I’ve noticed some (especially US based) charities have fundraising times when they say your donations will be matched (2x, 3x etc.) such as the OMF and MEAction. I wonder a couple things about this: 1) Who is matching these donations? 2) If it says “matching upto 50k” and only 10k is donated, does that mean 40k that was pledged to ME is now not going to be donated anymore? 3) Is it common for the donor match fundraisers not to meet their target? 4) If (2) and (3) is true, does it make sense to coordinate giving to chartities when they have a “donor match” program?
1 sometimes donors want to be anonymous. 2,3 ? 4 Yes! OMF has triple match through today, and I am donating.
There's usually some detail on the fundraiser, though it's often only a name—"matched by the Such-and-Such Foundation". It's probably possible to learn a bit more about Such-and-Such if you look it up. Not quite. I think it means that $40K was available to ME/CFS research if the fundraising was successful, not that it was already pledged to it. I imagine the match model can be useful to charities, energising their fundraising efforts and persuading people to donate. To find out what proportion are successful, you'd probably have to look up the accounts or ask each charity. Sometimes a charity that makes its target will announce it, but often it's not straightforward—for instance, they might have received pledges that will take time to collect, and they can only claim the match funds when that money is in the bank.
