A donor gives $25 a month. Their employer matches it, but the company doesn’t send $25 a month. It sends one lump sum a quarter, sometimes through a giving platform that rolls dozens of employees into a single deposit, and sometimes months after the gifts it covers. Matching that deposit back to twelve monthly installments in Altru is where most of the confusion starts.
The short version: keep the donor’s recurring gift and the employer’s match as two separate revenue records, connect them with credit and relationships rather than by forcing them into one transaction, and decide up front how you’ll report the total. Below is how to set that up, and where you should check your own Altru configuration before you commit.
Start with who actually paid
Every accounting and reporting question gets easier if you follow the money. The employee paid the monthly installments, so they get the hard credit for those. The company (or the giving platform acting for it) paid the match, so the company’s constituent record gets the hard credit for the match. The employee gets recognition or soft credit on the match, because their gift is the reason it exists.
Recording the match as an extra payment on the donor’s recurring gift is the most common shortcut, and it causes trouble later: the donor’s giving total gets inflated, the acknowledgment letter thanks them for money they didn’t give, and your finance team can’t tie the deposit back to the company that sent it.
Setting up the recurring gift
Altru supports recurring gifts on the revenue side, with installments that are paid over time. A few habits make matches easier to reconcile later:
- Use the recurring gift record, not a string of one-time donations. A single recurring gift with monthly payments gives you one record to point to when the match arrives. Twelve unrelated donations make that much harder.
- Flag the donor as match-eligible. A constituent attribute such as “Matching gift eligible” with the employer name gives you something to query. Fill it in when the donor tells you, or when a match shows up unexpectedly.
- Add the employment relationship. Link the donor’s constituent record to the employer’s organization record. That relationship is what lets you find “all employees of Company X who give” when a quarterly statement arrives.
Recording the match when it arrives
- Find or create the payer. If the money came straight from the company, the company’s organization record is the payer. If it came from a giving platform or donor-advised fund sponsor, decide once whether you record the platform or the underlying company as the payer, and stick with it. Mixing both makes your corporate giving reports unreliable.
- Split the deposit by employee. A quarterly statement usually lists each employee and amount. Enter one revenue line per matched employee, all in the same batch, so the batch total equals the bank deposit.
- Give the employee recognition or soft credit. Add it on each match line so the employee’s record shows the matched amount without counting it as their own money.
- Note the period covered. Use the reference or a note field to record which months the match covers (for example, “Match for Jan–Mar recurring gift”). Months later, that line is what keeps someone from entering the same match twice.
What about native matching gift claims?
Some Blackbaud products have a dedicated matching gift claim feature that links a match directly to the original gift and tracks it from pledged to paid. Whether your Altru environment has an equivalent, and how it behaves with recurring gift installments, is worth confirming before you design a process around it. Test it in a sandbox if you have one, or ask Blackbaud support specifically how matching claims interact with recurring gifts. If it isn’t there or doesn’t fit, the separate-record approach above works without it.
Tracking matches you expect but haven’t received
Employer matches are easy to lose. The donor submits the request, the company approves it, and the payment shows up a quarter later, or never. A simple tracking routine helps:
- Build a query of recurring gift donors with the match-eligible attribute, showing their year-to-date payments.
- Build a second query of match revenue from their employers in the same period, using the soft credit or recognition to tie it back to the employee.
- Compare the two each quarter. Donors with steady payments and no match are worth a friendly note asking whether they submitted the match request.
Many companies have a deadline for submitting matches, often tied to the calendar year. A reminder to match-eligible recurring donors in the fall can recover money that would otherwise expire.
Reporting without double counting
Decide which number each audience needs and write it down:
- Finance and revenue totals: hard credit only. The monthly gifts count once under the donor, the match counts once under the company.
- Donor recognition and giving levels: many organizations include matched amounts toward a donor’s giving level or listing. If you do, use recognition credit, and say so in your gift acceptance or recognition policy.
- Acknowledgments: thank the donor for their own giving and mention the match as a separate line (“your gifts were matched by your employer”). Acknowledge the company separately, if they want an acknowledgment at all. Some platforms tell you not to send one.
Quick answers
Should the match be its own recurring gift?
Usually not. Matches arrive on the company’s schedule, in amounts that change, so record each one as it’s received. A recurring record would leave you with installments that are always past due or the wrong amount.
What if the match covers several months in one payment?
Record it as one revenue line per employee for the full amount received, and note the period in the reference field. You don’t need to split it into monthly pieces to match the installments.
The donor changed jobs mid-year. Now what?
Update the employment relationship and attribute, but leave past match revenue on the old employer. It was their money.
