Peer to Peer Fundraising: The Ultimate Nonprofit Guide

Peer-to-peer fundraising is an excellent fundraising strategy for charity organizations and schools. By harnessing the power of your supporters’ social networks, your organization can tap into an audience of potential new donors, amplifying awareness for your cause and generating substantial donations that surpass traditional fundraising campaigns.

But the benefits of peer-to-peer campaigns extend beyond fundraising. How can P2P campaigns enhance your organization or charity in ways that align with your mission and engage your supporters? What are the best types of social fundraising? And what sets peer-to-peer fundraising apart from organizational crowdfunding? Let’s explore these questions to unlock the potential of peer-to-peer fundraising.

Ready to Launch a Free Peer-to-Peer Campaign?

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 volunteer fundraisers, it decreases the need for staff time and resources. This means that P2P campaigns are generally cost-effective with a strong ROI. Of course, charities still need to support and encourage fundraisers to succeed.
• Drive Revenue: Nonprofits can raise more money through online donations received by reaching a wider pool of supporters.

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 crowdfunding software, social media platforms, and integrations. Utilizing fundraising software allows your message to be organically spread by your dedicated supporters. At the same time, your organization manages the over-arching fundraising campaign and maintains brand consistency.

Some features and tools of our P2P software include:

• Secure event registration
• Provides participants and teams with the ability to personalize the online fundraising experience via personal campaign pages
• Fundraising donation pages include images and videos, social media integration links (Facebook and Twitter) to easily share with friends and family members
• Templates include gamification tools like top fundraisers’ leaderboards and 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 on the main campaign page
• 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 existing 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 Donors and 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 for participants. This allows your organization to monitor fundraising prizes and awards. The function is completely configurable for your prize levels and ideas. A prize widget will appear on personal campaign pages when a participant has reached a certain prize level; 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 fundraising prizes be structured to encourage participation and not leave anyone behind.

Gamify Your P2P Fundraising Campaign To Make It Fun

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 innovative gamification techniques and see how they can boost your P2P fundraiser’s popularity and proceeds.

• Free P2P Fundraising Thermometers/Fundraising Progress Bars Free fundraising thermometers are included in all of our campaign page 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 Add 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 piece of your online 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.

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

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.

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.