Adding an increased match rate on a giving opportunity

Matching the charitable donations your people make is a powerful tool your company has to encourage them to give and help the causes you support. Offer matching on your Giving Opportunity to empower and inspire your people, and help them make more of a difference in the community.

The matching section of the Giving Opportunity allows program owners and administrators to set an extra match incentive for any and all Giving Opportunities they create. This feature is often used during special campaigns or for disaster relief. Any Spark user with the Awards Manager role can set an extra match rate at any time.

• Setting extra match rates within Giving Opportunities will only apply the extra match to any donation made through that Giving Opportunity and to users who operate in the currency of the cause attached to the Giving Opportunity! 

  If you’d like to set up extra matching across your site to specific causes or across currencies, reach out to help@benevity.com to connect with our teams for assistance!

Please note: If your program is using custom budget tags, please reach out to help@benevity.com to set up an increased match within a giving opportunity.

1. Set an increased match rate

To begin, open the Donation Match Rate drop-down menu and select the match rate that you’d like to apply to the Giving Opportunity.You can choose any amount, from 10% to 900%.

The match rate you select here will override the default match rate of your site, meaning if you regularly have no matching and you select 10%, any donation made through this opportunity will be matched at 10%.

That said, if you regularly have 100% matching and you select 10% here, your users will only receive 10% matching on donations through this Giving Opportunity. If you’re looking for that extra match through this Giving Opportunity and normally have 1:1 match, we suggest starting with anything over 100% in this drop-down selection.

Once you have selected the increased rate in the drop-down, a few subsequent fields will appear.

2. Set a limit per donation

When setting an increased match rate, you have the ability to set a limit of the match/donation. Any user who attempts to donate over this limit will only be matched to a maximum of this flat rate amount.

For example, if you set a limit of $1,000/donation and an executive attempts to donate $20,000, they will only be matched for the first $1,000.

Pro tip: If you set a match limit per donation here, you must also set a total match budget for the opportunity below.

3. Set a total match budget

If you have a limited budget for this campaign, you can set an overall budget in this field. Once the budget is reached, the match rate will fall back to the default match rate you have set in your program.

4. Select your budget currency

Select the currency in which you'd like match donations! This form will auto-fill to the site's default currency that is set up in implementation, so be sure to select the currency where you are promoting the match.

• If you’d like to set up extra matching across currencies, reach out to help@benevity.com to connect with our teams for assistance!

5. Set an end date

Special matching or specific campaigns are usually timely and will have an end date. This is extra incentive for your people to participate sooner rather than later. If you set an end date here, your increased match rate will cease and it will revert back to the default after the specified date.

6. How does this impact your users?

You've likely already established a match cap for each individual employee (the maximum donation amount you've agreed to match per person for the year). If you'd like any donations they make to this campaign or opportunity to count towards their annual match cap allocation, keep this box checked.  

If you’d like this extra matching to be outside of what your organization has already allocated per year, uncheck this box and this special matching will be outside of that. (This checkbox does not appear in all configurations. If you don't see this box and you want donations to this campaign or opportunity to count towards what your organization has already allocated per year, submit a support request to our team for assistance.)

Think about using variable matching rates as a strategic incentive to encourage employees to donate to particular causes or Giving Opportunities that are important to your company. Offer a higher matching rate for featured fundraisers, pillar causes, disaster relief campaigns and key Goodness initiatives.