A big number worth sitting with: an estimated $7 billion in corporate matching gift funds goes unclaimed every year. $7 billion!

It’s not overlooked because there are no matching programs. Thousands of companies have them. It’s missed because donors at those companies aren’t aware of the programs and because most nonprofits don't have a reliable system for identifying match-eligible donors, prompting them at the right moment and following up until the match is complete.

The opportunity is real. Surveys of nonprofit professionals consistently show that the majority of nonprofits rarely or never use employer data to promote matching gifts, and fewer than half follow up with donors about their matching gift status. Without the right tools and processes, funds just slip away. 

Leverage the summer slowdown

The corporate-matching losses are perhaps at their worst during the summer months, when donors and staff alike shift into a slower seasonal gear and fundraising is likely to hit a quiet stretch.

That mid-year lull doesn't have to be dead time; in fact, it shouldn’t. It can be exactly the right moment to diversify revenue streams, deepen donor relationships and lay the groundwork for a strong second half of the year. 

That’s what we're going to dig into during our upcoming free webinar. Register below, then read on for what to expect.

View our free “summer fundraising playbook” webinar on demand

The Summer Fundraising Playbook: Maintaining Momentum and Unlocking the Power of Matching Gifts

Cost: Free
Hosted by: Give Lively and Double the Donation
Who it’s for: Nonprofit fundraising staff, development directors and anyone responsible for donor communications or platform strategy around growing revenue without adding operational complexity.

What the webinar covers

This session is a joint presentation from Give Lively and Double the Donation, built around practical guidance that can be acted on right away. 

Here's what's on the agenda:

Mid-year fundraising strategies and new revenue opportunities 

We started with the bigger picture: what the summer slump actually looks like, where the overlooked opportunities tend to be and how to structure a mid-year strategy that doesn't depend entirely on reinvigorated donor generosity.

Bridging the matching gift revenue gap

We looked at how to close the gap between the corporate matching dollars available to donors and the dollars a nonprofit actually receives. That involves deepening donor engagement by folding corporate giving opportunities into outreach.

Marketing best practices and automation tools

We covered tools and approaches that build matching gift awareness through proactive stewardship and automations, so that donors know about the opportunity before, during and after they give, not just when they happen to stumble across it.

Live Q&A

Attendees brought questions about matching-gift program costs and structures, the partnership between Give Lively and Double the Donation, CSR portals, and discovering and approaching companies with matching-gift programs and more. We left time to dig in.

Why summer is a strategic opportunity

The summer fundraising slump is real, but it's also predictable. This means it can be planned for. While the instinct might be to push harder on traditional donation “asks,” quieter months are better suited to a different kind of work: educational stewardship that keeps mission top of mind, cultivation that builds toward year-end and revenue diversification that doesn't rely entirely on direct donor generosity.

Employer matching fits this moment well. Rather than asking donors for more money, corporate matching unlocks dollars that already exist, funds that employers have committed to giving and are awaiting someone to claim them. It's a different kind of conversation and it often lands well with donors who want to show support but may be at a slower giving pace.

What employer matching actually looks like in practice

When a donor gives to an organization through Give Lively, that gift may be eligible for a match from their employer. Many companies, both large and small, offer matching gift programs that can double, or sometimes triple, an employee's personal donation to a qualifying nonprofit. The catch is that someone has to initiate the match request, and without a prompting system, most donors simply never do it.

The Give Lively integration with Double the Donation's 360MatchPro platform addresses this directly. It automatically identifies match-eligible donors using information collected during the donation process and then drives those matches to completion through customizable tracking and automated follow-ups.

For donors whose employer information is already known, the follow-up is personalized, populated with that company's specific matching gift program details and a direct link to submit the match. For donors whose employment data is unknown, the follow-up includes a link to a company search tool where they can look it up themselves. And when a donor searches for an employer through that tool, the software records the result and associates it with the donor record for future use.

The whole system is designed to reduce the friction that causes matching gift revenue to go unclaimed, and it lives natively within the existing Give Lively donation experience.

Capitalize on the quiet

The summer months are quieter. That makes them strategically useful for protecting the momentum built in the first half of the year, diversifying fundraising revenue or getting more out of the giving that's already happening. This webinar builds a framework and flags a set of tools to work with.