Peer to Peer Fundraising: The Ultimate Guide
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Peer-to-peer fundraising is an excellent fundraising strategy for charity organizations and schools. By tapping into your supporters’ social network of friends and family, your organization can reach a much larger audience of new donors, spreading greater awareness of your cause and raising significantly more dollars than traditional fundraising campaigns.
So how can peer-to-peer campaigns benefit your organization or charity beyond raising needed funds? What are ways that you can use peer to peer that work with your organization‘s supporters and mission? What’s the difference between peer-to-peer fundraising and crowdfunding?
Here’s what we’ll cover in this comprehensive guide to peer-to-peer fundraising for nonprofits and charities.
What is Peer to Peer Fundraising?
Peer to peer is a powerful method of fundraising that leverages your organization’s supporters to fundraise on behalf of your group or cause. Your supporters contact their friends and family and request donations to support your organization. It’s also known as p2p fundraising or P2P crowdfunding and sometimes social fundraising.
Organizations with a dedicated supporter base and a solid social media marketing strategy that utilize peer-to-peer fundraising can meet fundraising goals, gain new supporters, and increase their impact on their community.
Benefits of Peer to Peer Fundraising
P2P fundraising campaigns can be wildly successful when well managed. Benefits of these fundraising campaigns include:
- Acquire New Supporters: Peer-to-peer fundraising is a great way to expand your organization‘s reach and share your cause with new donors and supporters.
- Strengthen Connections: As individuals actively fundraise on your school or nonprofit‘s behalf, the connection that the supporter has for your mission and organization is strengthened.
- Empower Participants: P2P is a unique way of empowering individuals to raise funds independently, with more of a supporting role from organizational staff.
- Save on Staff Time: Since peer-to-peer participants are volunteers, it decreases the need for staff time and resources. This means that P2P campaigns are generally cost-effective with a strong ROI. Of course, you still need to support and encourage your fundraisers to succeed!
- Drive Revenue: Nonprofits can raise more money through online donations received by reaching a wider pool of supporters.
15 Best Peer to Peer Fundraising Ideas
P2P campaigns are best suited for active events (think run/bike/ride fundraisers) and friendly competitions that promote community. These types of nonprofit fundraising events work well because new supporters and donors can get excited about supporting the individual who participates in the event and learn more about your cause. When selecting the best peer-to-peer fundraiser for your organization, consider your mission and how you want to brand your organization to new supporters.
The best peer-to-peer campaign ideas to raise money and awareness for charitable organizations are below.
Walk-a-thons & Charity Walks
Walkathons are great fundraisers for nonprofits and schools that can raise a lot of money with few upfront costs. Ensure your walkathon starts with a great online experience for your participants. People who sign up for the run/walk will register online and create their personal fundraising page to take online donations.
Spin-a-thons
A spin-a-thon® is a fundraising event where participants raise money by riding stationary bicycles and asking friends and family to donate to the cause. It’s a great way to start a community party by playing music and having food available for everyone to share before, during, or after the spin.
Color Runs
Who doesn’t love a fun run or walk? Hosting a color run fundraiser is a great, memorable way to get people interested in your cause. Color Run Fundraisers make great fundraising events for a simple reason – they are fun! Participants raise money on your crowdfunding website.
Golf Marathons
Golfers are some of the most competitive people, so there’s hardly a better way to get them involved in fundraising than to host a golf marathon. Offer golf tournament contests like hole in one contests, who can golf the most holes, or who can be the first to get to 100 holes over the tournament weekend.
Bike-a-thons
With a bike-a-thon fundraiser, cyclists bike a predetermined course and commit to raising money for your organization. Bike-a-thon fundraisers work well because almost everyone enjoys riding a bike. They are a great family or corporate event while also offering a venue for avid cyclists to participate in endurance rides.
Hit-a-thons
A great way for baseball and softball teams to raise money is to hold a hit-a-thon fundraising event. Each hit-a-thon participant will be raising funds by asking friends and family to donate a certain amount per foot or per hit. Get people watching and have them pledge money for every hit scored. Bonus points (and funds!) if they score a home run.
