Peer-to-peer campaigns are a form of fundraising where individuals work together to raise money for a cause. Nonprofits all over the world are embracing this type of fundraiser because it is one of the most popular types of fundraising. Almost 40% of people in the US say they have given money to a charity because a friend or family member asked them to.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is an effective way to collect a lot of money quickly, while also spreading awareness of your organization to new audiences and deepening your supporters’ connection to your mission.
To make your next peer-to-peer fundraising campaign more successful, it is a good idea to do some research to see what other opportunities are available.
Peer-to-peer fundraising tips
Asking for donations is an important part of fundraising. The way you approach potential donors and the way you tell your nonprofit story affects how much money you will receive in donations. Even though your peer-to-peer participants are not experienced in fundraising, they will still need some assistance.
Here are some ways to get the most out of your peer-to-peer campaign and motivate your volunteers to fundraise: -Provide the right tools: Make sure your volunteers have everything they need to be successful, including materials, resources, and training. -Use gamification elements: Use goals, competition, and recognition to motivate your volunteers and keep them engaged. -Encourage social sharing: Use social media and other online channels to get the word out about your campaign and encourage volunteers to share their progress and successes.
1. Come up with an idea that fundraisers are excited about
You need to come up with an idea that your peer-to-peer participants will be genuinely excited about in order to recruit them. This means that you should plan and prepare your goals and motivations for the fundraiser well in advance.
Make sure you:
- Determine a SMART fundraising goal
- Establish what your organization will do with the funds
- Use past peer-to-peer events to back up your claims
When recruiting new fundraisers, make them the focus of your story.
Explain the need for the peer-to-peer campaign and then discuss just how exactly their roles will benefit. If supporters can see how their own fundraising can make a difference for your cause, they’re more likely to get involved.
To make your campaign even more exciting, host an event alongside it. There are many popular event ideas that involve people working together, such as walkathons or game nights.
2. Prepare your fundraisers
This is the first time your participants have ever fundraised, so you should assume that they don’t know anything about it. If someone is interested in working for a nonprofit, they might not know where to start if they haven’t conducted their own campaigns before.
So, how can you effectively prepare your peer-to-peer fundraisers?
One way to engage your community is to create a welcome quest that gets people started. This text is introducing participants to the campaign and explaining how to use the fundraising tools and how to send the first email out.
**Don’t forget to give your volunteers some tips on how to raise money.**
For example, you could tell them how personal storytelling can encourage more donations. Make sure to include storytelling elements when sharing your donation link or on your fundraising page. This will help people understand why their donation is important and how it will help make a difference.
In case they have any questions, make sure they’re assigned a go-to staff member.
3. Use branded pages
Peer-to-peer fundraising allows your fundraisers to have their own online donation page. This is an opportunity for them to advocate for your organization and campaign by telling their own story.
Each donation page should be personalized to the participant and branded to your organization. This means using:
- Your nonprofit’s signature colors
- Organization logo
- Mission statement
- Links back to your nonprofit website
This image demonstrates how you can brand a peer-to-peer event page. Adding the Humane Society logo to the left side of the page makes it clear to readers that this is the organization hosting the event.
By doing this, new donors will be properly introduced to your organization and they can start to develop a relationship with your brand. Donations made on a branded donation form result in an average of 38% larger gifts than donations made through a generic PayPal page.
Your campaign will be more successful if you brand your donation page because new supporters that you reach are nearly 70% more likely to give again.
If a nonprofit has a branded donation page, they will receive five times more donations and raise nearly $15,000 more than a nonprofit with a generic donation page.
This text is convincing the reader to create a custom donation form for their campaign.
You should use the same imagery and wording in your donation form as you do in your email appeals in order to maintain the donor’s emotional connection to the cause and to ensure that the donation goes to the campaign that the donor intended.
4. Incorporate social media
Social media is not only a great place for your volunteer fundraisers to post their peer-to-peer pages, but it’s also a great platform for creating awareness with unique content.
Recently, it has been shown that Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can be valuable platforms to spread the word about peer-to-peer campaigns in creative ways. Social media platforms provide an easy way to share videos and stories with a large number of people.
Organizations like Camp Kesem recruit college students to help promote their campaigns on social media. Volunteers for Camp Kesem use Facebook to post videos that encourage people to donate to their page.
The videos include people eating spicy ramen if they hit $500 and more professional compilations of the community that Camp Kesem serves.
Try to find a peer-to-peer platform that has Facebook integrations to show real-time money for Facebook users.
5. Ask your fundraisers to set personal goals
Think about how much money you want to raise in your peer-to-peer campaign and divide that number by the number of volunteers you have. This will help each person understand how much money they need to raise. One way to set an easy, attainable goal to motivate people is to ____________.
If your goal is to earn $10,000 from 50 participants, then each person’s goal could be $200.
When they reach their goal, ask them to continue to raise it. When they achieve a goal, they can share their success with others and encourage more donations.
6. Gamify your event
What are some ways you can keep up your motivation for a peer-to-peer campaign? A key strategy is peer-to-peer gamification.
