My sweet mom sent me one of those feel good emails today.  Don’t tell her, but usually I erase them without reading them…I’m a total sap and tear at anything that involves random acts of kindness, animals, or dying wishes.

But something told me today’s email would be valuable, so I read it.  The email was a short story about a passenger who boarded a plane and was suddenly surrounded by U.S. soldiers heading off to Iraq.  One soldier asked another if he was going to pay $5 for the on flight meal, and he responded that he thought that was too expensive for a sack lunch.  The passenger then took $50 to the flight attendant to buy the soldiers’ lunches.  This one act inspired three other passengers to contribute $25 to the lunch (which was given to the soldiers) and left the original Good Samaritan with a first-class lunch and a round of applause from the rest of the passengers.

When I read this, I realized that most people don’t ever get to understand what a matching gift really means.  (That is, in fact, what the Good Samaritan experienced).

Matching gifts, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is when corporations, foundations, and wealthy individuals will “match” the donations of average donors, thus leveraging their resources to create the greatest impact.  If you ever listen to NPR during a fundraising campaign, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

A matching donation does several things.  First, it increases the total amount of money going to a worthy cause.  Second, it affords the matching donors the opportunity to share the fact that they are giving with a broader audience.  And finally, it helps create a connection between the individual donor and the matching organization, helping them feel united in an effort to make the world a better place.

But I wonder, why don’t more of us individual donors replicate this matching system?  Many not so wealthy individuals give more than $1,000 a year to wonderful causes.  Imagine if they created a GiveForward fundraising page and sent it to their friends, telling them they would give $1 for every $2 or $5 their friends donated.  Suddenly, that normal $1000 annual gift would be $5000.  Now imagine if just 100 people agreed to do that.

That would be $500,000 for worthy causes.  Half a million dollars for writing a few extra emails and donating what you would have given otherwise.

It’s definitely something to think about.