What’s the Difference Between Double the Donation and TheShareWay: Uncovering In-Kind Gifts
Event season is approaching rapidly. Whether you’re piecing together a high-end silent auction, mapping out a community 5K run, or coordinating an annual gala, your budget is likely a tight one. To minimize event costs, you need to secure high-value donations to support your efforts. But it’s not just money you should be looking for!
In-kind donations can go a long way toward protecting an organization’s bottom line, especially for events. By securing highly coveted auction items, no-cost refreshments, pro bono marketing services, and even discounted real estate, you can ensure that more of the funds generated by your event actually go to your mission.
Unfortunately, for many development directors and school event organizers, procuring these items manually feels like a shot in the dark. It usually involves going door-to-door to local businesses, tracking down corporate managers on LinkedIn, or sending cold emails to generic “info@” inboxes. Then simply hoping for a response (and usually not getting one).
However, dedicated procurement tools exist to solve this exact bottleneck. By establishing a centralized repository of established giving programs, online request links, and relevant contact information, these platforms eliminate the guesswork in sourcing in-kind donations.
Two prominent names consistently appear when organizations look to upgrade their procurement toolkits: TheShareWay and Double the Donation.
While both platforms aim to bridge the gap between charities and donors, they approach the challenge from entirely different angles. Let’s take a closer look at each provider. We’ll explore how each tool works to uncover hidden in-kind gifts, highlight their core differences, and offer strategic recommendations on which tool best fits your organization’s needs.
Platform Overview: What Is TheShareWay?
TheShareWay is an all-in-one directory designed specifically for finding, applying for, and tracking event-based in-kind donations and grant funding. Created to replace the tedious process of searching for local business donation pages, it provides a central hub where event coordinators can source physical items, consumable goods, and experience vouchers.
Target Audience
TheShareWay caters heavily to small- to medium-sized nonprofits, parent-teacher associations (PTAs/PTOs), booster clubs, and local event committees. It is built for fundraisers whose primary bottleneck is filling out an auction catalog or securing free food and beverages for an upcoming charity event.
Key Features & Functionality
- The In-Kind Directory: The core of the platform is an aggregated database of thousands of retail brands, restaurants, airlines, and local businesses that actively donate tangible goods to charity events. This includes specific corporate targets, such as grocery stores for catering, wineries for a wine wall, and entertainment companies for raffle baskets.
- Geographic and Date-Based Filters: Because corporate donation guidelines vary based on location, TheShareWay allows users to filter companies by zip code, state, and city. Plus, it screens companies based on the event date you provide, instantly filtering out businesses whose application deadlines have already passed.
- Application Facilitation: The platform provides direct, verified links to each business’s official donation request form. Not to mention, the platform’s paid tiers often include features such as copy-and-paste shortcuts and standard templates to speed up manual data entry across multiple forms.
- Built-In Application Tracker: Once you submit a request, you can log its progress within the platform. The tracking workspace allows teams to assign ownership of specific accounts, write notes regarding follow-ups, and update the status of items from “applied” to “approved” or “declined.”
Ultimately, TheShareWay was built to transform a traditionally fragmented, deeply exhausting outreach process into a structured, highly repeatable routine. By keeping its focus squarely on the immediate needs of event execution (from the initial lookup to final procurement tracking), the platform ensures that even lean teams can easily stay aligned.
Essentially acting as a localized digital matchmaker, the platform saves development teams dozens of hours of manual research and puts actionable donation opportunities directly into the hands of event managers when they need them most.
Platform Overview: What Is Double the Donation?
Double the Donation is the industry-leading workplace giving and corporate donation database. While widely known for its matching gift fundraising software, the underlying engine is a massive repository of corporate philanthropy profiles. This extensive database catalogs every facet of how companies give back to the social sector, including corporate matching gifts, volunteer grants, payroll giving, corporate sponsorships, and comprehensive in-kind donation programs.
Target Audience
Double the Donation is built for growth-minded nonprofits, K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and large-scale foundations. It primarily serves organizations looking to build an automated corporate fundraising pipeline that integrates with their existing donor, volunteer, and event management infrastructures.
