If you’re looking for a fresh, fun, and engaging way to raise money for your nonprofit, a challenge fundraiser might be just what you need. It’s a simple concept: supporters commit to a challenge—like running a certain number of miles, doing daily acts of kindness, or giving up coffee for a month—while fundraising for your cause.
Challenge fundraisers often go hand-in-hand with peer-to-peer fundraising, where participants rally their friends and family to donate. These campaigns thrive online, making them perfect for virtual fundraising. Think of viral challenges like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, fitness-based fundraisers like Movember, or other creative ideas like a “Read-a-Thon” for literacy programs.
So, why do challenge fundraisers work so well? For one, they create a sense of community and excitement—people love a friendly challenge! Plus, they tap into social media, where participants eagerly share their progress, bringing more visibility to your cause. And the best part? They encourage new donors to get involved, often through personal connections.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to plan, execute, and optimize your own challenge fundraiser, ensuring it’s a success from start to finish. Let’s dive in!
1. Define Your Challenge
This is the fun part—coming up with a challenge that excites your supporters and connects to your mission! The best challenges are simple, engaging, and directly tied to your cause.
For example, an organization like Meat Fight that helps people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) tackle endurance events, ran a fundraiser that encouraged participants to create their own bike challenge. The funds raised equipped people living with MS with adaptive bikes and gear.
Meat Fight’s Bike-A-Thon, hosted on CauseVox
Or if you are like Rise Beyond All Odds, helping the disadvantaged in Haiti pursue their dreams, you have hosted a movement challenge! They invited participants to run, bike, or walk to spread hope.
Rise Beyond All Odds challenge fundraiser, hosted on CauseVox
Make It Meaningful with Storytelling
A great challenge isn’t just an activity—it tells a story. Why does this challenge matter? How does it connect to your work? Consider featuring impact stories, testimonials, or a personal journey that participants can relate to and share.
Rise Beyond All Odds did a great job showcasing how each challenge ties to the population/area they serve. This helps participants understand how their challenge and fundraising efforts are making a difference,
Rise Beyond All Odds used excellent storytelling within their challenge fundraiser
2. Set Clear, SMART Goals
Before launching your challenge fundraiser, take a moment to define your goals—because a challenge without a goal is just an activity! Use the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to set clear targets for fundraising, participation, and awareness.
Consider your fundraising goal. How much do you aim to raise? Look at past campaigns, your donor base, and average gift size to set a realistic but ambitious target. For example, “Raise $30,000 in 30 days to fund 100 scholarships.”
Also think through your participant goal. How many people do you want involved? A strong participant base fuels peer-to-peer fundraising, so consider what’s achievable. For instance, SABAH made it clear on the fundraising page that all supporters had to do was raise $25 each. This low barrier to entry means they probably wanted to recruit a large amount of peer-to-peer fundraisers. Either way, it is important to set goals and guidelines so both you and the fundraisers know what to expect.
SABAH laid out clear goals for their peer-to-peer participants by asking them to raise at least $25 each
Another important aspect to consider is your awareness goal. How will this spread your nonprofit’s mission? Challenge fundraisers naturally gain visibility through social media shares, personal fundraising pages, and community engagement. Define success here—maybe it’s reaching 100,000 impressions, gaining 500 new email subscribers, or securing media coverage.
By setting clear goals, you’ll keep your team focused and motivate participants with a shared purpose.
3. Choose Your Peer-To-Peer Fundraising Platform
A great peer-to-peer fundraising platform makes it easy for participants to share their challenge, rally support, and raise more for your cause. The platform should include personal and team fundraising pages where participants can tell their story, set goals, and track donations in real time.
Individual peer-to-peer fundraising for Jane-a-thon, a skiing challenge fundraiser, hosted on CauseVox
Activity tracking is an important feature that helps supporters stay engaged by logging their progress—whether it’s miles run, books read, or acts of kindness completed.
The right platform will automatically update donation and activity progress from each personal page to show progress toward your overall goals on your main campaign page.
Al-Huda School’s campaign shows the individual progress of each fundraiser and how it counts towards the overall goal.
To boost excitement, choose a platform with leaderboards to highlight top fundraisers and encourage friendly competition. Having a team fundraising option is also key, allowing groups to work together toward a shared goal.
Team peer-to-peer fundraising option for the Jane-a-thon challenge fundraiser
And don’t forget seamless social sharing—when participants can easily post updates, your campaign gains more visibility, leading to increased donations and awareness.
With CauseVox’s free platform, you have access to peer-to-peer tools that help make your challenge fundraiser interactive, community-driven, and more impactful!
Download Our Free Ultimate Guide To Peer-To-Peer-Fundraising:
4. Set Up Your Campaign
Now it’s time to bring your challenge fundraiser to life! Setting up your campaign on your peer-to-peer fundraising platform ensures a smooth experience for both your team and your supporters. Here’s how to get started:
Create Your Main Campaign Page
Your campaign page is the hub of your fundraiser. It should clearly explain:
- The challenge (what participants will do and why it matters)
- Your overall fundraising goal and a dynamic progress bar or fundraising thermometer to show progress toward the goal
- A strong call to action for site visitors to join the challenge or make a donation
- Engaging visuals and videos to capture attention
The Jane-A-Thon campaign page clearly states the goal, progress, a clear donate button, and showcases an impactful video.
Enable Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Pages
Each participant (or team) should get their own customizable fundraising page. These pages allow them to:
- Set their personal fundraising goal
- Share their reason for supporting your cause
- Track progress toward their activity and donation goal
- Easily share their page with friends and family
Showcasing progress, both donation or activity wise, on personal campaign pages encourages donors to give. Check out how it’s displayed on this challenge that has just started!
