Do you need a way to spread awareness about your cause? Have you been looking for a fun and effective way to diversify your fundraising strategy? Do you want to get your supporters more involved in your organization? If so, peer-to-peer fundraising might be the solution for you.
Peer-to-peer fundraising shares many similarities with crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a strategy in which organizations raise many small contributions from a large group of people, which is a very effective way to increase your revenue. In fact, according to these crowdfunding statistics from Fundly, $34 billion was raised globally through crowdfunding campaigns last year.
Essentially, peer-to-peer fundraising is a multi-tiered version of crowdfunding in which individual supporters launch their own fundraising pages to raise money on behalf of your organization.
In peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, you still collect small donations from multiple people, but your supporters play a more important facilitator role. For this reason, peer-to-peer fundraising can help your donors feel more connected with your organization as they give back to a cause they care about. This makes it an excellent strategy for alumni fundraising. Supporters with a strong connection to your organization will be happy to participate.
Although peer-to-peer fundraising has great potential for success, there are some essentials that you must consider before launching your own campaign. Here are our top necessities for a fantastic peer-to-peer fundraising campaign:
- Clear Communication
- Support for Organizers
- Multi-Channel Marketing
These three essentials will ensure that you manage an organized, effective, and fun fundraiser. You’ll be running your own peer-to-peer campaign in no time! Let’s get started.
1. Clear Communication
Because you’ll be working with a network of fundraisers, clear communication is crucial to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The last thing you want is for some fundraisers to have one understanding of your cause or fundraising process, while another group has a completely different understanding. Streamlining your communication strategies can help avoid these inconsistencies.
You also need to make sure that your cause is compelling for potential donors who are less familiar with your organization. Your website may experience more traffic than usual during this campaign, so double-checking that your messaging is on brand is highly recommended.
To maintain clear communication to everyone participating in your campaign, you can:
- Streamline donation forms: Keep your donation forms simple and easy to fill out. This way, you can avoid donor abandonment (an occurrance that takes place when a contributor leaves the donation page because of a distraction or they hit a blocker to donating).
- Offer templates: Provide your fundraisers with templates to use for emails or social media posts to make it easier to raise awareness.
- Keep your branding consistent: Across your different platforms, be sure to maintain consistent branding. Doing so will help prevent donor confusion and better establish your organization within the nonprofit space.
- Present opportunities for additional funds: You should spread the word about every fundraising option you have. Perhaps you could encourage supporters to explore matching gift opportunities or set up recurring gifts.
Clear communication across the board ensures that your campaign will run smoothly. By making yourself available to fundraisers, you also demonstrate your appreciation of their efforts to support your cause.
2. Support for Organizers
Your fundraisers put a great deal of time and effort into managing their campaign pages, so you want to do everything that you can to support them. Because the success of any type of crowdfunding or peer-to-peer campaign hinges on many people uniting to support your cause, your fundraisers may be even more effective if you can provide them with the tools to reach wider audiences.
To support your organizers, you can:
- Share updates: Be sure to share updates of how close you are to reaching your fundraising goals. This way, organizers can see how their efforts are directly contributing. Try using engaging visual elements, such as a fundraising thermometer, to track and communicate progress.
- Give them access to helpful information: As your fundraisers design their campaigns for their outreach, it might be helpful to give them access to your brand guide, post templates, or other tools that you use during fundraising.
- Reshare their posts: Social media is one of the most effective ways your fundraisers engage their network of supporters. Show them that you appreciate ad support their hard work by liking, commenting, and even resharing their posts or images on these networks.
- Reward the most successful fundraisers: Consider offering some small incentives for successful fundraisers. Maybe they get a shoutout onsocial media, a free t-shirt, or the opportunity to come tour your facility.
Supporting your fundraisers is a great way to demonstrate your appreciation for their efforts. You might even encourage first-time donors to contribute because they see that you’re an organization that truly values its supporters.
3. Multi-Channel Marketing
Using multiple channels to support your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign is a very effective way to market your fundraiser. In fact, multi-channel marketing is an important part of any fundraising strategy that all nonprofits should be using, even beyond peer-to-peer fundraisers. Here are the online channels you should use to drive your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign engagement:
- Email: Consider creating a digital newsletter for your peer-to-peer fundraisers to provide tips and tricks to improve their strategy. You could also send updates about your fundraising goals to subscribers. Be sure that you write an interesting subject line to increase your open rates!
- Social media: Social media is one of the most common ways volunteer fundraisers will spread the word about their peer-to-peer fundraising pages. For this reason, it’s essential that you have a robust online presence, interact with your fundraisers, and post on your own account consistently.
- Text: Text messaging helps you communicate with your supporters and donors quickly and effectively. Provide links to your social media and website so that supporters can easily learn more.
- Website: All of your other marketing channels should point back to your website. This is your central hub for information about your nonprofit, tools for peer-to-peer fundraising, and more. Be sure that your donation option is clearly visible on your site to make it easy for supporters to contribute.
Using a multi-channel marketing strategy is the way to go for any type of fundraiser, but especially peer-to-peer campaigns. Creating a noticeable presence for your organization ultimately helps you expand your reach and connect with more people, which increases the awareness about your cause.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a very effective way to increase your revenue, connect with new donors, and encourage dedicated supporters to get more involved. This fundraising idea is one of the best ways to reach new audiences, making it well worth your time. Whether you launch a coordinated peer-to-peer campaign or encourage your supporters to start their own crowdfunding fundraisers around big events (such as graduations or anniversaries), there are lots of ways to mobilize your supporter base to contribute to your organization. Good luck!
