"Teaching Fishing" with challenge match gifts

One of our key strategies in our gifting programs is setting up challenge match gifts with nonprofits that we have already committed to give to. This is not to make the organization “earn it.” If we didn’t think they needed or deserved the gift, we wouldn’t select them for the program in the first place. Our goal is to help and incentivize the organizations to develop their own strategies to raise funds that they can continue to implement in years where they are not recipients of a Deena Jo Heide-Diesslin Foundation gift.

“We all know the saying, ‘Give a person a fish, and they’ll eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, and they’ll eat for a lifetime.’ It was always Deena’s desire that we focus on ‘teaching fishing,’ rather than just giving monetary resources,” said David Diesslin, Chairman of the DJHD Foundation Board of Directors. “The DJHD Foundation doesn’t want to just swoop in and save the day, for a day. We want our impact to be multiplied beyond what we can do.”

So far, we’ve been able to set up these programs with organizations like Baylor Scott & White All Saints Health Foundation, The Ladder Alliance, and The CFP Board. These programs were able to give potential donors an incentive to give, knowing that their small donations would go twice as far. Therefore, these organizations also received twice the benefit compared to getting a single gift from the Deena Jo Heide-Diesslin Foundation.

Does every gift need to be a challenge match gift? No. We try to work with each nonprofit to determine the best strategy that fits their unique needs, but often what they need when they come to us is just more financial resources. So it often makes sense to work together to double our efforts and get them the most that we can.

Stay on the lookout in the next few months to see if any of our 2024 Giving Cycle recipients have chosen to create a challenge match program, and see if you want to join in doing more than one person (or Foundation) can do alone.