"Hey buddy, have you got a match?"

I must have been asked that 100 times when I was serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. I even heard it from guys who knew I didn't smoke but who hoped I might still have a match to light their smokes.

These days, however, I am the one asking, "Hey buddy, have you got a match?" No, I haven't taken up smoking. In the fund-raising environment in which I live - at BYU, UVSC and my work in the Philippines - I am constantly looking for a match because I have learned that having a large donation matched by students, faculty or alumni is a great way to raise money to fund nonprofits.

For example, Ira Fulton, best known for his $50 million gift to BYU a few years ago, is now sponsoring a match with the UVSC students. You give $1,000, he tells the students, and I will match it. This technique at UVSC should raise tens of thousands, but more importantly it gets the on-campus community involved in giving at an early age.

I have sponsored my own matching contests at BYU-Idaho, LDS Business College and Southern Virginia University. These drives have always been successful.

And with good reason. Everyone wants to get a good deal. Who can pass up the opportunity to double their money - almost instantly?

I remember one of the matches I sponsored for a nonprofit. I wrote out blank checks to the Enterprise Mentors Foundation, signed my name and sent them to about 40 of my friends and associates. I encouraged them to make a donation to the organization and then to fill in the same amount that they donated on my check and send it in.

More than a dozen people did that very thing. They wrote their check and then matched their donation by writing in a like amount on my check. The organization was thrilled to tell me the total amount "I" had contributed. It worked so well at least one of my friends, Louis Pope, did the same thing for Yehu Bank in Kenya.

BYU has a group of matchers called the President's Leadership Council. Not too long ago this group got extra ambitious and announced that while it would match alumni and faculty contributions one-to-one, students who donated would be matched on a five-to-one basis. One entrepreneurial father gave his daughter $25,000 and asked her to donate it to the university. The PLC matched that at five-to-one and collectively wrote a check for $125,000 for the match.

Raising money for nonprofit organizations around the world isn't always easy but is hugely satisfying. I have a good entrepreneurial friend who recently sold his company for millions of dollars. He has been a great donor to many of my attempts at fund raising. Recently, however, he has changed his donating philosophy.

"I will continue to donate," he says, to the nonprofits he chooses to support, "but I want you to go out and find a match for my money. Then I will donate."

Last week, he committed to donate $100,000 to our Academy for Creating Enterprise in the Philippines, which has graduated more than 1,000 Filipino returned LDS missionaries. I am excited about what this donation will mean in helping me train another 1,000 of our students.

And if $100,000 will make a difference, what could $200,000 do? The possibilities are what prompt me to ask all my friends, including the readers of this column: "Hey buddy, have you got a match?"

And I don't care whether you smoke or not.