Individuals who give to charity often overlook one of the most important factors that can magnify the effect of their gifts: employer matching. Surprizingly, almost 90% of employers in this country have some kind of matching program for charitable contributions. Very few people take advantage of these programs. As a result, an estimated 6 billion dollars that could be given to charity is not.
There are several types of matching programs to be aware of: The first is true matching programs, which give dollar-for-dollar or in some other ratio. Another is volunteer grants, which make employees available to volunteer their time during working hours. Another common type of matching program is a special program for particular disaster events. Typically this type of program involves matching but only on a specific horizon and for a specific cause, such as a natural disaster.
A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.