A step-by-step guide to employer matching gifts: detect eligibility at checkout, automate the request, and follow up to recover lost revenue.
The easiest revenue you skip
A donor gives, gets her receipt and closes the tab, and somewhere in her employer's HR portal a matching programme that would have doubled the gift sits unused. Multiply that across a sector and the estimates run to billions in unclaimed matching gifts every year. The money is already promised and the donor has already given; all that stands between the nonprofit and a second gift is a short form most donors never learn they qualify for.
We think this is the one place in fundraising where the problem has never been willingness. It is friction and timing. Donors forget, or do not know their company takes part, or meet a clumsy portal weeks later when the moment has passed, and a matching line in the year-end email reaches almost none of them. The scale is in our piece on why matching gifts go unclaimed; this guide is the three steps that fix it, and we make software for the first two, so read them with that in mind.
Detect eligibility at checkout
The single highest-leverage change is to move detection into the giving moment. As the donor types her email or employer, an employer-search field checks it against a live database and tells her on the spot whether her company matches and by how much. That is where matching gifts earns its keep, powered by our partner Double the Donation and its database of more than 24,000 companies and their policies, so the lookup is current rather than a guess.
Detection only works if the giving flow does not get in its way. A fast, mobile-friendly checkout keeps donors from abandoning before they reach the employer field, which is why pairing detection with an optimised smart checkout matters more than teams expect. When the prompt appears inline, framed as your employer will double this, donors act in the same session, and the employer data captured there cleans up the record downstream so nobody chases it later.
Automate the employer request
Detection without follow-through still loses the gift. The aim is to remove every manual step between I am eligible and the request is submitted: after a match is found the donor should see her employer's specific instructions, a pre-filled form where one exists and a direct link to the company portal, all on the confirmation screen while motivation is highest. Fewer clicks and less typing is the whole game.
Personalised follow-up does the rest. DonorCardAI and the conversational agents can answer does my company match in plain language and walk a donor through submission without a staff member touching it, the same kind of nudge we describe in the donor retention playbook. And because Whitelabel syncs two ways with Salesforce, HubSpot and Klaviyo, every detected match and its submission status lands in your CRM on its own, so the team sees the pipeline without exporting a spreadsheet.
Follow up and measure
Most matches are not lost at detection. They are lost in the gap between intent and the employer's deadline, which is often months away. Set a simple cadence, an immediate confirmation, a nudge a week later, and a final prompt before the company's window closes, and automate it so eligible donors get timely, employer-specific reminders without anyone building a list, and a busy week on your side never costs a confirmed match.
Then treat matching as a tracked programme rather than a hopeful add-on. Watch detection rate, submission rate and confirmed-match revenue, and use analytics to see the one step where donors drop off so you can fix that step. Whitelabel layers on top of your existing stack with no replatforming, and pricing stays all in at 3.5 percent platform plus 1.1 percent processing with donors covering it by default, so the matched dollars you recover are not eaten on the way in. The form in the HR portal gets filled in, and the second gift arrives.
Frequently asked questions
What is Double the Donation and do I need it to run matching gifts?
Double the Donation is a database of corporate matching gift programs covering more than 24,000 companies and their specific policies, forms and deadlines. It is the partner that powers match detection inside Whitelabel, so when a donor enters their employer, the lookup is accurate and current. You do not manage it separately. It works behind the scenes in your giving flow.
How much matching gift revenue do nonprofits typically miss?
Industry estimates suggest several billion dollars in eligible matching gifts go unclaimed each year, largely because donors do not know their employer participates or forget to submit before the deadline. The biggest single lever is detecting eligibility at the moment of donation rather than mentioning it once in a year-end appeal.
Will adding matching gifts slow down or complicate my donation page?
No. Match detection runs as an inline employer-search field that checks eligibility as the donor types, so it adds a prompt rather than a separate step. Because Whitelabel layers on top of your existing stack with no replatforming, you can turn it on without rebuilding your site, and it syncs results into your CRM automatically.