Optimize Your Donation Form
A seamless donation process means more completed gifts. Your form should be mobile-friendly and branded to match your campaign, creating a consistent giving experience. Offering suggested giving amounts with donation tiers helps donors decide quickly, while a recurring donation option encourages long-term support. The simpler and more intuitive your donation form, the more likely supporters are to complete their gifts.
Endure to Cure uses donation tiers to optimize their donation form.
Set Up Activity Tracking & Leaderboards
Keep participants engaged by allowing them to log progress (e.g., miles run, books read). Leaderboards add a competitive element, showcasing top fundraisers and teams to motivate more giving.
Well Aware created a leaderboard on their new campaign where you can see who raised the most money and who traveled the most miles by individual, team, or organization.
Encourage Social Sharing
Empower participants to share their pages across social media with built-in sharing buttons, hashtags, and fundraising milestones that trigger automatic updates.
Make social sharing easy on your fundraisers’ personal fundraising pages.
5. Create a Fundraising Toolkit
Want to set your participants up for success? A peer-to-peer fundraising toolkit makes it easy for them to hit the ground running. Think of it as their go-to guide for everything they need—sample emails and social media posts, fundraising tips, key campaign dates, and impact stories to share. A well-prepared fundraiser is a confident one, and the more tools they have, the better they’ll be at rallying donations.
Well Aware’s participant toolkit is easily accessible on their campaign page.
To make the process of creating your toolkit as seamless and quick as possible, we’ve created a free customizable toolkit template for you to use!
Download Our Free Customizable Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Toolkit Template & Guide:
6. Recruit Participants
Now that your challenge is set up, it’s time to get people excited and signed up! Start by reaching out to your biggest supporters—donors, board members, and volunteers. These are the people who already believe in your mission and can help spread the word.
Next, tap into your email list and social media followers. A few well-crafted emails and engaging posts can go a long way in building momentum. Share why this challenge matters, highlight early sign-ups, and make it easy to join with a clear call to action. Bonus tip: personally invite a few key supporters to be your “challenge champions” and lead the way in recruiting others.
Well Aware used Instagram to recruit fundraisers for their challenge campaign.
7. Promote the Challenge
The key to a successful challenge fundraiser? Promote, promote, promote! Use social media and email marketing to regularly share progress on both activities accomplished and donations raised, success stories, and reminders. Create engaging content with participant spotlights, countdowns, and fundraising milestones to keep excitement high.
Encourage your participants to maximize their personal fundraising using the resources in their peer-to-peer toolkit. The more they post, the more visibility your campaign gets—leading to more donations and new supporters. A simple ask like, “Tag three friends to join you!” can go a long way in expanding your reach.
8. Keep the Momentum Going
Once your challenge is rolling, don’t let the energy fade! Stay in contact with participants through emails, social media shoutouts, and encouragement. A simple check-in—“You’re doing amazing! Need any help reaching your goal?”—can make all the difference in keeping them motivated.
Spotlight participants who are crushing it! Share examples of creative fundraising efforts, like someone who made a heartfelt video or used your email templates to rally their network. Repost their content on your social channels and celebrate their progress—it not only encourages them but also inspires others to step up their game.
Don’t forget about your donors and broader audience either. Keep them updated with fundraising milestones, impact stories, and reminders that there’s still time to give. If possible, segment your email list—send a thank-you and update to those who’ve already donated, while nudging those who haven’t with a friendly reminder: “It’s not too late to support this incredible cause!”
9. Show Gratitude + Continue Cultivating Donors
So your challenge fundraiser was a success—now it’s time to celebrate your participants and donors! Start by announcing the final results, highlighting the total raised and the direct impact it will have. Just like before and during the campaign, whether it’s providing meals, funding scholarships, or supporting a community project, make sure everyone knows how their efforts made a difference.
Next, send personalized thank-you messages to both donors and participants. Encourage fundraisers to use your templated thank-you notes in their toolkit to show appreciation to their supporters—it’s a small step that strengthens donor relationships. A heartfelt “You made this possible!” message goes a long way in keeping people engaged for future campaigns.
You can also use a CRM to follow up with donors, share impact stories, and invite them to stay involved. An added bonus of using CauseVox’s CRM is that it will automatically save all the donor information. With that info easily accessible, you can segment and personalize future outreach hassle-free. Remember, fundraising isn’t just about one campaign—it’s about building long-term supporters who will come back year after year.
Case Study: H2gO Fundraiser with Well Aware
The H2gO campaign by Well Aware is a great example of a peer-to-peer challenge fundraiser done right. Supporters participated in a walk/run challenge to raise funds for clean water projects, using activity tracking to log their progress.
With a fully customized, DIY CauseVox fundraising site, Well Aware made it easy for participants to fundraise and track their impact.
Well Aware’s fully DIY and customizable fundraising site built with CauseVox
A standout feature? The custom, dynamic “My Journey” progress bar CauseVox built for their peer-to-peer fundraising pages, which visually showcased how far participants had walked or run. This not only kept fundraisers engaged but also made it fun and interactive for donors to follow along and support their efforts.
Well Aware’s custom progress bar for their H2gO challenge fundraiser
By including activity tracking in their peer-to-peer fundraising efforts,, Well Aware created an inspiring campaign that motivated supporters to take action—both physically and philanthropically.
Up For The Challenge?
Challenge fundraisers aren’t just about raising money—they’re about bringing people together, sparking excitement, and making a real impact. When you choose the right challenge, set clear goals, and give your participants the tools to succeed, you create something bigger than a fundraiser—you build a movement.
With a little planning and the right platform, your nonprofit can run a challenge fundraiser that gets people engaged, sharing, and giving. So what are you waiting for? Get started creating your challenge fundraiser for free on CauseVox today!
