Georgia Public Broadcasting just concluded their October funding drive. Something I noticed and wondered about is all the matching.

They would say, “whatever you donate will be matched dollar for dollar to double [or triple] it.” Then sometimes explain the matching funds came from earlier donations.

Something about this feels like a Ponzi scheme. I guess the way this would be legitimate is the people providing the matching funds donated to that cause knowing that the people donating later are going to be enticed into helping using them. I might have heard something about that earlier, but I am not sure.

I remember a decade ago GPB using the matching less frequently. I guess they are getting more success with donations to back the matches.

Are there any numbers on how much came in for the matching funds? If not, then people are taking their word about whether there is enough to cover. They could just say a donation is doubled to entice it when they ran out of matching funds before that point.