Matching Gift

What it means

A matching gift is a donation that gets doubled, or increased by some other multiple, because a third party, typically the donor's employer, has agreed to match employee charitable contributions up to a certain amount. Many mid-size and large employers run corporate matching gift programs as part of their community engagement or benefits offerings, and most donors are unaware their employer offers one unless prompted.

How it works on HypeRaise

On HypeRaise, a matching gift is tracked as its own distinct entry rather than being folded silently into the original donation amount. This means a program's reporting shows both the donor's original gift and the separate matched amount once the employer processes it, which typically happens on a delay after the original donation, sometimes weeks or months later, depending on the employer's own matching gift administrator.

Key details

Because matching gifts effectively increase the value of a donation without requiring any additional outreach from the participant or program, they represent one of the more overlooked ways to grow a campaign's total. Programs that actively remind donors to check whether their employer offers a matching program, even with a simple line in campaign messaging, often see a meaningful bump in total dollars raised relative to programs that never mention it.

Administrators should expect some lag between an original donation and its matched counterpart landing in reporting, since the timeline is controlled by the donor's employer and not by HypeRaise or the receiving program.