Matching gifts where the original gift is unkown

Kacy Coates

I was wondering if anyone has had this issue come up, and discovered any solutions that work for them.

We sometimes get a gift that we know is a matching gift, but the company who sent the match didn't provide any information about the donor whose gift they are matching. The issue we're running in to is that, because we don't know the original gift this donation was inspired by, we can't create it as a Matching Gift pay and Matching Gift pledge.

We currently report on matching gifts separately from our other cash gifts, so we need to be able to identify this gift as a matching gift. Since we can't create the gift as a Matching Gift pay and Matching Gift pledge, we don't have a way to mark this as a matching gift. We've thought about using an attribute, but ideally we'd like to keep the data as consistent as possible and use a Matching Gift gift type for all matching gifts.

Has anyone else had this issue, and found a way to make the matching gift types still work? Or have any other suggestions?

We also can't put all matching gifts towards a specific matching gift fund and report that way, because we need to be able to restrict gifts towards the coding of the original gift (and often even these anonymous matching gifts will have notes for where the gift needs to be restricted to or an event they are supporting, and we need to put it towards that fund)

JoAnn Strommen

Per our MG data entry person, we have this happen too., We currently have a monthly one for which we have no information on the donor.

We enter the MG pledge and payment on our "Anonymous" record. If we are able to determine who the actual person is who initiated the gift, we can move as needed.

Rachel Bailey

@Kacy Coates, I don't think there is a way to make the matching gift MG Pay-Cash in this case since it wouldn't be tied to an MG Pledge. However, you could create a new Gift Subtype just for Matching Gifts and use that for both these Cash gifts and all of your MG Pay-Cash. I think that would work for reporting all your Matching Gift revenue while still allowing you to retain original Campaign, Fund, and Appeal coding. Otherwise you could use an Attribute/Custom field.

Christine Cooke

yep… gotta have workarounds in place for recording these things that do not rely on the MG Pledge and MG Pay… Personally I find those tools more trouble than they are worth because of the reporting issues and all the clean up at the end of the FY for unrealized matches.

You could make the Appeal MatchingGift an as a work around. And then if at a later time you find out who it was either soft credit the individual. There is no need to “move it” as mentioned previously - if it's just the match, then that goes on the Org record. Though, if it's the gift and the match, then the gift would have to go on an Anonymous record and the match on the Org record.

Rachel Cavalier

Are you able to ask the company who sent the match for a remittance advice that gives you this information?

We run into a similar problem with the Gift Aid we receive from supporters who give through Benevity - neither Benevity nor the organisation that sends us the Gift Aid payment apparently have any easily accessible records to tell us whose tax money we are getting and every time we have to email and they have to ask their finance team to dig up the information for us.