“Have your year-end gift to The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library DOUBLED on Give to the Max Day! “
“All donations to Teatro will be matched ($20 turns in $40) Wow! What a concept”
“GIVE TO THE MAX DAY is here! All contributions made to Avenues for Homeless Youth through GiveMN.org will be matched TODAY only! This is a great way to maximize your contribution. GiveMN has NO processing fees allowing 100% of your gift to go directly to Avenues for Homeless Youth.”
These statements are just a small sample of the emails that flooded my in box on November 16th. I believe very strongly in giving back to my community. We can’t always contribute financially so our family often does it in other ways. We volunteer, we donate gently used goods, we participate on nonprofit boards and actively help raise funds for organizations we believe in.
When I received these messages – I was thrilled! My usually meager donation would be doubled. I was so excited I didn’t pay much attention to my carefully detailed giving budget. I thought – this is worth it – even if it breaks my bank this month – my charities of choice will get double my investment.
I immediately hopped on line and went to the givemn.org website. My organizations are very small and do not receive metro-wide publicity. It also means that a $50 contribution can have the same impact that a $5,000 contribution does for larger agencies. I gave above and beyond my means to participate in this exciting campaign.
Mid-way through the day – the message started to change.
“Your gift of $10 to $2,500 today will secure a share of a $500,000 matching fund. Please give today”
“portion of all donations to American Experiment made on GiveMN.org will be matched thanks to the generosity of the St. Paul Foundation, Minneapolis Foundation, and Bush Foundation. These foundations committed $500,000 in matching contributions to support all Minnesota nonprofits. This means the exact amount matched per dollar donated will be determined after Give to the Max Day concludes”
“On November 17, starting at 8am, your contribution to Young Dance through GiveMN.org will be matched 50 cents on the dollar”
“On November 17th up to $1,000,000 in donations made through the GiveMN.org website will be matched 50 cents for every dollar contributed, up to $2,500 per transaction”
WAIT A MINUTE!
That wasn’t what I initially heard! I went back to the givemn.org website to double check. There on their home page was the big headline:
“All Donations Made on Nov 17 are matched!”
No additional information was provided unless you clicked further into the site and read the fine print.
I was very disappointed. I posted my criticism on Facebook. I immediately got a few responses:
“But any money raised for charity is good”
“The nonprofits don’t have to pay any processing fees today”
“I bet it is going to be close to 10% and that is better than nothing”
I agree, a high tide floats all boats and I want all organizations supporting our community to thrive.
This “ask” initially seemed amazing. This “ask” is disappointing.
Would I have donated if the “ask” was more authentic and said “Give today – your organization won’t have to pay any processing fees and you might get to increase your donation by up to 10%.”
Honestly, no. But I now overspent my family charity budget. I will not be able to spontaneously support something this holiday season. I may also have to cut back what I give in 2010.
In total the “Give to the Max!” promotion raised $13,229,292 for 3,141 non-profits. Awesome numbers for fantastic services provided to many who need assistance. The distribution of “matched” funds will be just under 4%. But my $50 that I thought would be a $100 contribution,turned into just $52.
Who do you think benefits the most from this confusing promotion? Of course the nonprofits got an influx of accelerated giving but at what expense?
The Givemn.org website received a flood of unique visitors and gathered all sorts of donor information. What will they do with it? Do we need another “ask” for our money or should we stick to direct communication with organizations we support?
What do you think? Did you understand the “Give to the Max” ask? What should they have done differently?
I appreciate your view points as directors and staff of non-profits. I’m speaking from a donor perspective. If I am disappointed in how I was asked to give, and if there are “rules that were changing” it makes be suspect of giving through this 3rd party. If the intent of Givemn.org is to support and help service agencies flourish – why are they so quick to blame them – saying it was “the nonprofit’s fault for not relaying the message correctly”.