Key Features & Functionality
- Comprehensive Corporate Giving Database: Double the Donation maintains a highly extensive database of corporate giving programs. It covers employee-directed giving programs as well as structured in-kind donation opportunities, such as tech corporations offering free software licenses, medical suppliers offering equipment grants, or airlines providing corporate travel vouchers.
- Automation and Native Tech Integrations: Unlike standalone directories, Double the Donation embeds directly into your fundraising tech stack. It integrates with over 100 CRMs, donation forms, peer-to-peer event tools, and auction software platforms, making it easier than ever to uncover in-kind gifts directly within your existing ecosystem.
- Integrated Donor Screening: When a supporter buys a ticket to your event or makes an online donation, they enter their employer’s name into a search bar embedded on your page. The system automatically cross-references that employer with the database to determine if the company offers workplace giving programs, corporate grants, and even in-kind donations. It then surfaces corporate hubs within your network, flagging groups of donors who work for the same companies (and any giving programs they offer). Those can be some of your best prospects for in-kind and broader partnerships!
In essence, Double the Donation shifts the burden of corporate prospecting from your staff to an automated background engine. Instead of requiring fundraisers to proactively hunt down corporate leads, the platform transforms everyday donor interactions into a powerful, around-the-clock intelligence-gathering system.
3 Core Differences: Data Depth, Workflow, and Campaign Scale
To choose the right tool for your development team, it helps to analyze how each platform performs across key categories. Here’s what we’ve determined!
1. Local Retail Listings and Enterprise-Level Registries (Database Depth)
The true value of any procurement tool lies entirely in the strength of its data, but these platforms map out entirely different corporate sectors.
TheShareWay excels at high-volume, event-specific retail data. If you need a restaurant to donate a dinner for two, a winery to provide a case of wine, or an airline to supply a domestic flight voucher, its directory provides excellent coverage. The data is hyper-focused on consumer goods and retail brands that regularly sponsor silent auctions.
Double the Donation maintains a massive corporate philanthropy database. Rather than focusing solely on retail item donations, it primarily tracks enterprise-level giving programs. The registry uncovers high-value in-kind programs that standard event directories frequently miss, mapping out tech corporations providing no-cost software infrastructure, retail giants offering bulk inventory shipments, or financial institutions offering pro bono services.
2. Manual Outbound Prospecting and Background Automation (Workflow)
The structural layout of each tool shapes how your development team spends its time on a daily basis.
TheShareWay uses a traditional outbound directory model. A team member logs in, inputs filters, browses businesses, and clicks the provided links to fill out company request forms manually. While features like copy-and-paste templates speed up the process, the workflow remains a hands-on campaign that requires dedicated office hours.
Double the Donation relies on background automation. Instead of requiring your staff to comb through lists for leads, the platform lets your donors reveal them for you through an integrated search tool during ticket purchases, volunteer check-ins, or online donations. The engine automatically checks for matching gifts, corporate grants, or in-kind opportunities, flagging employer programs that already exist within your network.
3. Immediate Event Deadlines and Long-Term Corporate Sourcing (Campaign Scale)
The ideal tool often depends on your specific timeline and fundraising goals.
TheShareWay is structured around the immediate timelines of one-off engagements. Most in-kind donation windows within the system require applications to be submitted 4 to 8 weeks prior to an event. This makes it a great choice for short-term procurement pushes where the primary objective is to quickly gather a high volume of local item donations.
Double the Donation looks at corporate relationships through a long-term lens. The platform is designed to turn a single donation or event registration into a multi-layered partnership. Identifying where your supporters work provides a data-driven roadmap to approach community relations teams for larger corporate grants, year-round sponsorships, and high-value product donations. (For one-off needs, it also offers a searchable sponsorship directory with standard 4 to 8-week timelines).
Double the Donation and TheShareWay: Top Use Cases for Each Platform
Aligning these platforms with your team’s immediate fundraising objectives depends entirely on the operational scenario at hand. Let’s examine a few instances where one tool provides the exact support needed, as well as scenarios that benefit from a combination of both.
