Making the Most of Matches

It pays to remind donors of companies’ programs, charities find

World Vision, an international-relief and development group in Federal Way,

Wash., has seen its employee matching-gift dollars from companies double since it started to promote such donations three years ago.

By encouraging donors, in its fund-raising materials, to “offer hope to more children through matching gifts,” the group saw its revenue from such awards rise to about $350,000 last year, or almost 6 percent of all the money it raised from companies.

The group includes an insert about matching gifts in most of its mailings to donors, lists companies that matched gifts to World Vision in the last year on its Web site, and trains its phone operators to answer questions on the subject. Still, only about 1,000 of the group’s 600,000 donors ask their employers to match gifts, according to Susan Prudente, director of workplace giving.

Her job, Ms. Prudente says, is to persuade donors that going after a company match is worth their time. “It’s one more thing in a busy world, and they’ve already given,” she says. “They need to hear from us about why matching gifts matter.”

Investing in such work may prove well worth the effort, particularly at a time when companies are laying employees off and suffering other economic woes. During uncertain times, say many fund raisers, employee matching-gift programs can provide a stable source of income.

“Most companies don’t want to tinker with the matching-gift program,” says Scott Sheldon, director of development at Arizona State University’s College of Extended Education, in Tempe, who conducted a recent survey on matching gifts received by colleges and universities. “They’d rather cut something else first.”

With matching-gift programs, businesses typically give a nonprofit group the same amount, or more, that an employee has given. In most cases, an employee must fill out forms for the employer and get proof from the charity that the gift was made.

Almost all of the 91 respondents to Mr. Sheldon’s survey of college and university fund raisers said that matching-gift revenue was either stable or increasing compared to last year, despite concerns at some companies about meeting profit projections.

In times when business problems may lead to cuts in companies’ philanthropic giving, many tend to preserve the matching-gift perk for employees. Such donations give workers another reason to feel good about their jobs, even at a time of pressure, and help the company maintain its image as a good corporate citizen.

And when companies are under fire, matching-gift programs are easy to talk about. “We get a lot of bad press for a lot of things,” says Heidi Salstrom, who handles matching gifts at Microsoft Corporation, in Redmond, Wash. “This is one effort,” she says, for which “we have very good numbers to boast about.”

Not Just for Colleges

Though matching gifts were once largely reserved for gifts to colleges and universities, most employers are now willing to match donations to a wide range of causes. For instance, Microsoft initially limited its matching gifts to education groups, but last year it gave $10.4-million in such grants to charities of all types. The only gifts it won’t match are those to charities and projects that are limited to members of one religion.

A survey last year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education of 1,007 companies found that just over half — 51 percent — matched employee gifts to at least one noneducational organization last year. That’s up from 41 percent in 1996.

What’s more, 23 percent of companies surveyed last year said they match gifts to all organizations classified as charities by the Internal Revenue Service, compared with just 13 percent four years earlier.

Mr. Sheldon of Arizona State says that many nonprofit fund raisers fail to take advantage of corporate matching gifts because they assume — wrongly — that their groups would not qualify for a match. “Matching gifts don’t get the recognition they should get,” he says. “If you go out and talk to the average person at a nonprofit, they say ‘We don’t do that because it’s only for higher education.’”

They may be missing out on a lot. The vast majority, 85 percent, of all companies matched cash donations dollar for dollar in 2000, according to the CASE survey. But 11 percent provided $2 for every $1 donated by the employee, and 16 companies reported matches of at least three to one.

Rewarding Volunteer Time

A growing number of companies are also starting to expand their programs to match non-cash employee contributions.

Just over half of the companies in the CASE survey said they will match gifts of stock.

And 6 percent of the companies said they would donate dollars to match the hours employees spend volunteering at charities — the first time this type of matching program was tracked by CASE.

ExxonMobil Corporation, for example, revamped its giving program last year so that it pays $500 to charities for every 20 hours of volunteer work performed by a company employee — up to four times a year for each worker.

The company also offers $500 to help cover the costs of an event coordinated by a team of ExxonMobil employees on behalf of a nonprofit organization.

