Against "Matching Funds"

This post is inspired by my local NPR affiliate's "summer fun" fund drive.  I typically wake up every morning to NPR's Morning Edition on New England Public Radio (NEPR), to which I have been a sustaining member for the last two years.  I do not give a lot, but I consider it my fair share for content that contributes something meaningful to my life.  Moreover, I do not mind the on air fund drives.  I understand that under the model for public radio and television in the U.S., a regular iteration of on air requests for support are absolutely imperative to ensure that the larger business model for public media can operate without recourse to substantial government funding and without commercialization.  To the extent that this is the case, furthermore, public media is a local cooperative investment, a true community asset.  That said, I had to endure a significant share of fund raising this morning, accompanied by the recurring efforts of NEPR staff to chide listeners who may never have contributed into coughing up a donation to keep the lights on and the NPR network shows coming.  What I found surprisingly irritating, however, was the fact that this morning's collection was a "matching fund" drive.  That is, a handful of otherwise wealthy contributors, remaining anonymous, had agreed to match donations made between certain hours of the day.  The point that irritates me about this tactic to bring in larger quantities of donations is that the matching fund somehow implies that there is some wealthy set of contributors out in the local community who might be giving more to support this community asset except that they want to make their contributions contingent on roping in free riders or otherwise extracting larger contributions from people like me who are already making a good faith effort to keep our station on the air!  In the end, such individuals probably end up coughing up the funds to enable NEPR to balance the books, but they evidently can't bring themselves to increase a donation that is well within their means without shaming their neighbors into picking up more of the slack.  In reply, I can attest to the importance of having accessible and relatively unbiased public media, and, as argued, I am more than willing to donate a share that is reasonable in view of my income, but I find it somewhat disgusting to have a set of wealthy donors dangling their spare funds in front of me as an inducement to get me to raise my contribution when, evidently, they could stand to make up the rest of the shortfall all by themselves.  If being a philanthropist is good for the soul and having an educated and well informed community is important to the functioning of a democracy (especially at a time when the well-informed voters of England have just voted to stab themselves in the back and many, many Americans think it would be safe to put the keys to the nuclear arsenal in Donald Trump's hands), then, next time, spare us all the guilt and just open up your wallets!