When TheShareWay Is the Fit
TheShareWay offers an accessible, highly tailored directory that simplifies short-term outreach for localized or volunteer-led campaigns.
You run a localized or school-based event. If you are a local PTA, a community sports league, or a small local charity whose primary fundraising event relies heavily on raffle baskets and gift certificates from nearby businesses.
Your immediate need is consumable goods. If your short-term priority is securing free food, non-alcoholic drinks, alcohol, or low-cost physical items to reduce the upfront overhead costs of hosting a physical event.
You have a lean budget and rely on volunteers. If your organization operates without a CRM or complex fundraising software, TheShareWay’s straightforward, standalone directory allows volunteers to step in and track their outreach manually with ease.
When Double the Donation Is the Choice
For organizations looking to build a highly efficient, scalable fundraising model, Double the Donation embeds corporate data directly into your donor workflows.
You want to secure high-value corporate in-kind gifts. If you are looking to secure institutional corporate support, such as major equipment grants, bulk corporate retail inventory, or enterprise-level software licensing.
You want to tie in-kind sourcing to financial matching. Why stop at an in-kind gift when you can simultaneously double your financial donations? Double the Donation helps you identify corporate programs that match financial gifts with corporate in-kind resources.
You require seamless tech integration. If your organization relies on a modern CRM or fundraising software stack, Double the Donation embeds directly into your ecosystem, eliminating data silos and keeping your donor intelligence centralized.
You want to scale corporate philanthropy overall. If your goal is to transition away from one-off, transactional event requests and move toward automated, sustainable corporate giving programs that run efficiently in the background year-round.
When a Combined Approach Is Right
Treating these platforms as complementary assets rather than competing choices is the key to building a resilient fundraising pipeline.
You host large-scale, signature events with high overhead. If your organization puts on massive annual galas, golf tournaments, or multi-day conferences, you face two distinct challenges simultaneously. You need local consumables (catering, wine, and local experience vouchers) to keep immediate event expenses down, but you also need high-value items and deep corporate backing to drive major revenue. Using both tools allows you to divide and conquer: TheShareWay helps secure your physical event logistics and auction inventory, while Double the Donation uncovers opportunities for longer-term corporate event and in-kind partnerships.
You have a multi-tiered development team. Mid- to large-sized nonprofits often have a split fundraising workflow. In that case, your event coordinators and volunteer committees can use TheShareWay as an isolated, hands-on workspace to hunt for localized raffle items without cluttering your core donor database. Meanwhile, your database managers and major gift officers can use Double the Donation’s system to track enterprise workplace giving and build institutional relationships.
You want to maximize total corporate yield from a single campaign. Organizations looking to leave no stone unturned can use TheShareWay as an aggressive, front-end outbound tool to source initial event partnerships. Then, once those partnerships are established, Double the Donation can be used on the back end to screen attending employees, ensuring that every financial donation, corporate product grant, and employee volunteer hour generated by that event is fully capitalized upon.
Double the Donation and TheShareWay: Our Overall Conclusions
When building a successful fundraising strategy, eliminating manual research is one of the fastest ways to save time and raise more money. Both tools discussed here do an excellent job of replacing old-school spreadsheet tracking and endless search engine queries with clean, structured data.
For small organizations, local chapters, and school committees focused primarily on filling out silent auction tables or procuring local goods for a specific event night, TheShareWay offers an accessible, highly tailored directory that simplifies short-term outreach. Meanwhile, for organizations looking to integrate broader corporate data directly into their year-round donor workflows, Double the Donation serves as a powerful solution for automating matching gifts and mapping out enterprise corporate giving ties.
Ultimately, the choice comes down to the scope of your campaign: look to TheShareWay for fast, localized event-item procurement, and leverage Double the Donation to optimize network-driven workplace giving and long-term corporate cultivation.
Interested in learning more about either platform? Explore Double the Donation’s website here and TheShareWay’s website here.
