
Does donation matching work? - luu
http://www.benkuhn.net/matching
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saurik
I was under the impression that the primary reason why charities did donation
matching was to allow them to take money from major donors to fund projects
while still maintaining their public charity status by having widespread
support from the public: if a small charity wants to accept a million dollars
from some large company, they need to come up with half a million dollars
donated by a number of small donors to pass the "public support test"; doing
this per dollar instead of per commitment leads directly to "we can accept up
to two dollars from this large donor for every dollar all of you small donors
are able to contribute".

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cdcarter
This may be true for MAJOR capital campaigns, but in my experience is rarely
what motivates a matching campaign. At least in the size orgs I work with
(1-2mil), matching campaigns are either genuine challenges from a donor OR a
move to get the year-to-date number up to where it should be.

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saurik
Cases where the challenge come from the donor don't seem to fall under the
scope of the OP's strategy: a donor's challenges would be evaluated on benefit
to the donor, maybe in terms of marketing their brand to the community, as
opposed to how it affects donations. As you use the word "genuine" for that
case, maybe the idea of whether matching grants are "effective" or not is
simply an incorrect question?

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cdcarter
I personally am aware of more matching challenges and capping grants that are
as I say "genuine".

You make a good point, perhaps their efficacy is more aptly measured on the
outcomes of the major donor. However, it's still a commonly held belief in
resource development and fundraising that a match is a very strong motivator
to give. This is a good start to determining how true that is.

The OPs suggestion of heavily studying your own matching strategy and running
different types is good advice (though maybe not 100% practical).

~~~
cdcarter
I'll also note that I couldn't find any particular data on the efficacy of a
match in large campaign fundraising vs. in-room fundraising. it's very
different to see a match in a direct mail or general campaign, vs. say a
featured guest at a fundraising party challenging the room personally.

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formulaT
All behavioral studies aside, in the long run matching doesn't seem like a
reasonable approach. The only money you have to donate is your own. If
individual A offers to match my donations, I could reason that A will probably
donate less to charity in proportion to how much of A's matching funds are
used up. That is, in the long run, whether I take up A's offer won't affect
the total amount A spends on charity. So it shouldn't affect my decision
either.

As an aside, I think people don't fully consider the effectiveness of earning
more money as a form of altruism. Since around 30% will be taken by the
government, and used to fund various social services, the choice to earn more
money is _really_ the choice to earn money and donate 30%.

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benkuhn
> As an aside, I think people don't fully consider the effectiveness of
> earning more money as a form of altruism. Since around 30% will be taken by
> the government, and used to fund various social services, the choice to earn
> more money is really the choice to earn money and donate 30%.

I'm super sympathetic to this idea, but I think generally there are even more
effective places to donate extra earnings than the government! For one thing,
a lot of government programs aren't very efficient for various political
reasons. For another, even the worst-off people in the US are largely better
off than the people that you could help by giving to organizations that work
abroad. (Personally, I'm a fan of GiveWell's[1] approach to finding the most
effective places to give.) But I agree that trying to earn money in order to
fund this sort of thing is an under-appreciated idea, and in fact exactly what
I'm trying to do :)

[1]:[http://www.givewell.org/](http://www.givewell.org/)

