As virtual fundraisers have grown in importance and popularity over the past couple years, peer to peer fundraisers have emerged as a necessary tool for nonprofits looking to raise more with less effort. CauseVox offers users the opportunity to run optimized peer to peer fundraising campaigns with our easy-to-use software.
After seeing thousands of organizations raise millions of dollars with peer to peer fundraising campaigns, we have put together this quick guide to show you how you can engage with your community to run a winning peer to peer fundraising campaign in 2024.
Quick Overview
What is Peer to Peer Fundraising?
Peer to peer fundraising is a type of fundraising campaign that involves activating your donors to fundraise on your behalf. Your supporters create personal and team fundraising pages and then connect with their social networks to collect donations from friends and family.
Benefits
Peer to peer fundraising allows organizations to raise more funds and awareness with less effort. On average, peer to peer fundraising raises twice as much as other digital fundraising methods. Running a peer to peer campaign will connect you with new contacts who are receptive to your mission because they know and trust someone who supports your organization.
SOS Children’s Villages used CauseVox to raise over $55,000 with their first peer to peer fundraising campaign. 419 new donors engaged with the campaign, accounting for 75% of their new donors!
Types of Peer to Peer Fundraising
Peer to peer fundraising campaigns generally fall into two categories:
- Launched by your organization: These campaigns can be event-based or centered on specific giving days and projects, such as #GivingTuesday.
- Launched by your supporters: Organizations create a general, ongoing campaign site and invite their supporters to create giving pages for a variety of reasons (birthdays, challenges, memorials and tributes, etc.).
To learn more about the basics of peer to peer fundraising, check out our Peer to Peer Fundraising Primer.
Platform
Now that you understand the basics of peer to peer fundraising, it’s time to decide on the right peer to peer fundraising platform for your campaign. You have many options for this, but CauseVox makes it easy by allowing your supporters to create visually appealing, easy-to-use and mobile-optimized giving pages. Learn more about how CauseVox can help you run a winning peer to peer fundraiser.
Whichever platform you choose, make sure that it provides an optimal experience for donors. Here’s a brief checklist of features to look for:
- Personal and team fundraising pages that are simple and easy to set up.
- Easy donation form with mobile payments.
- Flexible metric counting for donations, activity, and impact.
- Ability to set default content, design pages, and clone campaigns.
One best practice when designing your giving page is to showcase the impact of each donation amount. This will keep focus on your mission and will show donors the tangible contribution they are making to help you achieve your mission. You can use CauseVox to embed this information directly into the donation form.
Plan
Every fundraising campaign should have a solid plan behind it, but planning peer to peer fundraising campaigns is especially important. Here’s a checklist to make sure that you are set up for success.
- Set a specific and realistic fundraising goal
- Determine the measurable impact that this goal will have for your mission
- Create a definite timeline for your campaign (Pro tip: Many organizations opt for a 6-8 week timeline.)
- Consider how many fundraisers you would like to recruit
- Figure out whether you would like to use teams. These would be groups of supporters who collaborate to reach their collective fundraising goals. Teams are a great option if your peer to peer campaign includes a competitive component, like a long distance running or biking competition. For more information about how you can use teams to maximize your peer to peer fundraising, check out our deep dive blog post on the subject!
- Determine whether you will be offering any additional features in your peer to peer campaign, such as activities, prizes/giveaways, or corporate sponsorships
Looking for a fun way to add an incentive program to your peer to peer fundraiser? Consider using a tiered approach, by encouraging donors to meet certain fundraising benchmarks to qualify for incentives and prizes.
Invest In Kids included a giveaway program in their recent peer to peer fundraising campaign with an accessible starting benchmark of only $175. Thanks to their innovative thinking, they were able to exceed their goal and raise over $300,000 for their mission!
Recruit and Coach
When thinking about who to recruit as your initial peer to peer fundraisers, it helps to create a list of highly engaged supporters. These might be board members, volunteers, program alumni, or anyone else who is likely to put time and effort into this campaign.
Consider starting your recruitment process with a “soft launch,” by reaching out to a few highly engaged supporters to start fundraising first. This will allow you to show a baseline level of commitment and success from your community when you launch the campaign publicly.
The first two weeks after your public launch is likely when you will recruit the majority of your peer to peer fundraisers. Make sure you are using all social media and communication channels available to you to spread the word about your peer to peer fundraising effort.
Once you have your fundraisers recruited, set them up for success with a detailed fundraising toolkit. This should include templates for emails, texts, and social media posts as well as information about the campaign.
Not sure how to construct a fundraising toolkit that works for your organization? We’ve got you covered. Check out this free guide to learn how to create your own fundraising toolkit!
More Resources on Peer to Peer Fundraising
Peer to peer fundraising works because donors want to help you achieve your mission. Everyone wants to be a part of a winning team. So whenever possible, you should be showing them how close you are to achieving your fundraising goal. CauseVox’s peer to peer giving pages include progress bar options so your donors can see exactly how much they are helping with their contributions.
If you are looking for another way to show your donors their impact graphically, CauseVox offers a free fundraising thermometer. This easy-to-use virtual tool embeds directly into landing pages, communications, and social media posts so that your donors visually see how their donations move the needle.
For more best practices and peer to peer fundraising examples, check out our webinar on it!
