The Value of Donor Employer Information in Workplace Giving

As a nonprofit (or school) fundraising professional, you surely want to raise as much revenue as possible to go toward your mission.

When it comes to optimizing your organization’s supporter engagement and fundraising strategies, having access to donor employer information can play a notable role in your levels of success.

But how?

Here are four of the most significant ways:

Donor employment information can uncover workplace giving eligibility.
Donor employment information can direct your corporate partnerships strategy.
Donor employment information can provide valuable wealth data.
Donor employment information can ensure targeted donor communications.
Bonus! How to collect donor employment information to elevate engagement.

If you’re ready to boost your nonprofit’s fundraising efforts (i.e., collect more dollars for your cause, better engage with dedicated donors, and begin building powerful corporate partnerships), this guide is for you.

Let’s dive in with one of the top ways donor employer information can help elevate nonprofit fundraising⁠—corporate philanthropy.

1. Uncovering workplace giving eligibility

This might be one of the most apparent benefits of your team having access to donor employment information. When you know where your donors work, you can easily determine whether they’re eligible to participate in available workplace giving opportunities on your institution’s behalf.

Now, workplace giving can come in many forms. These philanthropic initiatives include:

Matching gift programs
Volunteer grants
Paycheck deductions
Annual giving campaigns
Employee donation stipends
Corporate volunteerism

And more!

Research shows that thousands of businesses offer one form of workplace (or employer) giving program or another. In terms of matching gifts alone, more than 65% of Fortune 500 and a wide range of smaller companies incorporate these programs into their overall CSR strategies. Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals eligible to participate have never been made aware of their employers’ charitable initiatives in the first place.

When your donors don’t know that they qualify to request a matching donation or volunteer grant for your nonprofit, they won’t complete the process required to secure the funding.

If your organization has access to donor employer information, however, you can identify corporate giving-eligible donors on your own and then communicate the availability to nonprofit supporters. And nonprofits see significant positive results from doing so!

In fact, matching gift stats report that 84% of donors are more likely to give charitably if a corporate match is offered, while 1 in 3 individuals stated that they’d make a larger donation in that scenario.

(Key tip: matching gift automation software makes this process as simple as possible for both the fundraising organization and its donors.)

2. Directing your corporate partnerships strategy

Workplace giving programs offer an excellent source of funding for organizations like yours. But they’re certainly not the only type of corporate philanthropy you can benefit from—nor should you count as a loss the donors who do not currently work for companies with employee giving opportunities.

In fact, your donor employment data can help inform your nonprofit’s corporate partnerships strategy, too. Here’s how!

For donors employed by companies with existing workplace giving programs…

Consider reaching out to the top matching gift companies in your network (as identified in your 360MatchPro dashboard) and proposing a broader partnership opportunity. This might mean:

Sponsoring an upcoming event
Launching a cause marketing campaign
Organizing an in-kind donation drive
Establishing a media sponsorship
Hosting a corporate volunteer opportunity

For the best results, ask your dedicated donors to provide a warm introduction to their employers. They might even be willing to advocate for such partnership opportunities on your organization’s behalf!

For donors employed by companies without existing workplace giving programs…

Not all companies currently offer matching gifts or volunteer grants for their employees. But it doesn’t mean they’re against it, either. They may just not know where to start!

For that reason, employee advocacy can play a significant role here, as well. Plus, you can consider pitching a custom matching gift program (where a company matches gifts exclusively to your organization through a dedicated partnership) as an alternative to a widely accessible program. This is often an easier way for companies unfamiliar with workplace giving to ease into their first step, and it results in stronger nonprofit-corporate relationships, too.

*While 360MatchPro offers custom matching gift program management functionality, this feature is designed specifically for fundraisers looking to manage custom matching gift initiatives—360MatchPro does not work directly with corporations. If you’re a company interested in creating a matching gift program, contact us, and we’ll share information about our corporate vendor partners.

3. Providing valuable wealth data

Unfortunately, you likely won’t know the exact salary of any of your nonprofit’s supporters, which can make it difficult to know how much they’re able to give to your cause (and by extension, how much you should ask for in donation requests). Having access to donor employer information, however, can assist your team in making educated guesses to guide your fundraising efforts, identify major donor prospects, and adjust your gift requests.

Keep in mind that when it comes to offering up useful wealth data, understanding more than just where your donors work can be a significant help. For example, having insightful data like an individual’s particular role in the company tends to add just as much⁠, or even more, value.

Picture this: Let’s say a new donor flows into your database, and you see that they are employed by a popular, profitable, and rapidly growing technology company. This data can help guide your efforts in the right direction. However, when you see that the individual is actually the president of the company, that information can provide additional insight into the donor’s propensity to give. For example, you might assume that, more than likely, the donor is fairly wealthy and may be willing and able to give generously if asked.

Then, once you have developed an estimate of a donor’s (or prospect’s) wealth level, you can determine the approximate level they might be able to give.

Remember, on the other hand, that wealth is impacted by more than an individual’s job title alone. Things like real estate ownership, stock holdings, and more can simultaneously impact and communicate a person’s level of wealth.