I was excited to give, and did so at a time when I thought my gift would be maximized, and it wasn’t. Everyone can say November 17 was a huge success – but in 2010 if others like me have less to give because of this campaign – you may not be so excited about one “give to the max” day in 2009.
I applaud givemn.org for generating so much buzz around Give to the Max day. I work for a small organization (I am the only staff person). Givemn.org was very good about relaying how the match changed. I received daily emails leading up to Nov 17th with links to a tool kit of how to promote and what language to use. It is unfortunate that such a sincere effort has a black cloud over it.
Not sure I would go as far as to say misrepresented, maybe overly creative marketing. Like many organizations they wanted something to draw attention and it certainly did that. And it appears that as you navigated through the contribution process you were informed the match was not 1 for 1, so if that information altered your willingness to contribute you could back out. That said it does seem like a alot of hype for an about 4% increment, it makes you wonder if the match and the associated cost of the progam to distribute it could have been distributed more effectively yielding the charities more.
Personally the quesiton I would ask is does marketing like this have along term negative impact on charties and peoples willingness to contrinute. The answer will be determined if they run the program again and what the results are.
Congratulations Wendy on being interviewed by MPR regarding http://www.givemn.org and Give to the Max day. If you didn’t hear the segment, you can read the transcript at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/11/19/givemn/.
I don’t like the whole matching thing much at all. Effective marketing? Absolutely. Honest and transparent? I’m not sure.
I mean, is that mysterious donor really going to withhold their donation if the target amount isn’t met? I struggle to believe that.
Big Donor: “We’d like to donate 50k this year. Is there any special way you’d like to handle it?”
Non Profit: “Let’s make your donation a match. Is that OK if we hold off on disclosing your donation right away?”
Big Donor: “No prob. The check should reach you tomorrow. Good luck!”
I like inflicting urgency, no doubt. It’s false senses of urgency that bother me.
If anyone has insights as to how matches typically work, I’d love to hear.
No processing fees? Now that I applaud. That’s good stuff.
Interesting post, and good questions about something NP marketers need to analyze more (I’m not one). Donator’s remorse has got to be one of the most annoying types of remorse to have.
Courage Center participated in Give to the Max Day. As part of the promotion team, I can say that GiveMN.org learned about technical snafus that happened in other places that had tried the 1:1 match. In those places, donors rushed to get a donation in early to have your match counted, which overloaded servers and crashed the system. So, taking those learnings, GiveMN.org changed and let us know about a week before that the matching message should change (and gave us suggested phrasing). So, yes, not as exciting as a 1:1 match was, but good that served didn’t crash.
For us, it was a win. I had the pleasure of getting the email notifications as each donation was made and it was a real rush as the day went on and the donations added up. Tuesday was a very good day for us and for many non-profits. Courage Center raised more than $70,000 in 24 hours, with more coming as the shared funds are divided. Plus, no processing fees adds up. I’m a board member of VSA arts of MN, a much smaller non-profit, and with limited advance notice, they cleared more than $1,300. For a small non-profit, that’s a real gift.
I’m glad GiveMN.org paid attention to what happened in other places, learned, and could change in midstream which resulted in a great boon to Minnesota non-profits.
Another piece that I think bears looking at is the equity of the bonus dollars provided to organizations who had the most donors through the GiveMN effort. If the goal of GiveMN is to open up the nonprofit marketplace to donors, why not structure the bonus in tiers and reward smaller organizations who, for example, attracted the most new donors. Or bonus organizations of different sizes or in different sectors, e.g. arts, human services, etc. To me, the way it was done rewarded organizations who for the most part already have large donor bases that they can mobilize via email. To really expand giving to non-donors would honor the goal of increasing giving, rather than just making it easier to give.
I hope I was clear, that I am thrilled about the money raised for our community. Most givemn.org supporters continue to state “the nonprofits” should have done a better job with their message. What is puzzling is that it wasn’t just the “small” organizations that “got it wrong”. I received a few “asks” from large, sophisticated fund raising groups that also used the phrase “dollar for dollar”. If Givemn.org was created to assist and help our service organizations flourish – why would they dismiss those emails as an “error on the organization’s end”. I have heard that the rules of this campaign changed frequently which would definitely cause confusion.
