Corporate Matching Gifts: The $4-7 Billion Nonprofits Leave on the Table Every Year

If your nonprofit raised $500,000 in individual donations last year, there is a very good chance that between $50,000 and $75,000 of that revenue could have been matched by donors' employers — without asking a single donor for another dollar.

Almost none of it was claimed.

According to Double the Donation's ongoing analysis of over 5,000 nonprofits, only 1.31 percent of individual contributions at the average nonprofit are matched, despite roughly 10 percent being eligible. Multiply that gap across the sector and the estimate — repeated across CECP, iDonate, Groundswell, and Double the Donation's own research — lands consistently at $4 to $7 billion in unclaimed corporate matching gift funds every single year.

That is real money, already committed to nonprofits by corporate matching programs, sitting in HR budgets waiting to be requested. And it disappears at the end of every fiscal year, quietly, because your donors don't know it exists and your nonprofit doesn't have the workflow to help them find it.

This post walks through why matching gifts are so under-claimed, the specific numbers you should be tracking, and the workflow a small nonprofit can build this quarter to start recovering a meaningful slice of that revenue.

The math nonprofits do not want to hear

Corporate philanthropy is not a rounding error in the sector. According to Giving USA 2025, corporate charitable giving reached $44.4 billion in 2024, a 9.1 percent year-over-year increase — the fastest-growing source of charitable giving that year and the highest level of corporate giving ever recorded.

Matching gift programs are a large slice of that pie. CECP's Giving in Numbers 2024 report — which surveys over 200 multi-billion-dollar companies — found that 94 percent of surveyed companies offered matching-gift programs to their employees, with matching gifts accounting for 12 percent of Total Community Investments. The median company matching-gift budget was $1.6 million; the top quartile was $5.6 million.

But here's the disconnect. Double the Donation's research shows 65 percent of Fortune 500 companies offer matching programs and more than 26 million individuals work for companies with matching gift programs — yet 78 percent of match-eligible individuals have no idea whether their employer matches donations.

Three-quarters of eligible donors do not know they are eligible. That is not a marketing problem for the corporations. It is a fundraising problem for you.

The behavioral data on what happens when nonprofits actually mention matching gifts is even more striking:

• 84 percent of donors say they are more likely to give if a match is offered
• 1 in 3 donors say they would give a larger gift if a match were applied
• Mentioning matching gifts in appeals increases the response rate by 71 percent and average donation amount by 51 percent
• Matching gift reminder emails sent within 24 hours of a donation see a 53 percent open rate, versus a 39 percent nonprofit average

There is essentially no other fundraising tactic with that kind of documented lift. And almost every small nonprofit is leaving it on the table.

Why matching gifts fall through the cracks

The typical small nonprofit matching gift workflow looks like this:

1. Donor gives online
2. Nonprofit sends a receipt
3. Nowhere in the receipt is matching gifts mentioned
4. Donor forgets
5. Nonprofit never follows up
6. Match window closes (usually 90 days to 1 year, depending on the employer)
7. Money returns to the corporate matching budget unspent

The root cause is not that nonprofits don't care about matching gifts. It's that the workflow requires three things most small shops don't have:

• A CRM field to capture the donor's employer
• A trigger to email the donor within 24 hours of their donation with matching gift instructions
• A follow-up cadence that reminds the donor 2, 4, and 8 weeks later until the match is confirmed or the window closes

Without those three pieces, matching gifts require the donor to be the fully self-directed one — which means the 22 percent who eventually complete the process (per Double the Donation's benchmark of the ratio between eligible donors and submitted matches) are the highly motivated exceptions, not the norm.

Six steps to build a matching gift workflow that recovers real revenue

You do not need a dedicated tool to start. You can build the first version of this workflow inside any modern CRM in a single afternoon.

1. Add an "Employer" field to every donor record. Right now. Before you do anything else. If you have thousands of donors and no employer data, don't try to backfill everything — just start capturing it on new donations going forward. The single biggest lever in matching gift work is knowing where your donors work.

2. Ask for employer on your donation form. Add one optional field: "Employer (for matching gifts)." Do not make it required — that suppresses conversion. Do add a one-line hint: "Many employers will double your gift. Enter your employer to find out."