Clay Shoots
To increase fundraising and awareness around a clays tournament, many organizations are turning to P2P. If you have supporters interested in clay shooting, a unique fundraiser gets shooters to participate by shooting at clay targets. This is an entertaining group activity that’s a bit different from the rest and will make for a fun day outdoors.
Read-a-thons
If your organization is a school, library, or advocate for literacy, why not try a read-a-thon fundraiser? Reading challenges promote a love of reading in kids and everyone who wants to participate. Just get involved with a local library or school and get everyone reading for your fundraiser. Bring on the pledges!
Dance-a-thons
Ready to get shaking? Involve your community in a dance marathon where they can raise money for your cause. Register and take donations online for a live or live-streamed event. You can change the theme and style of dance depending on the age group and even hold competitions within the dance-a-thon.
Choir Fundraising
When implementing a choir crowdfunding campaign, each choir member is responsible for bringing in donations. We have hosted several successful 30/30/30 choir campaigns where choir members have 30 days to find 30 donors of $30 to reach the choir goals.
Bowl-a-thons
Bowl-a-thons make great FUNdraising events for many types of organizations. Your organization benefits as bowlers create teams and compete to raise the most money for your cause. In fact, Bowl for Kids’ Sake is the signature fundraising event for Big Brothers Big Sisters at the national level.
Polar Plunges
Fancy taking a plunge into icy cold waters in some of the coldest months of the year? We didn’t think so! But get a few sponsors into the mix and rally your friends because the more plunges taken, the more money is donated. This is a great fundraising idea that can go viral and gain a lot of attention from supporters.
Dog Walks
Furry friends are so important, which is why many charities host dog walk fundraising campaigns. Why not please your dogs with a fundraising dog walk or run, get some exercise, and give back to a local animal shelter or community organization? Dog Walks are fun peer-to-peer crowdfunding events and usually 5K or less in length.
Serve-a-thons
Raising money for your school or charity can be a great opportunity to get participants involved in their local community. Try service projects where participants volunteer to get a certain project done in the area surrounding their school or community, all while raising funds. These are generally one-day or weekend projects.
Scavenger Hunts
Get the whole community together for a fun day finding items at a scavenger hunt. Hand out a list of items and clues as to where they may be, getting sponsors to donate both items and funds towards a fun day for the community. Families can participate, and the kids will love it. The more items found, the more funds raised!
Best Virtual Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Ideas
Canceled fundraising events have financially hit many nonprofits due to COVID-19. By reworking your P2P fundraising strategies, your organization can continue fundraising during this global pandemic. To do this, you’ll need safe and effective virtual fundraising ideas and the P2P technology to make it happen. We’ve included this list of the best virtual peer-to-peer fundraising ideas during COVID and beyond.
Virtual Walkathons and Fun Runs
Virtual walkathons are great fundraisers for schools that can raise a lot of money with few upfront costs. With parental involvement, these are fun and easy to organize.
Virtual Happy Hours and Performances
Get your livestream ready! Virtual performances work great and can be used to highlight school music groups, marching bands, and choirs.
Online Product Sales with P2P Pages
Virtual merchandise sales are a no-brainer for no/low contact fundraising. Our Simple Stores make it so easy you can get set up and selling in no time.
Fundraising Raffles
Online raffles are the perfect way to raise money for many schools. We offer the ability to incorporate peer to peer fundraising in raffles, where students sell tickets via a personal fundraising page. Our raffle software can even randomly select and notify winners. Just find a prize and go!
Virtual Bikeathons
Much like virtual walkathons, bikeathon fundraisers can be run virtually with just a few tweaks. Biking is a great socially distant sport, so some kids may even bike together. Students create a fundraising page and commit to biking in support of the school.
Virtual Reading Challenges
Readathons are a great way to keep kids busy during COVID and raise money for high school programs. All you need to do is set up the Athon website, where students can track the number of books or pages read. Donors make contributions based on the reading results, and top fundraisers are highlighted.
