Volunteer Matching Grants

Overview

The Volunteer Matching Grants feature streamlines the process of verifying and approving volunteer grant applications, ensuring eligible employees receive matching donations for their volunteer hours. This guide provides an overview of the feature, its workflow, and how to present it to clients.

Key Benefits

• Automated Eligibility Verification: Employees complete a short questionnaire when submitting volunteer hours, and the system determines eligibility automatically.
• Simple Approval: Reduces administrative effort for clients and speeds up the matching process.
• Direct donations: Rather than reward with credits like our traditional "Dollars 4 Doers" feature, donations go direct to the organization volunteered with, increasing conversion of rewards to donations and eliminated unspent credits.
• Enhanced Transparency: Employees can track their match status, and clients have access to detailed reporting.
• Improved Employee Engagement: Ensures employees quickly receive confirmation of their match requests.

How It Works

1. Employee Submission Process

• Employees log their volunteer hours.
• If volunteer grants is enabled, employees are prompted to complete an eligibility questionnaire (if required).
  • The system instantly verifies eligibility based on their responses.
• Employees receive real-time notification in app of their eligibility and given option to claIm grant, based on their available grant budget (see screenshot)

2. Approval Workflow

• If eligible, the match request moves forward for processing.

• If ineligible, employees are notified immediately.

• Volunteering organization notified to approve volunteering hours (see 3)

• Once hours are approved, admins can review and approve or deny (see screenshot)

  • Admins can bulk approve requests for faster processing.

   

3. Nonprofit Verification (optional)

• If an employee's volunteer hours are eligible for a match, the request will be sent to the nonprofit for verification.
• Organizations must approve the hours within the set 90 days timeframe.
• Once verified, the donation match is processed.
• If the client does not require organizations to approve hours, they can simply approve them themselves, so this step is optional.

4. Employee Visibility

• Employees can track their match status within the Deed platform, via their profile (see screenshot)
• A tracker in user profile and shown before application displays their remaining match budget. (screenshot)
• Employee can apply for Volunteer Grant for previously logged hours at any time via their Profile, if hours are (still) eligible for a grant.

5. Admin Insight

• An integrated Volunteer Grants report and Dashboard to monitor usage and impact
• An overview of Volunteer Grant donations on a separate tab in the Donations section of the Admin Portal (see screenshot)

Key Features 

For Employees:

✅ Easy submission process with automatic eligibility checks.

✅ Transparency on match status & remaining budget.

✅ Fast notifications on approval or denial.

✅ Increased chances of utilizing allocated volunteer match funds.

For Client Admins:

✅ Reduced workload with automation & bulk approval options.

✅ Greater visibility into match request data & trends.

✅ Customizable eligibility criteria & approval workflows.

✅ Improved budget utilization for volunteer match programs.

✅ Easily set up eligiblity periods based on budget rules, with configurable grace periods.

For Nonprofits:

✅ Simple hours approval process

✅ Increased funding through improved reward conversion rates.