not announcing the fact and only committing to the matched money
Since the donated amounts are usually public, the conspiracy will be blown eventually.
This happens on occasion in more public cases, with the unconditional donation clause buried in some fine print, though I can’t find any links ATM (was it Wikipedia? 2010 Olympics?). I recall that when something like that makes it into the media, there is a bit of grumbling from the small donors about being tricked into donating, but never too much fuss.
From a consequentialist point of view the worst thing that can happen is that the donors read the fine print the next time a matching drive is announced and some might refrain from donating if the matching part is fake. Or they might assume that it is a ruse and not donate because of that. So it might be somewhat unethical in that sense (you get more donations now at the expense of unspecified future matching drives, probably by someone else).
Since the donated amounts are usually public, the conspiracy will be blown eventually.
This happens on occasion in more public cases, with the unconditional donation clause buried in some fine print, though I can’t find any links ATM (was it Wikipedia? 2010 Olympics?). I recall that when something like that makes it into the media, there is a bit of grumbling from the small donors about being tricked into donating, but never too much fuss.
From a consequentialist point of view the worst thing that can happen is that the donors read the fine print the next time a matching drive is announced and some might refrain from donating if the matching part is fake. Or they might assume that it is a ruse and not donate because of that. So it might be somewhat unethical in that sense (you get more donations now at the expense of unspecified future matching drives, probably by someone else).
While I make my donations public someone else could easily make an offer like this and only publicize their matching donations.