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Key Statistics on Challenge Grants and Matches

Empower your donors with challenge grants and matched donations

Challenge grants and matches boost fundraising by incentivizing donors to give now and to give more. This powerful mechanism drives engagement, increases donation revenue, and attracts new supporters, making it a highly effective tool for scaling operational support.

Explore key challenge match and challenge grant statistics below to understand why they are crucial for a successful strategy and how they elevate fundraising results.

Challenge Match Basics: A Key Strategy for Fundraising Success

Industry research shows that nonprofits are increasingly integrating challenge matches and grants into their fundraising efforts. The results are impressive and demonstrate how these initiatives amplify nonprofit impact.

Here’s a look at some key insights from our analysis:

  • 43.8% of organizations say they usually run a challenge match campaign whenever a partner offers a match.
  • 45.5% of nonprofits and schools say they ask a business they already work with when finding a sponsor for a challenge match.
  • 27.3% of fundraisers say they’ve never run a challenge match campaign, but are looking for a partner to start.
  • 64% of surveyed nonprofits conduct year-end challenge match campaigns.
  • 58% of nonprofits say email campaigns are their primary channel for promoting challenge grants and matches.

One missed opportunity? Only 16% of surveyed nonprofits report promoting challenge grants on their websites.

Statistics on nonprofit challenge grant usage

These results indicate that nonprofits have a powerful opportunity to grow their fundraising through challenge grants and matching campaigns. When these opportunities are communicated effectively, fundraising success tends to follow.

To see more impact, nonprofits must expand how they promote challenge matches and grants, particularly on their websites where giving is occurring. Nonprofits also need to simplify the setup and management of these campaigns to encourage broader, year-round participation.

Donor Psychology: Increasing Generosity Via Challenge Matches

Challenge matches and challenge grants are proven to significantly boost donor engagement and increase fundraising results. These strategies not only motivate donors to take action but also encourage them to give more, acting as a powerful fundraising “supercharger.”

  • 100% of nonprofits surveyed reported that challenge matches and grants led to an increase in campaign fundraising.
  • 95% of people surveyed believe that challenge grants increase donations or have no negative impact.
  • 84% of donors reported that a match made them more likely to give.
  • 36% of recent nonprofit donors would not have given if a match had not been offered.
  • A recent survey showed that the presence of a challenge match increases the likelihood of giving by ~22%.
  • The presence of a challenge match also increases dollars raised per solicitation by ~19% compared to appeals without a match.
Donors are more likely to give and give more when match incentives are included.

Check out the following podcast episode to learn more:

How Corporate Matching & Challenge Grants Work Together

Combining challenge matches and corporate matching gifts creates a powerful fundraising incentive that directly drives donor action. By pairing these two initiatives, organizations can offer supporters an incredible opportunity to triple the impact of their personal contributions.

  • Only 7% of surveyed nonprofits currently promote challenge matches and corporate matching gifts together.
  • 70% of nonprofits say they’ve never used a corporate match to anchor a fundraising campaign because they lack a partner.
  • 46.4% of nonprofit professionals say they’ve never stacked a personal match (i.e., challenge grant) with a corporate match, but want to learn how.

Here’s what Alix Samuel recently shared about Doctors Without Borders’ Double-Match Stacking Method:

“Supporters frequently ask if they can participate in a major donor’s challenge match while also submitting their gift for an employer match.

Organizations should actively encourage this stacking behavior by having the donor give directly to fulfill the challenge match criteria, and then immediately submit the receipt to their corporate portal for a secondary employer match.”

Access the Full Dataset

Unlock all benchmarks, cross-tabulations, and growth trends across thousands of fundraising operations.

Top tip: Integrating into campaign landing pages lets donors instantly check their eligibility for a corporate match on top of the existing challenge grant opportunity.

Why Pursue Matching Challenges and Challenge Grants?

These statistics highlight the impact of incorporating matching challenges and challenge grants into your strategy. Here’s what you can achieve by incorporating these initiatives into your strategy:

  • Boost Donor Engagement: Matching challenges create a sense of urgency and excitement, motivating donors to give more.
  • Increase Donations: Challenge grants often result in higher average gift sizes, as donors want to maximize the match.
  • Attract New Donors: Matching challenges can help you reach potential supporters who might not have donated otherwise.
  • Maximize Fundraising Efficiency: With a challenge grant, your nonprofit gets more funding in a short period of time!
Challenge grants and challenge matches lead to high donor participation and an increase in revenue for nonprofits.
Bring fundraising success at all challenge match phases with workplace giving. Get started today!

Sources

[1] ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø research + industry analysis

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