This involves adding game mechanics to a non-game situation in order to make it more competitive, engaging, and motivating for volunteers.
Here are some quick tips if you want to gamify your own peer-to-peer event:
Encourage fundraisers to form teams. A great way to keep your volunteers entertained is to put them into teams. Give the team that raises the most money a fun prize to motivate them even more.
Come up with creative badges for top fundraisers. Badges are awarded to volunteers when they reach certain milestones or achievements. The awards can be displayed with pride on the recipient’s personal peer-to-peer page.
Badges not only show that someone is an active fundraiser, but they also make others want to achieve the same milestones. Some ideas for badges include giving them for page completions, first donations, reaching $100, and more.
7. The incentives
Incentives are a great way to motivate your supporters and get them excited about your initiative. When you are feeling fundraising fatigue or your donors seem to have lost interest, try using volunteers to help invigorate your cause.
In order to keep supporters excited, another great way to refresh them is to announce a donation match campaign. Giving donors the opportunity to double their impact can make them more enthusiastic about your campaign and attract new donors.
You could try to get corporate sponsors or large donors to sponsor a donation match.
If you can’t run a match campaign, another way to get people to participate is by giving them public recognition.
You should thank your supporters in a way that is publicly visible, such as on a leadership board on your website or by tagging them on social media. This will make them feel appreciated and encourage others to donate as well.
8. The soft launch
Don’t launch your campaign until you have planned and collected all of your assets. Taking the next logical step in your campaign might not be the best idea because it could make your campaign end sooner than you wanted. And no one wants that.
You need to launch your campaign in two phases, a “soft launch” and a hard launch, in order to increase its chances of success.
The soft launch of your campaign is when you recruit core supporters into the campaign before promoting it to a wider audience. This period should last for about a week.
Other people are more likely to want to join something that appears to be already successful, so if you can get some people to jumpstart your fundraising efforts, it can create an impression of success that motivates others to join in and be part of your “winning story.”
You should ask your most loyal donors, fundraisers, social media supporters, and volunteers to help your campaign achieve its goals.
9. The promotion
After your soft launch, the success of your campaign depends on how much effort you put into promoting it. The most successful fundraising campaigns use every available marketing channel to reach potential supporters.
A study by M+R found that a 2-3 part email series generated nearly four times the response rate and twice the average donation size compared to a one-off email.
Write a series of emails that introduce the campaign, its key marketing message, and its goal. Start by introducing the campaign in the first email, followed by the key marketing message in the second email, and finally the goal in the third email. Each email should include a link to create a fundraising page.
To draw attention to your campaign, you should place a banner promoting it on your website’s homepage.
Action for Hunger has a holiday gift guide campaign on their website which you can use to promote your own peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.
Use your social media platforms to share your prepared campaign materials. Your campaign’s cover and background photos should be changed to something that represents your campaign. Make sure to share your blog stories, photos, videos, and other engaging content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This will help get your followers engaged with your content.
You can find more campaign ideas in our Social Media Guide. This guide covers how you can engage donors on each social channel.
If you’re only posting asks to donate or start fundraising, you will probably annoy your followers. Try to mix things up and post other content as well. Your posts should include links to your website so that people can learn more about your campaign.
10. The communications plan
It is important to vary your communication style to fit the needs of your audience. Email segmentation is a process of dividing your email list into smaller groups based on specific criteria. By doing this, you can send more targeted messages to each group, which can help increase support for your campaign. Your segments might look something like this:
• Inactive Fundraisers – those who have raised $0
Reach out to these supporters and give them any advice or resources they need to start fundraising.
,000 in the past 12 months -People who have raised at least $1,000 in the past 12 months are considered active fundraisers.
Make sure your employees are always motivated by sharing success stories and campaign updates with them.
are often tapped to run for office because they have demonstrated an ability to raise significant amounts of money People who can raised large amounts of money for causes are often asked to run for office because they have shown they can collect significant funds.
Send messages that are personalized and only focus on thanking the person for their commitment. Gather your top fundraisers to help you recruit other people to raise money or to extend the overall reach of your campaign.
11. The strong finish
The final part of your campaign is just as significant as its beginning.
By creating a two-part email series to ramp up urgency, you can ensure a strong finish. At the start of next week, send an email reminding fundraisers that there is only one week left to reach their fundraising goals.
contact your most productive fundraiser and ask for their help to complete your goal A few days before your campaign ends, send a final email thanking fundraisers for contributing to your success. Celebrate what you’ve been able to achieve together and look forward to continuing the partnership.
12. The follow up
Any successful fundraising campaign must include follow-up in order to be successful. It’s time to reach out to your supporters again now that you’ve achieved success with their help. Make sure to:
Donors prefer to be thanked with personalized letters, according to surveys. You should at the very least send thank-you emails, which can be easily segmented to send a more tailored message.
• Share campaign results – How much did your campaign raise? What is its exact impact? How does this affect your mission moving forward?
Make sure to ask volunteers and fundraisers about their experiences and what they thought about the event or campaign. This way you can get feedback and learn what could be improved for next time. Find out what they enjoyed and what they didn’t. This allows you to better plan future peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns.
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