaigns where an individual donor puts up a match. Often, the donor will set the match gifts made up to a certain dollar amount or within a certain time frame.

In recent years, prominent matches have included Mike Bloomberg’s match following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, and Melinda French Gates’ $1 million match split between two nonprofits for GivingTuesday 2024.

“There's quite a bit of psychology behind matching,” Pooya Pourak, co-founder and CEO of MatchNice, said. “I think a matching gift from a prominent donor signals to others that a nonprofit is trustworthy and an impactful organization, and that you have a strong supporter base to create bigger impact.”

While these gifts can have incredible impact, it can be difficult for nonprofits to figure out where to start. Here are some insights to guide your nonprofit through the process.

Find Donors to Put Up a Match

One of the biggest challenges nonprofits have with social donation matching is finding someone who will put up a match, according to MatchNice’s internal data. Pourak said one of the easiest places to look is your existing community.

“The easy thing there is, look at your existing donor base and be like, ‘Hey, [this person] gives us $50,000 every year on this month. Can we ask her to put up $25,000 of that this year as a match?’” Pourak said.

Susan G. Komen will sometimes seek out donors to put up a match, but tapping the current donor database is often what happens.

“I would say probably the majority [of matching campaigns] is we have some partners who have enjoyed being partners with us who are long-time partners, and so we’re fortunate in that they want to continue to do them year after year,” Melody Conley, vice president of integrated marketing at Susan G. Komen, said.

This doesn’t have to be limited to major donors, either. Pourak said mid-level donors are also prime prospects for a matching campaign.

“This is like you crowdfunding a match from, let's say, 50 $100 donors could put up a collective $5,000 match,” Pourak said.

In the same vein, Komen’s board of directors regularly comes together at year-end to put forward a match.

“Having our leadership come together and fund a match pool isn't as traditional as maybe having a single match partner, but it works and they all commit to it early,” Trish Davis, vice president of major gifts and planned giving at Susan G. Komen, said. “… We've had the board help with videos to help share it and amplify that, so that it's coming directly from them — and also having the board help with videos to thank donors who participate in the match, because it is them putting their personal dollars forward to match those gifts.”

Set Up a Nonprofit Challenge Match the Right Way

One of the biggest challenges nonprofits face when it comes to major donor matching campaigns is getting them set up correctly.

“We have research that shows that like 55% of nonprofits don't believe that matches are truly contingent on donations, and 70% of nonprofits believe that they're promoting previously secured funds as matches,” Pourak said.

So, it’s important to be transparent with donors about the nature of the matching campaign — that your nonprofit doesn’t receive the full $5,000 match, for example, if you don’t raise that much from the rest of your donor base.

“And that goes on the other side too, right?” Pourak said. “Like, not only should donors have that visibility, but matchers also deserve that same degree of transparency of, like, how many gifts have they inspired? What was their total impact of their donation? So having those things clearly shown on your website in an automated, real-time way I think is really important.”

Use Challenge Matches Strategically

Matching gift campaigns can have a huge impact on your nonprofit’s bottom line. And it might be tempting to run as many as you can, but this can induce donor fatigue.

“If you constantly have a match that's live, it dilutes the magic of a match, right? People become desensitized to it,” Pourak said. “So, being strategic around matches is really important. At MatchNice, we think of it as maybe it's something that you're doing once a quarter or once every couple of months, depending on the timeline of that match.”

However, this might not be the case for your nonprofit. As Conley explained, Susan G. Komen takes an “always-on” approach to matching campaigns.

“From my perspective, I was always concerned about having an always-on approach to challenges,” she said. “And I think people among our leadership had some concern about always doing that, but the more we tested into it, the more positive we saw. So, it helped to validate that our donors specifically like those match opportunities.”

The key to figuring out whether this works for your organization, she said, is to do thorough testing.

To strengthen the response to a matching campaign, Pourak suggested holding it during an in-person event or an existing major fundraising campaign. This could include campaigns for GivingTuesday or a time of year that’s important to your organization. For example, Pourak said ZERO Prostate Cancer could hold a matching campaign in September, which is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.

“But I think one of the most powerful uses of matches is actually during off-season,” he said. “So, when it's January and February and your major fundraising campaign's kind of done, how are you engaging your donors in those off periods? We're learning from the way that our customers are using matches, it is one of the more powerful ways of keeping donors engaged when it's not that huge awareness month.”

This is true for Susan G. Komen, which ran a successful 5-to-1 matching campaign leading up to the organization’s busy fall season.

“The 5X was done in partnership with a repeat match partner over the summer, and we did it because we tend to see a little bit of a lull in giving during the summertime,” Conley said. “Our peak donation season really starts at the end of September into October — National Breast Cancer Awareness Month — and into the end of the year. They agreed to help extend that so that we could see if that would help boost some of our revenue in a slower period of time.”

Raise Mission Awareness With Challenge Matches

Challenge matches are obviously great for raising more money, but Pourak also sees them as a way to educate donors about your mission. For instance, he mentioned one nonprofit that launched a matching campaign in response to a devastating tornado. That campaign doubled the organization’s donor base in 30 days, Pourak said.

“So, it's also a really great tool to raise donor awareness around what your organization's doing and how you're making an impact,” he said. “It's not just this tool for getting people to give more. It can also be a platform for organizations to educate donors on what it is that the organization is doing, how their mission translates into impact in their communities and what a dollar means in terms of their programs and services.”

Follow Best Practices for Challenge Matches

In terms of best practices for setting up a matching campaign, when setting up a matching campaign, highlight and celebrate the matcher.

“Every time we put in a match campaign, we’re also calling out who the match partner is for a couple of reasons,” Conley said. “It validates that this is a true match offer, and if we have multiple match offers through the year, we want to distinguish the difference between them.”

You’ll also want to give donors a look at where the campaign stands in real time.

“When people donate, they should see how much of that is left and how much time is left for that match to be met,” Pourak said.

Conley emphasized that an omnichannel approach — leveraging direct mail, social media, email and more — is critical. Davis added that Komen will take things a step further, often checking in with mid-level and major donors to make sure they are in the know, too.

“For many of our match campaigns, we’re also sharing that opportunity in more of a one-to-one format and weaving it into language that we’re already using — both to share programmatic work and ask for support,” Davis said. “Sharing the match opportunity can make [a gift] really compelling for that moment in time.”

Perhaps most importantly, don’t forget to tie everything back to your mission.

“We can get so caught up in just the dollars and the progress that it can be easy to forget tying it back to the mission and what it means in terms of overall impact,” Pourak said.

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on gift matching. Read the first part on corporate gift matching here.