How Many Times a Year Can You Use Matching Funds?

It’s one of the questions we get asked most often:

How many times a year can we use matching funds?

There’s a real fear that donors will “catch on and stop giving” or that the matches will somehow tarnish the organization’s brand.

But in our experience, you can use matches almost as often as you’d like.  I think my personal “record” is 8 matching grant appeals in one year.  (And they all worked GREAT.)

There’s another fear that organizations have: that if they use matches too often, the matches will stop working.  This fear does not come true – and if you look at the data you see something interesting: You notice that the 8^th match does not work as well as the 1^st or 2^nd match, but the 8^th match still works better than an average appeal.   

In other words, matching grant appeals are so effective that, even when they don’t work at full strength, they work better than average appeals. 

We aren’t the only fundraising agency to come to the conclusion that nonprofits can use more matches than they think they can.  You can read the same thing in this post from TrueSense.  Also, Jeff Brooks has had the same experience.

Both of those posts make a recommendation about how to maximize the boost that using many matches give you: vary the approach.  For example, your organization could have a spring match, a fall match, and a year-end match.  You could use a unique design for each of your matching campaigns.  You can vary the multiplier.  You can release the match over time.  You get it.

The big lesson here for growing nonprofits is twofold: don’t be afraid of using a match too often, and redouble your efforts to source matching funds.   

Matches are a reliable, proven way to make your current fundraising raise more money. 

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while something in fundraising is easy.  “Adding a match and raising a little more” is one of those things.