Fundraising

Leveraging Matching Grants & Partnerships for #GivingTuesday

December 28, 2022

What if we advised you there was a sure-fire approach to get your supporters enthusiastic about donating to your #GivingTuesday marketing campaign? Excellent news, there’s: matching grants. An identical grant on #GivingTuesday is usually a game-changer on your marketing campaign. However how do you go about getting one? How do they work? Is there a technique to them?

Right here’s the breakdown of how matching grants work, why they’re such nice motivators on your supporters, and easy methods to safe one on your #GivingTuesday marketing campaign.

An identical grant is simply a big donation you leverage as an incentive to usher in different donations. You do this by providing it as a “match,” which implies that any donation can be doubled. The phrases can fluctuate. Mostly, nonprofits provide a 1:1 match, which means that donations are doubled, however the matching grants software on Mightycause permits for all types of matches.

Psychology of Matching Grants

The explanation matching grants are so efficient at motivating individuals to donate is that they’re tailored to enchantment to the psychology of donors:

Creates urgency. By providing the prospect to make their cash go additional for a brief time period, an identical grant might be the tipping level in somebody’s choice to donate proper now.
Makes their cash go additional. On the finish of the day, an identical grant appeals to individuals’s love of a superb deal. It’s a advertising software that makes use of the identical tactic as a “BOGO” or “purchase one, get one” retailer at a retail retailer, giving donors the choice to get (on this case, give) extra for his or her cash.
Creates a transparent, actionable CTA (name to motion). With regards to donating, individuals usually wish to be advised in clear and direct phrases easy methods to assist. With an identical grant, you may have an ideal CTA: Donate now to double your donation!
Empowers donors who give in small quantities. Sadly, some supporters who don’t have a lot to present might choose out of the donation course of altogether. However an identical grant empowers these donors who give in smaller quantities, by giving them the chance to spice up the affect of their donation.

Study Extra Concerning the Matching Grants Device on Mightycause

Mightycause has a strong, easy-to-use software that lets you add your matching grant to your #GivingTuesday web page. Our assist article will stroll you thru including an identical grant and selecting one of the best choices on your grant.

Matching Grants on Mightycause

There are three fundamental steps to securing an identical grant, for #GivingTuesday or any marketing campaign. Prospect, domesticate, ask.

Prospecting Ideas

Have a look at your inside circle first. Earlier than you begin cold-calling and attempting to begin new relationships, take a look at your current supporters. Your Board of Administrators is a wonderful place to begin! Why not ask them to pool collectively their annual donations into an identical grant? Main reward donors and current sponsors are additionally sizzling prospects, as they’ve proven that they assist your trigger in a giant manner. Issues like match swimming pools from engaged volunteers can even work nicely, and it offers your nonprofit’s greatest supporters a brand new and significant approach to assist your work!
Create a listing. A easy spreadsheet organizing your prospects, and protecting observe of your conversations with them, can go a good distance!
Search for three necessary components when researching. If you’re researching your prospects for this 12 months’s #GivingTuesday marketing campaign, you’ll need to search for three necessary components:
- Historical past: Have they given to your group or related charities up to now? Have they got a powerful historical past of philanthropy typically?
- Wealth: Since an identical grant is a big donation, you’ll need to ensure you’re not barking up the mistaken tree (and creating a clumsy scenario for everybody concerned). Is your prospect ready to present a big quantity to your trigger?
- Affinity: Have they got a connection to your trigger? Or do they present an curiosity in related causes?

Cultivation & Relationship Administration Ideas

Meet in individual (if potential). Assembly in individual every time potential is necessary! Organising a gathering over lunch or espresso, or inviting your prospect to your workplace, can assist you construct a stronger private relationship with the individual you’ll be asking. It’ll additionally allow you to learn nonverbal cues about whether or not or not your prospect is excited about your trigger and serving to along with your marketing campaign (which might be a lot more durable to gauge over telephone or e-mail).
Assign one individual to handle the connection. Have one individual at your group be the purpose of contact for every prospect. It will forestall your prospect from feeling passed-around, having to repeat data, and can help you domesticate a powerful private relationship.
Use every assembly & telephone name for discovery. Discover out about your prospect! Study who they’re, what they’re excited about, if there’s a specific facet of your nonprofit’s work that pursuits them, and what appeals to them. It will allow you to finesse your ask!
Preserve it private. Nonprofits don’t domesticate relationships with companies, organizations, or prospects — they domesticate relationships with individuals. So maintain it pleasant and private!
Monitor conversations & outcomes. Use that spreadsheet you created! Log telephone calls, conferences, emails, and every other contact along with your prospect, together with any notes about what was mentioned.