I had a great conversation with Jennifer Reedy from the Saint Paul Foundation yesterday (one of the grant providers covering the $500,000 match). She tracked me down after seeing my post and offered to walk me through the plans and their process of the campaign. She mentioned that they had a “SWAT team” in place to monitor any incorrect messages. If you are anticipating mixed messages and confusion – could it be that you knew the use of the word “matching” might not have been the most transparent term to use?
I am very impressed with what GiveMN was able to acomplish on Tuesday. In their wildest dreams I am sure no one even drempt that they would be able to raise over $13 million. That is an outstanding impact for the community. Sure, I am disappointed that my donation wasn’t able to be fully matched but I realized it was a limited pool of match funds going into the event. I believe the GiveMN site did everything in their control to spell that out on their site. The promotional execution of Give to the Max day was outstanding as I received emails from at least a dozen organizations. I do agree with Wendy and some of the other posts that some of those individual non-profits didn’t do as good of a job as they should have to explain the matching fund pool.
Overall GiveMN is a great success. It raised more in one day and through a completely new medium then I ever recall happening in the past. The best piece of the site is that it made me aware of other organizations and causes I wasn’t familar with prior to visiting the site. I ended up making contributions to organizations I never would have known about or considered in the past and ultimatly ended up giving more than I planned going into the day. This is exactly what the site was constructed to facilitate! A great congratulations to the GiveMN team and I look forward to next year’s Give to the Max day!
I gave quite a bit on Give to the Max Day. I didn’t think that GiveMN.org misrepresented to donors the way the match worked. It seemed clear to me that it would be a share of $500,000 divided based on donations up to $2,500. The site did use examples of $500,000 ($1/$1 match) and $2,000,000 ($0.25/$1 match) in their FAQ, but I give them the benefit of the doubt that they truly did not expect $14,000,000 to be donated.
On the other hand, the e-mails that I received from individual charities often quoted either a $1/$1 match or a $0.50/$1 match without any disclaimers. These e-mails were factually inaccurate, but the GiveMN.org seemed clear to me.
I’m not sure if GiveMN.org gave correct info to the non-profits or if the people at the non-profits just didn’t understand the details.
I ended up with mixed feelings because I was hoping that my donations would be matched more, but I’m happy that Twin Cities non-profits raised $14,000,000 in one day. (Honestly, I don’t know how that compares to a typical day for all Twin Cities non-profits, though. It may not be anything special.)
This is a very thoughtful post. I learned of Give to the Max day from a non-profit I support (1000 Friends of Minnesota: http://www.1000fom.org).
I think 1000 Friends did a very good job from the get-go of explaining how the match worked – they never said it was a 1:1 match. I pretty much ignored the “match” language on the GiveMN site… I do think the match “story” changed as they neared the date, at one point it was reported that the foundations would match 50 cents to the dollar with $1M. I wonder when the Give to the Max details were finally decided… if it was close to the day it probably contributed to the confusion.
Another thing 1000 FOM did well was that they used existing vehicles (annual appeal, e-mail newsletter) and didn’t badger me at all yesterday. They just used Facebook to promote it.
I also think that when organizations are in a match situation that’s not 1:1, they need to explain it very carefully, like 1000 FOM did.
Maybe now that this has been shown to be such a powerful tool, the matching foundations will increase their match in coming years? Hopefully people aren’t disappointed by the experience…
I did understand the “give to the max” ask – I think GiveMN did a good job of creating the buzz around town and get some excitment with non-profits around town. I think non-profit organizations could’ve done a better job of their due diligence – GiveMN stated how much they had for the match – it was each non-profits responsibility to market this information to their donors. Also, it is not true about the non-profits not having to pay the transaction fees for the day – the fee should be covered for the next couple years.