Matching and seeding best practices

Updated July 02, 2024 23:25

If you find yourself with unspent budget — and you’d like to take your campaign a step further and really boost engagement — consider matching (or an increased match rate!) and seeding to rally your employees in supporting the causes they care about.

Why Matching?

Clients who offer matching have, on average, 80% higher donation participation. And, often, individual donation amounts are higher from people whose employers offer matching (55% on average!).

Best Practices for Matching

Set up a shorter time frame and make a big splash by having it coincide with a cause awareness date. And, to make the matching offer more enticing for your people, set a higher-than-usual match rate. Many clients do a 2-1 or 200% match rate.
To ensure your people know about — and get excited for — the special match offer, be sure to include prominent messaging about it in your communications.
Interested in setting up a special match campaign in Spark? Have a look at this checklist we put together to help you find and set up the perfect campaign for your program in three steps.

Why Seeding?

Seeding makes your people more likely to donate and participate! For example, between April 2018 and March 2019, clients who used seeding had, on average, 2.67 times higher donation participation than those who didn’t and saw 68% more account activations. People donating for the first time with seeding tend to give, on average, 36% more of their own money in their first year (compared to those who don’t have seeding for their first transaction).

Best Practices for Seeding

Boost energy and impact by running a seeding lottery! Select one employee at random and seed their Giving Account with a higher-than-normal amount they can donate to their cause of choice.
Communicate — often. Let your people know you’ve seeded their accounts with donation currency by adding messaging about it to your email templates. Check out our campaign communications best practices guide for more suggestions.

Seeding in Action

Genentech: Seeding employee and contract employee accounts

In June 2020, Genentech pivoted their program and ran a seeding campaign that not only enabled full-time employees to donate to a cause of their choice, but also included contract employees in the program for the first time. By seeding $20 into employee and contractor accounts, the program prompted 634 first-time participants to make their first transaction, with 150 of these same participants volunteering 151 hours and giving again using personal funds, resulting in $68,109 total donations.

TC Energy: Using seeding to unlock workforce involvement

COVID relief
- During their COVID relief seeding in Spring 2020, TC Energy seeded 8460 users giving accounts with $25 each. The company reached a 69.3% redemption rate, engaging 1232 employees to volunteer or donate for their first time. Of these 1232 employees, 195 went on to volunteer again or donate their own funds reaching a total of $36,552 total user donations.
Christmas party seeding
- With COVID restrictions in full swing during the holidays, TC Energy canceled their annual holiday party, and instead seeded 8550 employee accounts during the month of November. The company reached a 71.9% redemption rate, with 505 as their first volunteer or donation transaction.

Why Matching?

Why Seeding?

Seeding in Action

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