3. Send a matching gift email within 24 hours of the donation. Not the receipt — a separate email 6 to 24 hours after the receipt, subject line something like "Can your employer double your gift?" This is where the 53 percent open rate lives. The email should include a search box or link (many free tools exist, including Double the Donation's free public search) and instructions for the two most common submission methods (HR portal and email to HR).

4. Add a matching-gift line to your standard donation receipt. Even if you do a dedicated follow-up email, put one sentence at the bottom of every receipt: "Your donation may be eligible for an employer match. Check with your HR department or [link to your matching gift page]." Free, no downside.

5. Set up a 3-touch reminder cadence. Day 1 (initial matching gift email), Day 14 (gentle reminder — most matching programs require the donor to log a receipt in the HR portal), Day 45 (final reminder before deadline). You can do this with any marketing automation tool or even a manual CRM query if you are small.

6. Track five KPIs. You cannot manage what you do not measure. Track:

• Eligibility rate — percentage of donors with a matching-eligible employer (industry benchmark: 5-15 percent per Double the Donation)
• Match identification rate — percentage of donors who found their employer in your search tool (benchmark: 4-12 percent of total donors)
• Match submission rate — percentage of eligible donors who actually submit
• Match completion rate — percentage of submitted matches that get paid
• Average matching gift value — total matched dollars divided by matched gift count

If you set that up and give it 12 months, industry data suggests you should see matching gift revenue at 20 to 50 percent higher than baseline, per Double the Donation's client benchmarks.

Regional Insight: Canada vs. U.S.

Corporate matching gift programs are far more mature in the U.S. than in Canada. Most large Canadian employers with matching programs are either subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals (Deloitte Canada, Microsoft Canada, RBC, TD) or use platforms like Benevity (which is Canadian-headquartered — Benevity reports $3.74 billion in workplace giving processed on its platform in 2025, a 9.2 percent increase over 2024).

For Canadian charities:

• Ask any corporate donor whether their employer uses Benevity, Chimp, or a similar workplace giving platform — many do, and the payment routes through the platform rather than directly to your organization, which affects your reconciliation and receipting workflow.
• The Canada Revenue Agency's stance is that a matching gift from an employer is a corporate donation to your charity — not additional donation revenue attributed to the employee. You issue a receipt to the corporation, not the employee, for the matched portion. This is a common CRA compliance mistake — do not double-receipt.
• Because corporate matching programs are less widespread in Canada, employer capture on donation forms is even more valuable in Canada than in the U.S.: it becomes the primary way you discover which of your donors work at match-eligible employers.

For U.S. charities: because 501(c)(3) status is broadly recognized, you can lean harder on the "search your employer" approach — the coverage is dense enough that a reasonable proportion of donors will find a match with one search.

What "great" matching gift practice looks like

If your matching gift program is working, at the 12-month mark you should be able to answer these questions with data from your CRM in under 60 seconds:

• How many of our donors work for a company with a matching gift program?
• What percentage of eligible donors submitted a match request last year?
• What percentage of submitted matches were successfully completed?
• What is our average matching gift value?
• Which employers have matched to us most frequently — and are we cultivating those as corporate sponsors?

That last one is the one most nonprofits miss. Every completed match tells you two things: which employers have a matching relationship with your cause area, and which employees at those companies are engaged enough to submit a match request. That is a prospect list for corporate sponsorship, board recruitment, and volunteer engagement — hiding inside your matching gift data.

Conclusion: The easiest fundraising money you will ever recover

Corporate matching gifts are, without exaggeration, the highest-leverage revenue opportunity available to a small nonprofit right now. The donors have already given. The corporations have already budgeted the match. The only thing missing is a workflow that connects the two.

You do not need a new platform. You do not need to write a strategy document. Add one CRM field, add one donation form field, and set up one automated email within 24 hours of every donation. That alone will move you meaningfully off the 1.31 percent floor.

The $4 to $7 billion that goes unclaimed every year is not going to fund itself. But some of it will fund your organization, if you build the workflow this month.