The impact of matching gifts
A new study caught my attention because I am currently working on matching gift campaigns with several clients.
What is a matching gift campaign? Basically a donor offers to match what others give. as an incentive to encourage people to donate. The match might be 1:1 ($1 for every $1 raised ), 2:1 ($2 for every $1 raised) or even more.
These campaigns are especially popular with arts organizations in British Columbia at the moment, where the BC Arts Renaissance Fund and Canadian Heritage are matching new donations to some arts endowments.
Conventional wisdom says that a higher match (i.e. 2:1) would result in more giving, right? Not so according to a Yale study. Researchers found that matching campaigns do encourage giving overall (gifts were 19% bigger and response was higher by 22%), but that degree of the match has no impact. A 2:1 and 3:1 match did not result more giving than a 1:1 match.
Based on this study, the Chronicle of Philanthropy concludes that fundraisers should not spend time trying to convince wealthy donors to match at a 2:1 or 3:1 level — just go for 1:1. This makes no sense to me! It is useful to know that the bigger matches aren’t incentives, but the final result to the nonprofit will be much greater if the lead donor will give $2 or $3 for every dollar.
An rather long and dense article summarizing the results of the study, “Does Price Matter in Charitable Giving? Evidence From a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment,” is available as a PDF here.
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