Individual Matching gifts, not MG Orgs

Gracie Schild

Hi - we have created a workaround for the individual matcher, rather than the organizational one.  We have a single donor who is matching all gifts to a specific scholarship fund, but there's no way (that I know of) to create a matching gift record for an individual.  Here's what we do (all names have been changed to protect the innocent!):


Miss Smith gives $100 to the "Match Me!" Scholarship. We enter that as a regular gift in all the usual ways.  A gift attribute is added called "Individual Match", the Description is set at "No" (as in Not Paid), the date left blank until paid, and the Last Name, First of the matcher in the Comment field.  I have a Query set up to run a list of all the gifts that have that attrubute, sorted by Yes/No, then gift date.  When the matching gift is paid, we change the No to Yes and fill in the date.  On Mr. Matcher's record, we enter a pledge for the amount and note the name of Miss Smith in the Reference field.  Mr. Matcher pays multiple matches at once, so we either lump multiple matches on one pledge or pay multiple pledges with one gift - the decision on how to do that is based principally on the appeal.


There must be lots of public radio and television stations that have come up with some way of handling this, since every hour of a pledge drive has a match by Mr. and Mrs. Jones.   Does anyone have a better system of recording a match made by an individual?  I really don't want to make an additional Org constituent out of Mr. Matcher just for this - it would be a nightmare to get all the records together for total giving.  We'd like to create more individual match challenges in the future. Any suggestions?


Thanks!

Jen Claudy

My first inclination would be to do what you don't want to do, create an Org record for Mr. Matcher and use the MG function.  I just tested, and you can soft credit Mr. Matcher for one or both of the MG Pledge & Pay-Cash gifts.  I would probably opt for this.  I would probably also set the Constituent ID for Mr. Matcher's Org record to be his Ind record's ID with a suffix.  Then put a relationship between Mr. Matcher's records and add Notes and/or Annotations if needed for explanation.

Christine Robertson

Gracie Schild:

Hi - we have created a workaround for the individual matcher, rather than the organizational one.  We have a single donor who is matching all gifts to a specific scholarship fund, but there's no way (that I know of) to create a matching gift record for an individual.  Here's what we do (all names have been changed to protect the innocent!):


Miss Smith gives $100 to the "Match Me!" Scholarship. We enter that as a regular gift in all the usual ways.  A gift attribute is added called "Individual Match", the Description is set at "No" (as in Not Paid), the date left blank until paid, and the Last Name, First of the matcher in the Comment field.  I have a Query set up to run a list of all the gifts that have that attrubute, sorted by Yes/No, then gift date.  When the matching gift is paid, we change the No to Yes and fill in the date.  On Mr. Matcher's record, we enter a pledge for the amount and note the name of Miss Smith in the Reference field.  Mr. Matcher pays multiple matches at once, so we either lump multiple matches on one pledge or pay multiple pledges with one gift - the decision on how to do that is based principally on the appeal.


There must be lots of public radio and television stations that have come up with some way of handling this, since every hour of a pledge drive has a match by Mr. and Mrs. Jones.   Does anyone have a better system of recording a match made by an individual?  I really don't want to make an additional Org constituent out of Mr. Matcher just for this - it would be a nightmare to get all the records together for total giving.  We'd like to create more individual match challenges in the future. Any suggestions?


Thanks!

When I worked in radio, the on-air staff regularly said that this hour or that was being "matched," but most of the time, it wasn't actually a match in the true sense of the word, so we didn't track what you're referring to.  It was a matter of semantics that, in my opinion, was a pretty big difference between what the listener interpretted it to be and how the finances actually worked.  I don't know if that's the case at all stations, but I imagine that it could be more on air theatrics (as it was at our station) than actual matching.  I say all of that to say that this may not be as common of a need as you'd think.


​How do you want to be able to pull this information out of RE?  What do you need that your current system isn't doing?  Unless you have an issue with your system, I'd stay with it.  It's logical, not overly complicated and doesn't add extra records into RE. 

 

Tom Klimchak

We've looked into doing this for our Giving Day and we've come up with a slightly more simple method:  When we enter the gifts to be matched, we just give them a special Appeal Package (you could just use an appeal if you wanted). 


Then at the end of the time period we can run a report to find exactly what gifts came in under that Package.  We then give an "overview" giving report to Mr. Matcher and we enter it as a pledge.  So if we raised $444 we'd put a pledge on Mr. Matcher's record for $444.  When he pays, he pays...


We've done this with small internal employee drives and it seems to work.  Whether you enter an appeal, package or attribute on the gift record, I would think it would be easiest to just give Mr. Matcher a final pledge amount at the end of the drive.

