Donations available to you on DonationMatch are solely based on criteria set by donor companies, so upgrading will not give you access to items for which you otherwise would not already qualify. We at DonationMatch do not hide items based on your membership level being free or paid.
However, upgraded events statistically have a 3x higher approval rate than non-upgraded events, potentially due to their requests being highlighted to donor companies and/or not having limits on the number of requests being sent or approved per event. A Pro VIP yearly upgrade also allows you to post additional events and request items for them all at the same time, which not only saves time but may also contribute to higher approval rates due to the timing of donor responses and/or donation availability, which can fluctuate.
Another popular benefit of an upgraded membership is the choice of a one-on-one event expert call or marketing review, which draws upon our expertise of 18+ years of fundraising event planning experience and direct conversations with company decision-makers to provide feedback on things that can affect your donation solicitation success and/or anything event-related you wish to talk about, including your DonationMatch event listings, event marketing, event timeline, donation letters, and strategy, and much more. Pro VIP upgrades have this option, and Pro Event upgrades may request a Marketing Review, which is a written or video format version.
We are always working on bringing more companies into our network to ensure upgrades are beneficial and have positive ROI. Even though we cannot predict how companies will respond and when they will have inventory available, we offer a money-back guarantee on upgrades, as seen on our membership options page (https://www.donationmatch.com/np-pricing). This is our way of ensuring you receive sufficient value from the upgrade, or you don't pay.