Billions in employer matching go unclaimed because the request was never part of giving. The tools that catch it at checkout, the ones that only send the reminder, and the honest all-in cost.
The gap, in plain terms
A donor gives a hundred dollars on a Tuesday evening, gets a receipt, and feels done. Her employer runs a matching programme and would have doubled it. Nobody at the nonprofit knows where she works, she has never heard of the programme, and three weeks later the moment has passed. Multiply that by every gift in a year and you have the matching gift gap: industry estimates put typical claim rates at 10 to 20 percent of eligible matches, which means 80 to 90 percent of money that companies have already budgeted for causes like yours is never requested.
We think the gap is not a marketing problem. Donors do not forget to claim matches because the reminder email was weak; they forget because the request was never part of giving. The software that closes the gap is the software that catches the match while the donor is still on the page and hands her the employer's form right there, and this article is about which tools do that and which only send the reminder.
That is also the honest frame for reading it. We sell one of the tools below, so the comparison is written from inside the market, and where a rival is the shorter route we say so.
Catching the match in time
Whitelabel Matching Gifts asks the one question at the one moment it can be answered: as the donor gives, it checks whether her employer matches, shows her the match while she is still deciding, and puts her employer's own form and instructions in front of her on the confirmation screen, with the gift already registered against it, then follows up until it is done. Catching the match there rather than in an email weeks later lifts claim rates from the 10 to 20 percent baseline to 60 to 90 percent, and donors who see a live match tend to raise their own gift by around half.
We are an integration partner of Double the Donation. Their matching plugin runs inside our giving flow and every gift is registered back to them, so detection draws on the largest matching gift and workplace giving database in the sector rather than on a list we keep ourselves. Every matched gift lands on the donor's DonorCardAI record, which is how your team learns who works where, which employers match, and where the next corporate relationship should come from.
Pricing is the same 3.5 percent platform fee plus 1.1 percent processing that covers the whole platform, about $4.60 all in on a $100 gift, with no separate fee for matching and no monthly subscription. Donors cover fees by default, so 100 percent of the gift, and the match, typically reaches the cause. For the size of the problem this is solving, read the match gap guide.
Double the Donation
Double the Donation is a matching gift automation platform, and it is the one name on this list that sits underneath most of the others. It keeps the largest matching gift and workplace giving database in the sector, which companies match, at what ratio, and with what forms and deadlines, and pairs it with software that surfaces those opportunities as people give and follows up with donors who have not finished a request.
It is built to sit inside whatever a team already runs. Double the Donation publishes integrations with every major donation form, peer-to-peer tool and CRM, plus more than a hundred others, so a matched gift lands in the system the team works in rather than in a separate export.
We should declare an interest. What you get through Whitelabel is their detection and their database, sitting next to your donation pages, donor records and outreach. If you already have a donation platform and a CRM you are happy with, going to Double the Donation directly is the shorter route to the same data. The choice is about how many systems you want to run, not about the quality of the matching.
Benevity, and what it does
Benevity is the platform on the other side of the transaction. Companies buy it to run their own employee giving: workplace campaigns, volunteer hours, matching requests and grants. If a donor works for a company that uses Benevity, her match request flows through Benevity's system and your nonprofit receives the money once it is approved.
From your side of the desk, then, Benevity is a source of matched donations rather than a tool you deploy. You can register in its nonprofit directory so that you are eligible to receive matches from the companies that use it, and you should, but you do not control the donor experience or the workflow. If you are shopping for software to lift your own claim rates, Benevity is not that. It is the system your software needs to be registered with.
What the big platforms do
Classy, Fundraise Up, Givebutter and most of the other large donation platforms offer some level of matching gift detection, usually built on Double the Donation. What varies is how far each one has wired it in. Some surface eligibility as the donor gives and put the employer's form in front of her there and then; others hand the donor a search box and leave the rest to them.
The way to find out is to make a test gift. Watch whether the employer check happens on the page or on a page you have to click away to, whether she is handed the employer's form on the spot or gets an email weeks later asking her to go and find it, and whether the matched gift shows up on her record in your CRM or in a monthly export. Those three answers are the difference between a platform that automates the gap and one that has a matching feature on its pricing page. We expect the gap between the two to widen, because the platforms that put the form in front of the donor at the moment of giving are the ones seeing the 60 to 90 percent claim rates.
What to ask before buying
Ask three things of any tool, including ours. Whether eligibility is detected while the donor is giving, or she has to search separately. Whether she is handed her employer's form on the spot with the gift already registered, or your team sends reminders hoping she goes and finds it. And whether the matched gift syncs to her record, or somebody reconciles a CSV once a month.
If the answers are search separately, send reminders and export a CSV, the software is not closing the match gap; it is documenting it. Real automation means the detection, the hand-off to the employer's form and the record update all happen without a member of staff chasing anything, and that is what moves a claim rate from 15 percent to 75. Choose on those three answers and the rest of the feature list takes care of itself.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best matching gift software for small nonprofits?
For small nonprofits, the best matching gift software is one that integrates into the donation platform you already use with no separate subscription. Whitelabel Matching Gifts is included in the same 3.5% + 1.1% processing fee that covers the entire platform, with no monthly fee, so cost scales with what you raise rather than adding a fixed expense.
How much matching gift money goes unclaimed every year?
Industry estimates put unclaimed employer matching in the billions annually. Typical claim rates are 10 to 20 percent of eligible matches, meaning 80 to 90 percent of the money companies have budgeted for nonprofits never gets requested because donors do not learn they qualify or never complete the paperwork.
Do I need to replace my donation platform to add matching gift software?
No. Double the Donation integrates with every major donation form and CRM, so matching can be added to the platform you already run. Platforms like Whitelabel bundle it into the same system that handles donations instead, which is one less integration to maintain. Either way the question worth putting to your current platform is how far it carries the request, because detection on its own moves claim rates far less than detection, the employer's form on the spot and a record that syncs.
What is Double the Donation and do I need it?
Double the Donation is a matching gift automation platform, built on the largest matching gift and workplace giving database in the sector. You can buy it directly and plug it into the donation form and CRM you already use, or you can get it through a platform that integrates it. Whitelabel is one of its integration partners, so its detection runs inside our giving flow and gifts register back to it. Both routes use the same underlying data.