Gracie Schild:

Hi - we have created a workaround for the individual matcher, rather than the organizational one.  We have a single donor who is matching all gifts to a specific scholarship fund, but there's no way (that I know of) to create a matching gift record for an individual.  Here's what we do (all names have been changed to protect the innocent!):


Miss Smith gives $100 to the "Match Me!" Scholarship. We enter that as a regular gift in all the usual ways.  A gift attribute is added called "Individual Match", the Description is set at "No" (as in Not Paid), the date left blank until paid, and the Last Name, First of the matcher in the Comment field.  I have a Query set up to run a list of all the gifts that have that attrubute, sorted by Yes/No, then gift date.  When the matching gift is paid, we change the No to Yes and fill in the date.  On Mr. Matcher's record, we enter a pledge for the amount and note the name of Miss Smith in the Reference field.  Mr. Matcher pays multiple matches at once, so we either lump multiple matches on one pledge or pay multiple pledges with one gift - the decision on how to do that is based principally on the appeal.


There must be lots of public radio and television stations that have come up with some way of handling this, since every hour of a pledge drive has a match by Mr. and Mrs. Jones.   Does anyone have a better system of recording a match made by an individual?  I really don't want to make an additional Org constituent out of Mr. Matcher just for this - it would be a nightmare to get all the records together for total giving.  We'd like to create more individual match challenges in the future. Any suggestions?


Thanks!

 

Gracie Schild

Thanks for all the good suggestions.  If anyone else has something to add, please chime in!


Jen, we intentionally do (almost) no soft credits so that's the main reason for me to avoid the way you described. I might try the package choice, Thomas, though that would mean adding it to several appeals.  We want to keep the appeals as they stand so that we know that both Miss Smith's donation and Mr. Matcher's match were related to a mailing or an event or a personal ask - that's what makes it sticky when Mr. Matcher pays up.  At one point his gift was all entered as related to an event, and that skewed the numbers on several appeals because he was actually paying off matches from 4 different appeals. Now I make sure his MG pledges are separated by appeal. Also, our year-end appeal is segmented out the wazoo, so the packages are used for that (not usually in other mailings).  And thanks, Christine, for the insider view of public radio.  I kind of thought it was like that, but didn't know for sure.  We had a "match challenge" in the Paddle Call of our gala this past year, but it was basically just an incentive based on what the matcher was planning to donate anyway.  We didn't add a pledge or a matching gift - just the actual cash.  I think I'll stay basically with my own system (which NATURALLY is a beauty to behold) and just look at some tweaks around packages.  We'd just like to have a simpler way of giving Mr. Matcher his pledges - and we'd like to have more people do those kind of matches! 

JoAnn Strommen

Been following this thread as may be dealing with some MG in upcoming campaign.  Plan to just record applicable gifts with an appeal code and just enter them on donor's record, no MG record.  Then for individual or company matching the donations just enter one gift.  Too much work to do the paid yes/no for each gift.  Think MG donor would prefer to just do one gift also. 


I like to keep it is simple as possible.

Jane Kenny

Gracie Schild:

Hi - we have created a workaround for the individual matcher, rather than the organizational one.  We have a single donor who is matching all gifts to a specific scholarship fund, but there's no way (that I know of) to create a matching gift record for an individual.  Here's what we do (all names have been changed to protect the innocent!):


Miss Smith gives $100 to the "Match Me!" Scholarship. We enter that as a regular gift in all the usual ways.  A gift attribute is added called "Individual Match", the Description is set at "No" (as in Not Paid), the date left blank until paid, and the Last Name, First of the matcher in the Comment field.  I have a Query set up to run a list of all the gifts that have that attrubute, sorted by Yes/No, then gift date.  When the matching gift is paid, we change the No to Yes and fill in the date.  On Mr. Matcher's record, we enter a pledge for the amount and note the name of Miss Smith in the Reference field.  Mr. Matcher pays multiple matches at once, so we either lump multiple matches on one pledge or pay multiple pledges with one gift - the decision on how to do that is based principally on the appeal.


There must be lots of public radio and television stations that have come up with some way of handling this, since every hour of a pledge drive has a match by Mr. and Mrs. Jones.   Does anyone have a better system of recording a match made by an individual?  I really don't want to make an additional Org constituent out of Mr. Matcher just for this - it would be a nightmare to get all the records together for total giving.  We'd like to create more individual match challenges in the future. Any suggestions?


Thanks!

We have a few individuals with 'matching gifts'.  We consider these to be conditional pledges.  They pledge to make the gift on the condition that others go first.  We set up the conditional pledge and run reports to track if the condition is met.   We can calculate the amount that came in via the event or fund or appeal.  The match may be for the event (giving day) or fund specific (giving day to athletics).