For example, Melanie Green-Fowler, a full-time mechanical engineer at ExxonMobil’s Beaumont, Tex., oil refinery, has received matches for her work as an adviser to low-income students and her participation in team projects to improve area schools.

Ms. Green-Fowler calls the Volunteer Involvement Program “an added benefit” of working at the company and a huge public-relations plus for ExxonMobil’s Beaumont operation. “Community leaders definitely know that we have a very healthy relationship with them,” she says. “Whenever they need to call on ExxonMobil for volunteers or to provide any sort of services out in the community, they can count on us.”

In all, ExxonMobil spent $2.1-million last year on matching grants for volunteer work, in addition to the $17-million it spent to match financial contributions by employees.

Computerizing the Process

At ExxonMobil, as at more and more businesses, information about the matching-gift program is available on a companywide computer network, and application forms can be downloaded from there.

By eliminating the paperwork, many businesses are trying to make their matching-gift programs more attractive to employees. And, especially at high-technology companies, where computer networks get a lot of use, online information is raising awareness among employees about a perquisite that was often not well known.

HEP Development Services, an Ashburn, Va., consulting company that specializes in collecting data on matching-gift programs for nonprofit fund raisers, has seen a big increase in the number of companies that are putting their matching-gift programs at least partially online. In 1997, none of the 940 parent companies in the organization’s database had information about matching gifts online; today, 152 of the 1,033 parent companies it monitors have at least a portion of their matching-gift programs online.

Many of the companies with online material allow employees to fill out matching-gift forms electronically. The form then gets sent to the charity to verify that the employee has made a contribution, and then back to the company, which mails the charity a check.

In November, HEP Development started offering a software program called E-Matching Gift Donor Link. It helps charities put information on their own Web sites about which businesses will make matching gifts and to which kinds of organizations. Using the software, donors can find out in a minute whether they can obtain a match from their employer, and how their company wants them to do that.

Close to 100 organizations have signed up for the software, which costs $600 or more for the first year, depending on the size of the group.

Fund raisers also have access to matching-gift information from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, which publishes a popular book — “Matching Gift Details” — that describes the programs of more than 7,500 companies. And the organization publishes leaflets on the companies that match gifts to specific causes, like education and social-service groups. It plans to announce Web enhancements to its service soon, according to Charles Lee, vice president of finance and administration.

Still, 79 percent of the respondents to Mr. Sheldon’s survey report that using the Internet to promote matching-gift opportunities has had little or no impact on revenue. “The vision is different from the reality,” he says.

Instead, when they make a concerted attempt to mention matching gifts whenever and wherever possible, nonprofit fund raisers are seeing more results from direct mail and other comparably old-fashioned fund-raising methods.

Such direct appeals may become more necessary to keep matching-gift revenues at current levels if the economy continues to plunge, warn fund raisers. While matching-gift programs may be the last type of corporate philanthropy to suffer cutbacks, they could be reduced or eliminated altogether if conditions get bad enough.

Mr. Sheldon found that 81 percent of the respondents believe that some companies will end or modify their matching-gift programs if the country experiences a prolonged economic downturn. Those that match more than one dollar for every dollar given might decide to make the match less generous.

Nurturing Relationships

At Special Olympics Northern California, in Pleasant Hill, fund raisers are hopeful that relationships they have cultivated with corporations, through event sponsorships and other marketing deals, will help sustain matching-gift programs at those companies even during hard times.

“The same executives who are making the decisions about the matching-gift programs at their corporations are also volunteering and getting involved in our events,” notes Bruce G. Alexander, director of planned giving and major gifts.

In the last five years, the group has seen an 80-percent increase in matching-gift revenue — although it accounts for less than 2 percent of the $5-million the charity raises annually.

With the crash of so many high-technology companies in the region it serves, the Special Olympics chapter is going after matching gifts more aggressively in its direct mail, newsletters, and telemarketing appeals, and will be soon on its Web site, too.

Mr. Alexander says the group is trying to think ahead. “If we operate in a vacuum,” he says, “we have a tendency to get blindsided.”

COMPANY POLICIES ON MATCHING GIFTS