Top companies for donation matching

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.

1. ^{^}

   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.