Running Peer to Peer Product Sales
Fundraisers know that product sales are a great way to get supporters involved in raising funds for your school, PTO, or group. Many organizations sell candy, school spirit wear, magazines, holiday items, and gift or discount cards. These custom fundraising items can make for a successful fundraising sales contest, especially if sold during seasons when the item is in high demand.
Our peer-to-peer sales platform provides personal fundraising pages for your organization’s fundraisers. The system tracks total dollars earned and top fundraising individuals and teams. All sales are securely processed online, making managing the sales program much easier for the fundraising organizer. Organizations can still choose to accept and enter check sales into the program.
With DoJiggy, peer to peer isn’t just for Run/Walk/Ride events anymore.
Organizing Peer to Peer Fundraising Events
Successful peer-to-peer fundraising events hinge on the recruitment and action of a strong leadership team. Your team should include your development department and volunteers who strongly connect to your cause or charity. Members of your leadership team will take on various fundraising event and planning responsibilities, including:
- Event logistics and permits
- Event budgeting and financial planning
- Recruiting and supporting event participants and volunteers
- Gaining sponsorships and in-kind donations
- Managing your peer to peer software platform
- Day of event operations
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Best Practices
Peer-to-peer fundraising events can be great fun and generate high revenue for nonprofits and charity organizations, but what are the best ways to boost your charity campaigns to get the most out of them? Let’s dive into our top peer-to-peer fundraising best practices to help you on your way to a successful P2P fundraising event:
Start Planning Early!
So start early, gather a strong fundraising team, and plan for at least six months before hosting a peer-to-peer crowdfunding campaign. This ensures your group will have the time necessary to reach and exceed fundraising goals.
Build A Strong Brand Across Your P2P Campaign
The fundraiser you choose to host says a lot about your organization and brand. So, when planning P2P fundraisers, consider how your fundraiser can help communicate your mission and strengthen awareness of your brand and cause.
- Choose a fundraiser that communicates your nonprofit’s mission and message successfully. Maybe pick a unique fundraiser with a theme that aligns perfectly with the message you want to convey.
- Reach out to like-minded brands and community businesses for sponsorships.
- Share your vision with participants and volunteers – they are the champions of your brand, and their actions reflect positively or negatively on your organization.
Choose The Right P2P Crowdfunding Platform
Peer-to-peer campaigns rely on powerful peer-to-peer crowdfunding software tools and social media networks and integrations. Utilizing online fundraising software allows your message to be organically spread by your supporters. At the same time, your nonprofit or school can manage the over-arching fundraising campaign and maintain brand consistency.
Some features and tools of our P2P software include:
- Secure event registration
- Provides participants and teams with the ability to personalize the fundraising experience via personal fundraising pages
- Fundraising pages include images and videos, social media integration links (Facebook and Twitter) to easily share with friends and family, and more
- Templates include gamification tools like top fundraisers’ leaderboards and event fundraising thermometers
- Donor interaction via comments and listing of all donations
- Ability to easily track and distribute prizes and awards with our prize management system
- Sponsorship promotion for local businesses sponsors
- Virtual event support – including our live streaming platform
- Free text to donate (for US-based campaigns)
We offer more features and functionality for nonprofit and volunteer managers as well as an easy, clean user experience for donors and supporters.
Fundraising
Thermometers
Personal
Fundraising Pages
P2P
Leaderboards
Text to Donate
(US clients)
Live Stream
Studio
Digital Wallet
Support
Custom
Branding
Easy
Social Share
Embeddable
Widgets
Recurring
Donations
Fundraising
Landing Page
Offline
Donations
Supporter
Chatter
Custom
URLs
Event
Check-in
Automated
Receipts
Export Reports
to CSV
Per Unit
Pledges
Crowdfunding
Perks
Google Analytics
Integration
Gift Aid for
UK Organizations
Sponsor
Promotion
FAQ
Section
Canadian
Tax Receipts
Facebook Pixel
Integration
Countdown
Timer
Participant
Privacy Options
Prize
Management
Peer to Peer
Functionality
Free
Pricing
Share Fundraising Goals And Progress
Building and maintaining solid relationships with your donors and sponsors is vital to your fundraising success. Donors want to know how the charity event they support is going and how close it is to smashing its fundraising goals. If you want to keep your supporters in the loop and coming back for your fundraisers in the future, don’t forget to:
- Send out fundraising updates and progress posts via SMS, emails, on your fundraising website, and via social media.
