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What the Fundraising
308: Using Donor Matching to Grow Impact and Community with Pooya Pourak
00:28:11
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- [00:04]
A
Before we dive in, I want to give a huge shout out to donorperfect for supporting this podcast and the fundraisers
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B
who listen to it.
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A
They're not just a CRM, they're a partner in helping fundraisers feel more confident, aligned and supported. Learn more@donorperfect.com Mallory,
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What can we do to help nonprofits that are struggling right now in the midst of the pandemic? And we saw a lot of grassroots organizations living off of like one to two months of financial Runway. So we stepped into the world of what we dubbed as impact centric fundraising at that time, which was let's create a stronger connection between dollars and impact to create a strong, stronger sense of community and understanding of what my donation means to the organization. What we quickly found is, oh my gosh, there's a hundred other fundraising platforms in this space and this just isn't differentiated enough for us to create a large scale impact.
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A
Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fun fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes. Uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we, as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. And join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode. So let's dive in.
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B
Welcome everyone. I am so excited today to be here with Puia Porak Pooya. Welcome to what the Fundraising.
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C
Mallory, it's great to be on your show and to have had the opportunity to have you on my podcast, the Nonprofit Lab. So it's cool to have this full circle moment. Moment.
- [02:29]
B
I know, I love it. I'm so excited for our conversation. So thank you for joining me. Let's jump in with just you telling everybody a little bit about yourself and then we'll go from there.
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C
Yeah, sure. Before I do, can we just pause and create a breath cue for breathe in for 5, 4, 3, 2, release. I wanted to start that way, Mallory, because you've been one of the greatest champions around just well being and mindfulness in the sector and I appreciate that and wanted to bring some of that energy onto the stage here. But yeah. My name is Puia Porak. I'm the co founder and CEO of Match. Nice. Our whole mission is to help nonprofits raise more and acquire new donors through a category that we've created called social donation matching. So instead of an employer matching model where, you know, I work for Delta Airlines, donate to Habitat for Humanity, Delta matches my donation, we're kind of flipping that script and saying anybody can put up a match for a nonprofit and that it can be really fun, engaging and community driven. A little bit more about myself. I am a first generation immigrant US citizen, college grad, graduated from Georgia Tech in industrial engineering, started my career in the private sector working at Delta Airlines in analytics. My hallmark project there was building the business case for designing, implementing and managing Delta's customer experience program where I had to and got to connect 80,000 employees to real time feedback from customers. And that thrusted my career into the space of listening to others and helping organizations take action on that feedback. A couple kind of jumps ahead in my career, I found myself at Deloitte Consulting where I was leading human centered design in state and local health and human services across 10 different states. And that was just Mallory, the most fulfilling job I've had because my customers were now not diamond medallions, but families on Medicaid and food assistance programs and supporting foster care and childcare. And if I didn't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body, I would have just stayed at Deloitte and gone towards the partner path. But as fate would have it, I was volunteering at an organization called Beat the Streets in Philadelphia and saw an opportunity to create a partnership between Beat the Streets and another organization that provided career training for youth. And that was the light bulb moment for me of like, wait, what if maximizing impact wasn't me creating another nonprofit, but taking that systems thinking and connecting the dots between nonprofits, businesses, communities, government, foundations to maximize social impact. So that vision started in 2018 for me and has evolved into my fullest expression as the founder and CEO of Match. Nice today.
- [05:39]
B
Amazing. So, okay, so tell me how that led to this passion for matching gifts and like the gap that you see here around this kind of engagement opportunity for folks.
