Match Funding South Tyneside

Match Funding South Tyneside: Do you know anyone who works for a bank, building society, insurance company, supermarket, utilities provider, phone company or car manufacturers?

Are you an employee who could volunteer their time to a project or fundraising event for us, and have your company “match fund” your time and money raised?

Do you work for a company who has this policy, but you do not want to participate yourself? Please do drop us a line at fundraising@hospitalityandhope.org.uk so we can approach the company direct, with details of any fundraising opportunities for other employees.

What is match-funding?

Match funding is a simple way to maximise the fundraising efforts of your individual volunteers. It is basically free money from companies to match their employees own fundraising activities pound for pound.

It is an informal, albeit corporate, arrangement between a company and an employee as part of their employee benefits, aimed to deliver the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility policy. Usually, a company pledges to match a sum of money relating to the amount the employee has either raised or donated to a charity. There is usually a predetermined upper limit and timeframe criteria applied. Many UK employers match up to £750 for each fundraising volunteering time or activity their employee takes part in. The activity usually has a time frame that it needs to be signed off on, in advance, often the criteria is the next quarter of the financial year, or at least 3 months in advance to qualify.

Some companies don’t offer a monetary value, but will offer to their employee’s time, for a specific project, then provide the cost of the resources around that project, as well as the match funded part.

How can that apply to me volunteering or fundraising?

Match funding money: The company then pledges to match up to e.g. £750 if the employee raises funds for a cause or charity. So, if you were able to have a bank employee volunteer to work on a fundraising activity for Hospitality and Hope e.g. tombola stall at a fayre, help run a raffle, cake bake or something similar. Their company would match the fund they helped to raise.

Example: Barclays Bank offers its employees the opportunity to match funds they raise for their chosen charity up to £750 per year. This is available for three activities a year! Aviva, in response to feedback from their staff, has introduced a ‘£ Plus’ matching scheme. The scheme gives Aviva employees the chance to receive matched funds for any money raised on behalf of a registered charity of their choice.

Match Funding time and resources: For example, if Hospitality and Hope were to aim to refurbish a shop to deliver Food Education, a company might look at the project schedule and choose to give each employee one day a month to volunteer on the project to “paint the building”, and their company might offer to “match fund their time by donating the cost of the paint” for that project, to the value of £750 per employee involved.  It is usually up  the employee to find the activity and apply, although some companies do commit to one charity as their nominated charity, and offer opportunities to their employees.