Gift Matches (not Corporate Matching Gifts)

Does anyone track gift matches such as a gift match for Giving Tuesday gifts (a donor who says they will match dollar for dollar all gifts that come in for Giving Tuesday up to a specific amount)? I know this is a common occurrence in many situations (not just Giving Tuesday) and wonder how others have taken to tracking it. Thank you for your time.

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  • Sunshine Reinken Watson
    Sunshine Reinken Watson Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply February 2026 Monthly Challenge
    We have a package named "Match" under that appeal so we can clearly see/separate those gifts on reports.

    Its A Match GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 January 2026 Monthly Challenge 2025 bbcon Attendee Badge

    Will have to think on the ‘match’ appeal suggestion. We currently have a separate fund for these gift matching donations. Money is entered there and then moved if/as needed.

  • I've done this with a gift attribute. I've seen various matching challenges over time, and not every gift matches - sometimes it is a match of new donors only, or matches of a certain amount only.

    I think we had an attribute category for the specific match and then the description was a yes/no? I did use “no” if it was not a match instead of leaving it blank to indicate that the gift was reviewed and rejected as part of the match. I typically had a query that I would run to see which gifts needed to be coded, and would do a global add for the attribute if there were a lot of gifts to code.

    I liked this because it didn't interfere with the gift coding at all. Most often, a donor had no idea they were part of a match, and it is important to keep the “purity” of the gift they made. The specific Appeal they responded to and the Fund they chose were left intact and the match coding was extra.

    Karen

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply PowerUp Challenge #3 Gift Management

    We definitely note it in the gift reference, but we don't note it as an appeal or anything. There are not a lot of gifts that will have this note (we put the reference on the matching gift, not the gift that was matched) and I think it depends on the reporting you'll need to do to determine how you will have to code these gifts.

    There is something to be said about intention as well. There is often no way to tell if the donors made the gift because it was being matched, and increased their donation because of it. Was the match the catalyst for the gift? Without a way to determine that, I don't know what this data will be able to tell you, outside of the just raw dollars.

  • Sunshine Reinken Watson
    Sunshine Reinken Watson Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply February 2026 Monthly Challenge

    Sunshine Watson:
    We have a package named "Match" under that appeal so we can clearly see/separate those gifts on reports.

    Its A Match GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

    Just to clarify, we don't have an appeal for matching gifts. We have a package named “Match” under whatever appeal the match applies to.

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