TL;DR
- Donation matching is an excellent way to boost your impact during the giving season.
- Some companies have very generous donation matching programs, as highlighted in the list below. (Big shoutout to Dan Wahl and Soon Khen Ow Yong for helping to put the list together!)
- Take advantage of those donation-boosting opportunities yourself and encourage your colleges and network to do the same.
- An effective way to encourage your colleagues is through a fundraising campaign; High Impact Professionals (HIP) can provide support and resources to help there, starting with this short overview video.
- An additional way is to reach out to people in your network (e.g., on Linkedin) who work at donation matching companies and encourage them to donate. Dan Wahl created a tool that leverages LinkedIn's search functionality to do just this.
Intro
End-of-year giving season is quickly approaching. An excellent way to multiply your impact during is to take advantage of the donation matching offered by your company, especially if you work at an organization with a particularly generous matching program. Below we compiled a list of companies with the most generous donation matching.
Regardless of where you work, but especially if you work at one of these organizations, encouraging your colleagues to make effective donations is a powerful way to multiply the impact of donation matching. Please book a time or email us to explore how we can support organizing a fundraising campaign at your organization.
Companies with the largest donation matching
The graph above shows the 30 companies with the largest donation matching. The amounts are in thousand USD and are per-employee and per-year. The color coding indicates the match ratio—e.g., blue is a 1:1 ratio, red is 2:1 ratio, and so forth. For example, Intermec Foundation (IF) has a maximum donation match of 150,000 USD and has a 5:1 match ratio; so, if an IF employee donates 30,000 USD, IF matches up to 150,000 USD. Note, the source data is not always 100% exact and can sometimes come with caveats (e.g., it’s accessible only to some employees, the company/matching program will only support certain charities, etc.). However, this information is a good starting point to identify opportunities to scale your impact.
Well-known companies with generous donation matching
Many of the companies with the most generous donation matching shown in the graph above are not very well known. So, below is a list of larger, more well-known companies with generous donation matching programs. To compile this list, we multiplied each company’s donation matching amount times its total number of employees. The results are presented in billion USD and are again color coded for the corresponding multiplier.[1]
What you can do about it
Now that you have this information, what can you do about it? A few things actually.
If you’re working at one of those companies, take advantage of the donation matching yourself by making donations.
Also, and very importantly, encourage your colleges to do the same. Again, a good way to do that is to organize a fundraising campaign at your company. We’ve found running a campaign is a highly effective way to multiply your impact, particularly when coupled with donation matching and other key factors. We even put together a short overview video about it.
Finally, if you’re not working at one of those companies but know someone who is, you can reach out to them. Ask them to donate through their company’s donation matching program and encourage them to get their colleagues to do the same, ideally through a fundraising campaign.
Dan Wahl created a LinkedIn tool that can show you which of your connections work in companies with generous donation matching programs. With that information, you can then send those connections a message like: “Hi, I noticed you work for a company with a generous donation matching program. Please consider donating to effective charities like [insert links to effective charity/-ies of your choice].”
Reach out to Dan Wahl to learn more about the LinkedIn tool. Contact HIP for everything related to how to have an impact as an EA in the private sector—in particular, HIP is currently supporting people in organizing workplace fundraising campaigns, so please book a time or email us if you want to know more.
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We are not suggesting that those companies would allocate the full amount to donation matching, as it is sometimes a relevant fraction of their net income. But, we believe it is a useful indicator that combines the size of the company with its donation matching amount.
Thanks for this!
FYI I think the chart might be improved if you sorted by, and had the x-axis as representing, the total possible match (match ratio * matched base), since this is probably the most decision relevant number. A company offering a 5x match on $1 is basically the same as a 1x match on $5 for someone who expects to donate a lot (enough to clear the match thresholds).
Hi Larks, thanks for your comment. Indeed the amounts shown are the total possible match, and the color coding is to add an additional layer of information. So e.g. if the amount shown is 100'000 USD with a ratio of 2:1, it means that if you donate 50'000 USD, the company matches 50'000 USD x 2 = 100'000 USD for a total of 150'000 USD (donation + matching). This is how it generally works, I hope this can help clarify things a bit.
Great, thanks for explaining!
Also color coding could be slightly more legible if it was a gradient
Hi Pat, thanks for your feedback, we will keep that in mind for future posts. ;)
Noting that LinkedIn Search worked on desktop but not mobile for me
Hey Pat, thanks for the heads up. You're right that, despite working on desktop and via the LinkedIn mobile app, the search link doesn't seem to work on mobile browsers.
One quick workaround is to request the desktop site on the mobile browser, which seems to load properly on my side.
Thanks Pat, I will notify the developer (although I am not sure the tool was designed to work on mobile)
Thanks for this. Fwiw, a slightly outdated and incomplete-ish guide for FTSE-100 companies here, highlighting the value of this benefit that could be used for effective charities.
Hi David, thanks for sharing, indeed not all companies match donations to all charities. This means that in some cases EA orgs might not be included in the list of charities that are eligible for matching.
Thank you for sharing! I currently work for Apple and organize charity-based art events, and have been trying to find the best way to maximize my matching and impact (both for volunteered time and financial donations). As such, it’s both interesting and helpful to see how they stack up/get suggestions for how to make the most of this!
I wonder how many of these organizations use Benevity as their matching platform, and if it isn’t possible to get more intermediate groups like GiveWell (that aren’t exactly charities but are working to fund them) listed so that donors don’t have to granularity pick efforts to fund/match themselves?
Hi Mariella, thanks for your comment. Indeed a lot of organizations use Benevity as donation matching provider. In some cases, we saw regranting orgs as GiveWell inclued in the list of companies eligible for donation matching. But if it is not the case, it might be possible to ask the company to add orgs to the list.