Q: There have been a number of posts on matching gifts dealing with the type of match, but I’m wondering about the language of a match. Do donors respond better to an appeal that doubles their money, or one that doubles the amount of good that can be done?
To my knowledge, there’s no study separating the effect of doubled money vs. doubled impact. As you say, most are interested in the effectiveness of the different types of match offers. In that context, some mention that your money will be doubled, some your impact and some both. To answer your question, one would have to create 3 versions of the same match offer:
1. Mention of doubled impact and doubled money
2. Mention of doubled impact only
3. Mention of doubled money
However, a bigger question is whether you should be using matching gift offers at all. There’s an increasing number of studies with evidence pointing to the contrary:
- Matching offers increase donations only in some geographical areas (Karlan & List, 2007)
- Matching offers may not work for all types of nonprofit organizations (McCarty, Diette, & Holloway, 2018)
- Response to matching offers differs across regular donors compared to other donor types (McCarty, Diette, & Holloway, 2018)
- Lapsed donors could be negatively affected by a match offer (Karlan, List & Shafir, 2010)
- Matching offers do have an immediate effect on contributions but they reduce future contributions to the same cause. When there are repeated asks, match offers can result in a negative long run effect (Meier, 2007).
Instead, you could use the match money to announce you received a lead gift. These produce a better response than matching offers. In their study Rondeau & List (2008) compared a matching gift offer to a lead gift announcement. The lead gift raised 31% more money than the matching offer. That’s just one of the many studies showing an advantage of lead gifts over matching offers.
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