- Collect contact details to personally thank supporters for their donations and participation and strengthen relationships for future events.
- Show your donors and sponsors how they are making an impact. Do this by sending out a breakdown of how their donations are being spent with details of who and how they are personally helping.
Offer Prizes And Incentives To Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraisers
Offering crowdfunding rewards is a great way to motivate supporters to give to your nonprofit’s P2P crowdfunding campaigns. Many nonprofits use rewards in their crowdfunding campaigns to boost revenue and increase supporter involvement in a cause. These perks are essentially gifts given to supporters at defined donation levels. A common example is an organization offering donors a custom t-shirt for $100 or larger donations.
Our peer-to-peer software includes a prize management and incentivization system. This allows your organization to easily monitor fundraising prizes and awards. The function is completely configurable for your prize levels and ideas. A prize widget will appear on personal fundraising pages when a participant has reached a certain prize level, and your participants will love to see this!
Kids love prizes of all kinds and will work hard to earn even small prizes. We recommend that School Fun Run and read-a-thon prizes be structured to encourage everyone to participate and not leave anyone behind.
Gamify Your P2P Fundraising Campaign To Make It Fun
Do you just want the bullet point headings or the small paragraph under each heading explaining briefly how each gamification element can help boost your P2P fundraiser?
Gamification strategies are a great way to get your supporters to have fun in the P2P fundraising process and stir up some competitiveness that benefits your organization. Take a look at a few of DoJiggy’s winning and innovative gamification techniques and see how they can boost your P2P fundraiser’s popularity and proceeds.
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Free P2P Fundraising Thermometers/Fundraising Progress Bars
Free Fundraising Thermometers are included in all of DoJiggy’s fundraising website templates. Our peer-to-peer crowdfunding platform uses thermometers at the individual fundraiser, group, and campaign levels. -
Leaderboards for Top Fundraisers
Leaderboards build excitement and competitiveness among your P2P campaign participants with our free leaderboards to monitor individual and team fundraising leaders. -
Badges and Trophies
A trophy widget will appear on personal and team fundraising pages to showcase a participant’s rank or when they have reached a certain prize level that participants and donors alike will love to see. The function is completely configurable for your prize levels and ideas. -
Prizes and Incentives
Optimize your supporters’ interest by rewarding them with digital tools and tangible prizes. Achieve this through hosting a raffle, providing customized printed charity merchandise, or giving away other prizes. -
Gamification on our Free Live Streaming Platform
Try adding quizzes and interactive games to your digital fundraising campaigns, connect with more people, and gain global outreach. Our platform now offers gamification for virtual events. Organizers can add polls and trivia questions to your live stream, making for an interactive event where you can reward winners. -
Text-to-Donate and Mobile Giving
Text-To-Donate and mobile giving are fantastic gamification techniques that we offer. Text-to-Donate allows your donors to easily support your organization or charity at any time from anywhere right from their mobile phones. -
Social Media P2P Fundraising
Post updates and videos about your P2P campaign, live stream your fundraiser, create a hashtag challenge and set up stories and highlights to produce an unforgettable charity event. Incorporate gamification elements into the social media part of your fundraising campaign by asking donors to match the number of likes a post about your charity receives by donating a corresponding monetary amount.
For a more detailed and easy-to-follow P2P fundraising planning timeline and checklist, check out our Ultimate Guide To Event Planning For Nonprofits.
Equip Your Participants With The Tools To Succeed
We have compiled an extensive and easy-to-follow Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Toolkit for anyone considering a P2P fundraiser. You’ll find helpful fundraising tools for peer-to-peer participants, including sample fundraising letters and templates for your upcoming walk-a-thon, bowl-a-thon, jog-a-thon, or other peer-to-peer fundraising events.
