Companies with Matching Grants
 

In an effort to increase funds for our team I am trying to compile a list of all known companies that offer matching donations or hour-matching donations.

We got a good deal of money from Cisco last year as they will donate a certain dollar amount to any non-profit that an employee of theirs volunteers at. Now that the school year is starting back up I am hoping to motivate the parents to see if their places of business have similar programs and to take advantage of them.

I found this site a while ago which lists a couple of companies.
But I wanted to know if any fellow FIRSTers have taken advantage of programs like this from any companies so that I can pass on the information to our parents and mentors. Even if they just offer a small amount per hour volunteered it can go a long way.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Boeing and Microsoft in addition to their matching programs listed on that site have hours payment programs. Boeing pays $10 per hour while Microsoft pays $17 per hour. Boeing has a max of 600hrs per year and have to have a minimum of 10 hours. Not sure on the specifics of Microsoft's program. Alaska Airlines has a hours funding program but do not know the details.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Honeywell will donate $500 for the first 50 hours an employee volunteers. It is part of the Dollars for Doers program from corporate. We had around 10 mentors the second year I was on the team. We are slowly losing people. I just retired, so I will have to set aside money each week to make up for this.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Texas Instruments does $250 per 20 hours, up to $1000 per employee and $15000 per organization to any 501c3 for matching employee volunteerism.

They also do matching gifts dollar for dollar (1:1) to K-12 schools or Universities, or certain arts institutions.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

I'm not sure the exact numbers, but we've had great success with 3M and Symantec paying for volunteer hours. Symantec also matches employee donations I believe.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

There's a company called Graco who gives some amount of money per hour that an employee volunteers at an organization. (funding starts at 50 hours)

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Medtronic has a Volunteer Grants program which will donate $500 to an eligible non-profit for which an employee volunteers at least 25 hours per year. There is also a Matching Grants program which will match the employee's monetary donation.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Assuming this is the same Graco Inc that I work for... We have 2 programs.

Dollars for Doers Program
Through the Dollars for Doers Program, the Foundation donates $1,000 to any eligible nonprofit organization where an employee has volunteered 50 hours or more. Time that a spouse or dependent of a Graco employee volunteers may be counted toward the 50 hours.

Employee Giving Campaign
Through the Employee Giving Campaign, every contribution made by Graco employees to eligible nonprofit organizations is matched $1 for $1 by the Foundation up to a maximum contribution of $200,000.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Microsoft's cap is $15,000 for the combination of matching time at $17/hr and matching donations 1:1.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Is this per employee or per organization? With 2-3 MS employees I imagine a team could do quite well just on time matching donations.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Hi Monochrom,

It's Adam, the President of Double the Donation (the company you referenced in your original message about the list of top matching gift companies).

First off I'm glad to hear you're thinking about employee matching gift and volunteer grant programs. Matching gifts and volunteer grants are very much a source of corporate philanthropy that are overlooked by both nonprofits and individuals.

You already shared the link to a handful of top matching gift companies but here's a link to the top company with volunteer grant programs as well.

At Double the Donation we provide tools and service to help them raise more money from employee matching gift programs. We do this by maintaining a database of thousands of companies (along with forms, guidelines, and company specific information) across the US, Canada, and UK that offer matching gift programs and providing tools and services to nonprofits and schools to help them raise awareness among donors and make it easier for donors to submit matching gifts.

You can view a demo of our service here >

I also encourage you to look through the links on the left hand side of this section of our website - https://doublethedonation.com/market...d-newsletters/ for a list of ideas and examples of how other organizations are promoting matching gifts.

As I'm sure you've realized employee matching gift participation rates (https://doublethedonation.com/matchi...ipation-rates/) are all over the place and it's often up to organizations to make sure donors are aware of the programs and submitting match requests.

I encourage you to check out our matching gift service to see if it's something that could benefit your organization or school. https://doublethedonation.com/matching-gift-service/

Additional Resources:

- We also help manage the largest LinkedIn group on employee matching gift programs. You may want to check it out / join.
- Subscribe to our free five day matching gift email course

I hope some of the above information helps!

Adam
--
Adam Weinger
President of Double the Donation
https://doublethedonation.com

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Aaron will have to speak to the specifics of Microsoft's program but usually these types of programs are on a per employee basis.

I know Boeing's program is per employee and their program has provided some very big checks to my team thanks to a couple of mentors that reach the cap and many more that volunteer quite a few hours.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

It's per-employee. A plurality of our budget comes from Microsoft's hours-matching funding.

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

Boeing's minimum is 25 hours (or at least it is for me, maybe it's different for other business units or bargaining units?). Our $6,000 is total giving per employee per year. So if I gave $3,000 to another cause, 1778 would only be eligible for up to $3,000 (from me) for that year. If we had 3 Boeing mentors that all hit the cap, the team would get $18,000.

(This is on top of the FRC Boeing Grant that has historically paid a significant portion of our registration fee. Thanks Boeing!)

Re: Companies with Matching Grants
 

The TI VIP program was awesome, and I dearly miss it (it exists, I'm not a TIer anymore).

One thing to be careful about for TI matching gifts.. (a) avoid the use of "team" when describing the activities your 501(c)(3) supports, and (b) make sure your 501(c)(3) only supports a single school.

(a) is because they're specifically looking for that word to avoid giving to sports teams and it can cause confusion or delays.

(b) Is because the specific wording they use to describe a qualifying 501(c)(3) organization is that it gives the monies directly to the receiving entity. They're trying to avoid giving to a non-profit who takes a % and send it on, eventually getting to the receiving entity. Our non-profit supports the school*s* in our district and the plural was important to them (at the time, it may be different).

The TI Foundation was great to work with. All TIers who mentor should be taking serious advantage of the VIP program and qualifying matching gifts.