Matching Gifts

Stacey Brake

I wanted to get some feedback on another gift issue I've come across. Everyone here has been so helpful that I thought I would ask another question...here goes:


We sometimes receive matching gifts from our donor's employers. Many times we are not notified about these matches and only find out when we receive the check. I have always used the same Fund and Appeal codes from the donor's original gift when entering the matching gift into Raiser's Edge. The challenge I am running into, however, is when the matching gift is received after we have closed the fiscal year the original gift came in. For example, John Doe gives us $500 for the 2019 golf tournament but doesn't tell us he submitted a matching gift request to his employer. Months go by and a matching gift is received from his employer but we received this gift after the 2019 fiscal year closes. Normally I would still code that matching gift with the same Fund and Appeal codes I used for John's original gift; even though they were received in two different fiscal years. I am curious to see how others would process a gift like this. Any feedback would be most appreciated...thank you in advance!

JoAnn Strommen

We record MG to align with original gift, regardless of FY.


MG can be a challenge in that way when some companies only pay out once/year. How would you record payment if you had a pledge from previous FY? Unfortunately, very rarely can everything be wrapped up into nice, neat FY packages.


Good question to see how others handle it.

Dariel Dixon 2

Yeah, what JoAnn Strommen‍ said! I generally align the MG to the appeals and fund of the original gift, unless I hear from the donor that they would like the match to go to a different fund. That has happened once or twice, but is still the exception to the rule.

Christine Cooke 2

I align the Fund with whatever the original gift was unless an the very rare occasion the donor wants to directed somewhere else. And for the Appeal I use MatchGift . Matching funds always show up 2 to 6 months after the request was filed, they will never neatly wrap into FY. It's just the nature of things.


I've run into that a lot with the end of Calendar Year recently. The individual requests a match at the end of December and expects it to be counted in that calendar year --- nope, didn't see any of them until February.

Holly Finneran

We align our matching gifts with the original funds and appeals, but a majority of our events are yearly, such as a yearly 5K and yearly golf. So when we have one come in for the previous years fund and appeal, we use the same fund and appeal that has been updated for the current year. So if someone gave to 2020 Golf and the match came in now, we would apply it to 2021 Golf. Mostly because the previous funds and appeals are now closed and we cannot reopen them.