Always Say Thank You!
The expression, ‘Good manners may not cost anything, but their worth exceeds any monetary value,’ could not be more apt when talking about treating your donors well. Without generous donors, even the most hyped fundraiser of the year will fail to generate proceeds for its cause. So, don’t forget to thank them and make them feel appreciated. Here are a few ways you can thank your donors for their support:
- Write personalized emails
- Post photos on social media of the fundraiser’s accomplishments, tagging them with your donor’s names
- Send a short thank-you video showing the impact of their donation to remind them of why they were inspired to give in the first place
Tips for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaign Success
Ensure your p2p fundraising campaign website is responsive and readily visible on mobile devices. Most social media interaction is done on mobile phones, and your crowdfunding website will be accessed through social media. Therefore, it’s vitally important for your campaign page to be responsive and professional in appearance and allow for easy donation collection to raise money online.- Stories are of utmost importance. The individual raising funds should share their reason for loving the organization’s mission, along with the organization’s ability to clearly define what makes their mission come to life. Taking the time to frame your success stories compellingly helps to ensure that people feel connected to your work and compelled to give.
- Individuals raising funds and potential donors must be able to see the progress of a campaign. Ensure the crowdfunding software you are considering has a fundraising thermometer to illustrate how much money has been raised thus far towards a goal. This can also be shown in the form of leaderboards. Our sites use fundraising thermometers at the campaign, team, and individual fundraiser levels.
- Every P2P campaign must be able to be shared on social media with ease. Ensuring that individuals can easily share links to the campaign creates access for people wishing to give financial support.
- Your fundraisers are likely busy people with limited time to raise money for your organization. Make it easy by providing resources and fundraising tools P2P for volunteers.
- Create weekly campaign progress reports that are sent out to each volunteer participant so that everyone understands where the campaign stands in terms of goals and which individuals are the highest performers. Your role as an administrator is to support and motivate your participants.
- Weave a culture of gratitude through every step of the campaign’s progress. Ensuring participants feel appreciated and supported will increase the likelihood of their enthusiastic support and future participation.
- Don’t give away a large percentage of your fundraising proceeds for software and payment processing fees. Many crowdfunding platforms advertise themselves as a free service but read the fine print. All e-commerce transactions carry a transaction fee (since Visa and MasterCard charge merchants for the privilege of accepting their cards – even for charitable donations). We offer a percent-based model or a free option with tipping by donors enabled – whatever works for your charitable organization.
Ensure your p2p fundraising campaign website is responsive and readily visible on mobile devices. Most social media interaction is done on mobile phones, and your crowdfunding website will be accessed through social media. Therefore, it’s vitally important for your campaign page to be responsive and professional in appearance and allow for easy donation collection to raise money online.
Your fundraisers are likely busy people with limited time to raise money for your organization. Make it easy by providing resources and fundraising tools P2P for volunteers.
Peer to Peer Fundraising vs. Crowdfunding – What’s the Difference?
Peer to peer fundraising is a type of crowdfunding, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. The difference is that with P2P fundraising, your supporters create personal fundraising pages on behalf of your cause. Your supporter shares his or her page with friends, family, and other community members, and donations are made directly to your organization via their page. With traditional crowdfunding for nonprofits or school crowdfunding campaigns, donations are made by many people directly to the organization or cause, but without the personal or team fundraising page or component.
DoJiggy P2P crowdfunding software supports both of these types of social fundraising campaigns.
Evaluating the Value of Peer to Peer Fundraising for Nonprofits
Some organizations have asked us to help them evaluate the benefits and value of peer-to-peer campaigns. We created this infographic to help answer the question – is peer-to-peer fundraising a good idea for my organization?
See how much value a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign can bring to your cause today! Try our easy peer-to-peer crowdfunding software. We support walk-a-thons, school fun runs and jogs, bike-a-thons, school reading fundraisers, bowl-a-thons, and more. Use our leading peer-to-peer platform for FREE with optional tips from your donors, so your organization can keep more money for your cause.