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C
Yeah, so we in the middle of COVID were asking ourselves, me and my co founders, what can we do to help nonprofits that are struggling right now in the midst of the pandemic? And we saw a lot of grassroots organizations living off of like one or two months of Financial Runway. So we stepped into the world of what we dubbed as impact centric fundraising at that time, which was let's create a stronger connection between dollars and impact to create a stronger sense of community and understanding of what my donation means to the organization. What we quickly found is, oh my gosh, there's a hundred other fundraising platforms in this space, and this just isn't differentiated enough for us to create a large scale impact. Now, we did help a number of grassroots nonprofits, and it was quite successful. But as we thought about how can we create a greater impact, we decided to try matching. And we gave five grassroots nonprofits $500 each as a matching donation. All five met that goal within a month. Three of the five raised more in that one month period than they had in the previous 12 months. So that was the initial leading signal of, okay, there's something here. And the more we looked at the fundraising technology space, the more we recognize that there is a significant gap in tooling strategy and just capability around activating anybody as a matching donor. So what we've evolved into is truly to be like a matching layer that works with your existing fundraising platform. So if you're on givebutter, fundraise, up, gofundme Pro, blackbaud, whatever the platform, match nice connects to the fundraising platform. You have a match. Anytime a donation goes through your existing fundraising platform, we create a really cool, visible scoreboard for donors to feel engaged and tap into the psychology of, like, what makes donors feel like they're connected, what fosters community. And we've come quite a long way and are excited about continuing to shape the path and just context on this too. Like, why is this new? Why hasn't this been done before? Well, when you look at the history of matching, it all actually started in 1886 with Andrew Carnegie. And Andrew Carnegie was putting up a matching challenge for communities to fund public libraries. Hey, if your community can raise this $500,000 to fund this library, I will donate the other 500,000. So institutional matching was born from that, where it was really reserved for the wealthiest philanthropist of the time. Then in 1954, General Electric was the first corporation to offer employer matching. So if you worked at GE and you wanted to donate to your university, GE would match that donation. When we stepped into this world of social donation matching, which we're working to pioneer and create more of a movement around, most nonprofits aren't thinking about their existing donor base as potential matchers. In fact, when we surveyed nonprofits on this and we said, what's the first thing you think about when you hear matching. 50% of nonprofits said they think about employer matching the likes of Double the donation. Awesome company, highly recommend everyone check them out. About 28% thought about corporate matching. So like this company is sponsoring or putting. Maytag is putting up a match for my organization. Less than a quarter of nonprofits are thinking about mid level donors, major donors, existing everyday donors to crowdfund and source that match. And that's where we've evolved and found that we can create the greatest impact on this mission to help nonprofits get more unrestricted funding.
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B
You know, there's something really interesting to me around thinking about this sort of like social matching and belonging component because it seems to be, if I'm understanding it correctly, sort of activating the like advocacy muscle a little bit.
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A
Right.
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B
It's like it's almost giving people an opportunity to engage in advocacy for an organization like through matching. Right. Because it feels like you're engaging more. It's not just about a decision around your own belonging and desire, but it's about sort of engaging additional resources and feeling like without the pressure of fundraising for an organization, you're able to still to be an advocate for additional funds going to the organization.
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C
Yeah. And there's so much psychology around why matching is such a powerful strategy. And I use the word strategy because I feel that the sector today is still treating matching as just a one off tactic, whether it's for giving Tuesday or for another giving day. But the data shows that this really could be a major opportunity in today's climate where smaller donor gifts are going down but average gift size is going up. It's this perfect storm for nonprofits to actually activate some of their larger donors to bring in those larger groups of supporters. And the psychology of this, Mallory, is tied to a number of different factors. And this is all kind of designed into how Match Nice presents the match and engages donors to increase conversions and donor acquisition. At the end of the day, the first is social proof, right? Like, oh, someone already believed enough to go first. It's like when you're at a dance party and no one's on the dance floor, but you get that one person who's just like breaking it down and then the next person comes up and then before you know it, the dance floor is full and everyone's having a good time. The second is urgency. And I want to frame this as positive urgency, not as this place of like scarcity. If we don't meet this, it's gone. But real deadlines Clarify action. Creating time bound campaigns and matches builds not fake pressure, but this sense of creating a goal which ties back to providing real transparency around the progress of a match. I think any donor that's participated in a match before the status quo is, you go on the website, there is maybe a countdown, there is a text that says there's a $50,000 match for a multiple, but you don't really know where the organization is in meeting that match. So creating that progress actually motivates or like donors to see milestones to make it seem like they're actually moving the needle for an organization versus this more broader appeal. And we know that matching like reduces uncertainty and also increases generosity. I think 80% of donors say they're more likely to give with a match. One out of three said that say that they would give more with a match as well. And there's just a force amplifier there. Like if I know that my hundred dollars instantly moves and becomes $200, that's great. But the core principle of where we start with organizations is to actually start with why. What is your case for support? What does this match unlock for your organization? So the core principles of where match and I started, of tying giving back to impact and having a strong narrative, the story of how you're inviting donors to be part of a community, shifting from I donated to we did this together, creating that visible participation, seeing how many other donors have participated in the match, it really goes much further than a transaction and creates a sense of belonging. And we're continuing to learn and understand what is it that resonates with donors in that way?
