AMPLIFYING YOUR PRO BONO IMPACT WITH MATCHING GRANT PROGRAMS

Matching grants are a great way to support Southern Legal Counsel (SLC). These grants, also known as volunteer grants or “Dollars for Doers” grants, generally involve a company donating to a nonprofit where its employees volunteer.

Companies typically organize matching grants in one of four ways. First, they may offer a dollar-to-dollar match (typically up to a certain amount) for a donation that you make. Second, they may donate a flat rate for each hour of volunteered service (e.g. $100 per hour of service). Third, they may donate a specific amount when a set number of hours is reached (e.g. $500 for 10 hours of completed service). You may even be able to get a match for recurring (e.g. monthly) donations. Finally, some organizations will have a primary partner in their corporate social responsibility efforts, to whom they donate a significant amount, annually, with no requirement for the number of volunteer hours completed,

These donations are helpful to non-profits for a few reasons. First, they require few resources from the volunteer or the non-profit – it depends entirely on your company’s ability and willingness to participate. Second, they provide an easy way for you to increase your impact. Since the inception of SLC’s Pro Bono Program, volunteers have provided over 10,000 hours of service – imagine if each of those had been bolstered by a donation (even $10/hour would have an enormous impact). And impact is what your company gets when it donates to SLC. For every dollar invested in the Pro Bono Program, we provided about six dollars of service!

Matching grant programs also encourage the company’s employees to engage in pro bono efforts since, sometimes, a certain number of hours (or a certain number of employees) need to be reached before a match is made.

If your company has a matching grant program, please consider getting involved so that your time volunteering with Southern Legal Counsel has an even greater impact. And, if your company does not have a matching grant program, reach out to your Pro Bono Counsel or Corporate Social Responsibility Director to ask about getting one started.

We also invite you to visit our pro bono webpage to see what pro bono opportunities are available.