Ideas for Asking

Preserve your ask open. If you go in with a selected quantity or approach to accomplice in thoughts, you might discover that the reply isn’t any. Preserve the dialog open — attempt to let your prospect information the dialog about numbers! And prospects who aren’t in a position to present an identical grant this 12 months could also be open to partnering along with your nonprofit to bolster your #GivingTuesday marketing campaign in different methods (like sharing your marketing campaign, internet hosting a contented hour occasion, and so forth.)
Pitch it as a mutually useful partnership. You’ll have to refer again to what you realized about your prospect by way of analysis and in your conversations with them, however use your information to enchantment to them! For companies, as an example, the promise good publicity for his or her philanthropy is a good way to seal the deal. And for particular person donors and board members, the potential of having the ability to use their donation to usher in new donors and assist construct long-term assist on your work might be interesting.
Don’t activate the stress. Nobody likes to be placed on the spot or pressured! Preserve it pleasant, private and keep away from pressuring your prospect. Even when the reply isn’t any, if the expertise of working with you was a pleasing one, they could be open to supporting you sooner or later!

To ensure that your matching grant to do its job, that you must put it up for sale! Right here’s easy methods to successfully market your matching grant.

E-mail

E-mail is among the greatest drivers of donations on Mightycause, and one of the vital necessary methods you possibly can promote your matching grant. When you may have an identical grant accessible, it must be a centerpiece in your #GivingTuesday e-mail advertising plan.

You must plan a minimum of one e-mail asserting the matching grant, and observe up with reminders in all your emails about your #GivingTuesday marketing campaign. You may also embody it in your month-to-month e-newsletter if you happen to ship one! Repetition will ensure it sticks in individuals’s minds (and provides people in your e-mail record a number of alternatives to be taught in regards to the matching grant, in case they missed an e-mail from you.)

Plan on sending an e-mail reminder when your grant turns into energetic!

In case your grantor desires to be acknowledged, ensure you embody a hyperlink to their enterprise’ web site (if they’ve one) and thank them for generously offering the grant in your emails.

Social Media

You must plan on scheduling the next posts on social media:

Announce the match
Remind your followers in regards to the match (making a graphic or brief video is a good way to seize your followers’ consideration)
Announce when the match begins

Whereas the match is energetic, put up updates on how a lot you’ve raised and the way shut you’re to assembly the match and ensure to say it in each put up with a CTA to donate!

On Your Mightycause Web page

You must promote your matching grant closely in your Mightycause web page! You possibly can observe the steps in this assist article on easy methods to create and add your matching grant so it shows in your web page.

However don’t cease there! You must also point out it in your story (a graphic is a superb, eye-catching manner to attract consideration to your matching grant), together with the beginning and finish dates. In case your grantor is a enterprise or company sponsor, you possibly can embody a brand and hyperlink to their web site.

As soon as the match is met and your marketing campaign is over, shut the loop along with your grantor. Share details about how a lot you raised in whole for the day and whereas the match was energetic, and don’t be afraid to share specifics! Displaying the affect an identical grant had is a good way to encourage a grantor to supply one other sooner or later. Make sure that to tie up any free ends with the grantor shortly, equivalent to offering a letter acknowledging the donation.

Saying Thanks

A speedy, private, and honest thanks is essential in making the expertise of offering an identical grant fulfilling and optimistic on your grantor! So be sure you thank them — publicly and personally. Listed here are some glorious methods to say thanks:

Have your total workers signal a thanks card
Create a brief video along with your workers thanking your grantor for his or her assist (and it doesn’t should be fancy — a video shot on a smartphone is completely nice!)
Thank them on social media and e-mail
Have your Govt Director or Growth Director deal with them to lunch, or a minimum of make a private name to thank them for his or her grant

The “thanks” interval is the start of the stewarding course of along with your donor — and doing it nicely is significant to make sure their ongoing assist.