- [14:59]
B
Hey, I want to tell you about a podcast. I genuinely love, the small nonprofit podcast. It's hosted by the incredible Maria Rio. And it's speaks directly to the realities so many of us are living inside every day. Maria, tell us about your show.
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D
Hi, I'm your host, Maria Rio. I moved to Canada as a refugee, use charitable services myself and have been fundraising for over a decade. I love exploring ways our sector can grow, change and make the world more equitable. The small nonprofit podcast is where we do just that. I believe small nonprofits are where the most transformative work happens. But we've been set up to fail by systems that expect us to do more with less. Every week I sit down with leaders, fundraisers and change makers who are doing things differently. They're building sustainable funding without compromising their values. Creating power instead of dependence and pushing back on the broken systems we've all inherited. You'll walk away with actionable Strategies you can use, not just inspiration. So if you're ready to stop scratching, scrambling and start building something that lasts, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.
- [16:06]
B
If you're leading or fundraising at a small nonprofit and you're craving work that feels aligned, sustainable and human, go listen to the small nonprofit podcast.
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A
Search the small nonprofit podcast on Spotify
- [16:19]
B
or Apple Podcasts to listen. Yeah, I so appreciate that. And I think I'm curious, like any results or, you know, things that you've seen in terms of. Because, you know, I know for organizations, any sort of like new platform adoption or platform switching or like there's even a little bit of like strategic shifting here around how an or like mindset shift around how an organization thinks about matching that isn't maybe more passive, like maybe we'll get the match after the donation. Right. You're sort of, you're talking about a behavior change.
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A
Change.
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So tell me a little bit about like some of the things that y' all have seen with adoption of stuff like this.
- [17:08]
C
Yeah, happy to, Mallory. And I think starting with the roots of this idea that social matching, tapping into your existing donor base and individuals to put up a match that's visible on your website is still relatively new in the sector. Like, it's been a tactic before, but there really haven't been tools or, or solutions built around this. Now we ask nonprofits around their willingness and desire to actually work with a match. And not surprisingly, like 80 plus percent of nonprofits say they regularly or occasionally use matching throughout the course of a year. The interesting thing is there's not a lot of data around how individuals putting up matches moves the needle. There's a ton of data around how employer matching can increase the impact. So we've done some research around our case studies and the nonprofits that we've worked with. And to the best of the benchmarks that we were able to create, the standard around industry is like approximately 23% of donors that give in a matching campaign are either new or re engaged with match Nice. Across our customers, we're seeing that double to 57% average gift size we know goes up complementary to the stat around 1 of 3 donors wanting to give more standard around that has been about 50% increase in gift size. We're seeing that at 200 to 600% and then just year over year revenue comparing like the same period with a match versus without a match, the standard being about 20% increase in revenue. Again, we're seeing like 600 to 1500% X around that. Now, like every organization is different. There's different maturity around matching and like whether it's brand new to the organization or whether it is a part of the fundraising operating model. So I'll give a couple of examples of what matching has done for grassroots organizations and then some of the larger enterprise organizations that we've worked with. So connecting to Cure, Krones and Kaleidos Organization, they had just finished their end of year Hallmark event and they were like, I don't know if we should go back to our donors and make another ask. We just had this event, they put up a match and they raised way more than they expected, met their goal and 50% of those donors were either new or lapsed donors that hadn't given in the past three or four years. Years. There's also this opportunity where we've helped organizations activate donor advised funds as a source for matching and in One instance for DAF Day last year, an organization 6x the DAF revenue that they gained from that satisfied is another food pantry organization that we worked with which was just really interesting. The more specific you can get around the need, the clearer and easier it is to actually attract and tell the story to donors. For them, they needed a new 30 foot refrigerated box truck. Campaign was very clear. They raised 33x times more than they had in the previous year with that match and got that truck. Rx outreach pharmaceutical organization doubled their donor base. So we're seeing a lot of outsized impact for smaller organizations. But two examples of where we're working with enterprise nonprofits. One, we just completed a corporate match with Boys and Girls Club of America. They have a fill the pantry match that they do every May sponsored by Maytag Brands. And going into it we set like 15 different benchmarks of what we were going to track to see if there was an actual lift