Guys talking out of his ass; the donation match is indeed rich people who agree ahead of time and ultimately plan on donating the whole amount anyway, or at least a chunk. Iirc, they sign away X amount of dollars and the campaign leverages that for the 4x or 8x and so forth. Usually it’s a few hundred or even thousands of pledge donors, though
I think of it sort of like those walk-a-thon donations by the mile. You pledge knowing you’ll probably be out a few miles but know it could be more or less… And usually when it’s less, you donate a bit more later anyway.
That said, be mindful of scams. I saw one offering 20x pledge but the link looked phony.
So it sounds like theres 3 steps here:
- Campaign receives large donation from wealthy donor
- Campaign spins up an advertising campaign, encouraging potential donors by saying they will get matched from funds in step 1
- Campaign receives donation from small donor.
Yeah that kinda sounds like bs to me. There are 2 donations, and an advertising campaign. No extra money is generated by the “match”.
I mean, 1 is more of a pledge as I understand so it wouldn’t be guaranteed that they donate the full amount planned. I just suspect that they ultimately would, though, given it’s their cause. But I agree that it is more of a gimmick to secure more funding.
Then again, so are walk-a-thons and other fund raising events. If you believe in a cause, it shouldn’t matter. I once waited tables for a rich person’s wine tasting fund raiser, and that was a gimmick too. Had raffles and entertainment, etc. Good cause for some kind of illness research, although I only volunteered my time because I had a crush on a girl. That was stupid, of course, but I was 18 so, yeah.
