As someone who believes in giving back to my community, I’ve spent many years building meaningful connections with the nonprofits working in the causes I care deeply about. Through this effort, my wife and I have developed many ways to make our contributions as impactful as possible, whether through giving our time, treasure, and talent, leveraging Charity Navigator’s ratings to ensure we’re giving to efficient charities, or funding a match challenge.

Why help fund a donation matching challenge?

Supplying funding for matching challenges is an incredibly impactful way that donors can help their favorite nonprofits get the critical funding they need to innovate. That is, you supply the funds to be matched for a future matching challenge.

Many charities have campaigns that offer donation matches of 1:1, 2:1, or even 3:1 to incentivize you to give, e.g., for every $1 you give it will be matched by another $1, for every $1 you give it will be matched by $2, and for every $1 you give it will be matched by $3, respectively.

Can you do more good by starting or joining a matching challenge? We certainly believe so! The most successful matching challenges my wife and I have supported resulted in 1,000% to 1,200% increases in the financial impact of our giving. We have used the approach detailed below to increase the effect of our giving by an average of 500%. The overall, combined result is several times our total annual income.

Our approach is simple. We initiate the start of the match fund, build out a larger fund with the help of other donors, then go public for donors to unlock the collective fund.

Read the full article about donating to a matching challenge at Charity Navigator.