with this. The technology of like tying back to all of the psychology elements that I mentioned in our banner. Now we were a little nervous going into this as was Boys and Girls Club because this was brand new for them. And this was one of the first opportunities that our company had working at that scale. And they have five plus years of data of how this match has performed historically. And we knew going into this that this year individual giving was trending down compared to previous years. What we found was this $75,000 match that they had created well above 150,000 in impact and they generated 64% higher revenue year over year with that just through organic digital channels. This isn't including direct mail or any other channels. I also want to qualify this by saying, is it just the quote unquote like banner? And the solution that drove that? Like no, right? Like that's part of the tool that enables the strategy and the narrative and creates all the transparency that makes people want to actually participate in that community giving. The other one that we are currently piloting is with greater good charities and this is a really cool idea that we've piloted with them. And they host like a thousand different charity projects that they fundraise for. One of them is for saving pets in Ukraine and their goal is to increase the number of monthly donors for that campaign. So we said, hey, what if you engaged your existing monthly donors and asked if they would opt in their next monthly gift to fund a match? They quickly raised $10,000 through opt ins from their existing monthly donors, promoted a match funded by their amplifier community to attract new amplifiers. And rather than creating a matching incentive that's like we'll match dollar for dollar, we're testing a milestone based matching approach where every 10 donors that join unlock $1,000 so far as of today attracted 16 new monthly donors. And we're kind of doing some of around that and working with other organizations to test that as well and are excited to also kind of step into the world of how can matching be used beyond capital campaigns to actually build a sustainer base for your organization. The last example of an enterprise nonprofit that started small but we're working towards bigger opportunities is with Good Shepherd Services in New York. So they have a junior board and that junior board had a first task of actually raising funds for the organization. Their goal was to raise a $10,000 total. Good Shepherd Services current board put up a $5,000 match and this junior board had to go out and actually raise the rest. Now what you were saying earlier Mallory, about like the, there's a degree of like anxiety around making an ask, especially if you're not a fundraiser and even if you are a fundra. This diffused that anxiety for the junior board because now the ask was hey, not just will you give, but hey, our junior board is half as this match and every dollar you give, our team is helping to multiply and they far exceeded the goal and way faster of a pace than they expected. There's so many other examples that I could share as well. But that's just some anecdotes of what we're seeing. And when we ask nonprofits, who would you prioritize as a matcher? Mid level donors come up on Top and then everyday donors, like people who give less than $1,000, were the second preference. So there's this huge opportunity to democratize matching and to create that sense of community. And to your point, the Good Shepherd Services Junior Board Match is a great example of how a match can create a network effect where each Junior Board member is now going out to their network and bringing in new donors as well. So it's kind of like peer to peer matching on steroids.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah, that's what was coming up for me as you were talking about all of this. And I think what's also really exciting is the intentionality that gets to be created around matching. Right. Like I hear the enthusiasm, the campaign focus, the visibility it creates. Like I think it, you know, I can imagine that both for the donors and the community, but also just for the staff and the organization and the team, they're given all these new ways of talking about showcasing, et cetera, matching. So I'm so grateful, I'm so grateful for all this insight. Tell folks where they can go to learn more about Match. Nice. And connect with you, etc.
- [26:34]
C
Well, thanks Mallory. Yeah, you can check out matchnice.org to just check out our website and what we're up to. You can also just email connectnice. Org if you want to connect with us there. And also check out my episode with Mallory on thenonprofitlab.com those are the only plugs and if we can help with strategy or just help you think through any of the your fundraising calendar and how matching can be part of that. We're all for collaboration and brainstorming and I'll just conclude by saying thank you to you as well as to every non profit leader listening to this. Your work matters and we're grateful to be a small part of the journey.
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B
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the work that you do and I can't wait to talk again.
- [27:21]
C
Thanks, Mallory. Foreign
- [27:27]
A
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com backslash podcast. And if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you. Inside of my program, the PowerPoint Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you visit malloryerickson.com powerpartners last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.
- [28:27]
E
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