4. Ensuring targeted donor communications

It’s a common understanding that personalized communications are more likely to drive the intended action of the sender. These types of messages tend to grab the recipient’s attention, stay at the top of their mind for longer, and become more difficult to ignore. This is true in the for-profit business world as it is for the nonprofit fundraising sector⁠—the key difference being the expected results.

For fundraising groups, these intended results are often a combination of donor engagement (i.e., strengthened relationships between nonprofit supporters and the organization itself) and fundraising revenue (increased dollars funneled toward the organization’s mission). And as you can likely see, having the right donor data⁠—such as donor employer information⁠—can make a significant difference in both realms. You just need to ensure this data is clean and accurate for it to be useful.

Take a look at this example:

Suzie, a long-term Home Depot employee, has recently made a first-time donation to your organization as part of a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. The day after she submitted her gift, she received an email from your team that piqued her interest. The subject line read: “Suzie, did you know that the Home Depot will match your charitable donation?”

The subject grabbed her attention⁠—and when she opened the message, she was provided with even more personalized information about her donation⁠. In fact, she reads that her initial gift of $50 is matchable by her employer, bringing its total value to $100!

Suzie can clearly tell that the message in her inbox was meant specifically for her⁠—it’s so detailed and relevant to her donation as well as her employer. She decides to follow the instructions provided in the follow-up email (including direct links to Home Depot’s online submission portal) and request a corporate match on your behalf.

Now⁠—voilà⁠—you’ve secured a matching donation from the Home Depot while also deepening your stewardship relationship with a new donor. That means more money toward your mission, along with an increased likelihood that Suzie will give (and get her gift matched) again in the future.

Sure, you could have sent a generic, “Dear Donor, do you know if your employer will match your gift? Find out here!” email—but it certainly wouldn’t have received the same results as your targeted and personalized message.

Bonus! How to collect donor employment information to elevate engagement.

If you don’t already have access to donor employment details, don’t fret⁠—there are many easy and impactful ways to uncover the information you need.

These include:

Donation form fields

Chances are, you already use your online giving pages to collect donors’ essential details like their name, address, email, and phone number. By incorporating an additional field in your donation form specifically for employment information, you can uncover valuable data right from the source.

And when you utilize software like Double the Donation, you can even streamline the data entry process for donors by embedding an auto-completing search tool that takes into account spelling variations, subsidiaries and parent companies, and more.

Donors who prefer not to provide this information can simply skip the optional field, and your team can employ other methods to obtain the requested data.

Email domain screening

Another easy way to gather employment information is through email domain screening. To do so, simply browse your donor database and flag any email addresses using corporate domains. For instance, if you come across an email like “john@waltdisneycompany.com,” it is highly probable that the person is employed by Disney.

However, it’s important to note that this method has a significant limitation: It won’t help you identify employers for donors who give using their personal email addresses. As a result, a portion of your network will likely lack employment information unless you utilize an additional strategy or two in conjunction with the initial domain screening.

Follow-up communications

Post-transaction donor outreach can also play a crucial role in uncovering employment information⁠—specifically for those who opted not to select their company during the initial giving process.

When you use a tool like 360MatchPro, all you need to do is trigger automated emails that encourage donors to interact with a provided database search tool. The tool then provides the donor with company-specific workplace giving criteria and stores the information in the individual’s donor record for future reference.

Employer appends

Another (less common but still effective) way to locate donor employment data involves utilizing a third-party appends service to uncover the missing information. An appends provider that specializes in employment data can produce a ton of valuable insights that identify donors’ unknown employers⁠—and sometimes even job titles.

To get started, all you need to do is provide your chosen employer appends service with the information you do have about an individual⁠—such as their name, contact information, and giving history.

For the most exhaustive results, start with a solid baseline of information for each donor. The appending company will expand on your original data and fill in the blanks with employment data accordingly.

The bottom line is that since no data collection is foolproof, it’s a good idea to leverage a few of the above strategies to maximize the number of donors whose employment information you have available.

Equipping your team with accurate and up-to-date supporter employment data allows you to set the stage for effective fundraising efforts that see big results long into the future. Get ready to make the most of available workplace giving initiatives, obtain and utilize invaluable wealth data, leverage targeted and personalized donor communications, and more.

And if you don’t already have access to donor employment information, don’t fret⁠—there are many easy and impactful ways to uncover the data you need. We recommend looking into employer appending services and matching gift software to begin. Best of luck!

Interested in learning more about corporate fundraising tools and strategies? Check out these other additional resources:

Matching Gift Databases: Our Comprehensive Guide. When donors search their employer’s name in a matching gift database, they can determine their corporate giving eligibility, and your organization can record their employment information.
Why Did My Nonprofit Receive a Check From a CSR Vendor? If you’re receiving donations from companies you’re unfamiliar with, they might be matching gifts. This guide explores why you might get these checks and what to do with them.
12 Essential Corporate Giving & Philanthropy Statistics. Check out these powerful corporate giving statistics that effectively showcase the importance of matching gifts and other philanthropic efforts on nonprofits like yours. Find out something new here!