5 Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Tips for Millennial Audiences

Wendy Levine and Craig Grella • Aug 12, 2021

 Peer-to-peer campaigns lend the perfect opportunity to connect with donors who care and deepen their connections with your cause. The real power behind appealing to this age group with your peer-to-peer fundraisers lies in the fact that they’re tech-savvy, have connections with like-minded individuals, and are willing to put in the work to help worthy causes succeed.

 

Effectively inspiring millennial donors to get involved in your next peer-to-peer campaign requires a thorough fundraising strategy rooted in proven best practices. To help, we’ll explore five proven best practices that will inspire them to not only participate, but also to stick around for the long haul. Here are the five tips we’ll explore:

 

  1. Center your appeals around your cause.
  2. Use social media to increase campaign visibility.
  3. Offer a streamlined donation process.
  4. Don’t underestimate millennial giving power.
  5. Convey genuine gratitude.

 

Millennial donors are known for demonstrating a clear passion and commitment to worthwhile causes. Targeting them with your next peer-to-peer campaign is a smart way to build a sustainable support network for years to come. Let’s dive into our first tip.



1. Center your appeals around your cause.


Millennials are motivated to give to causes that appeal to their values. In fact, in its annual Millennial Impact Report, Achieve found that 90% of millennials who donate are motivated to give by a compelling mission, rather than a specific organization.

 

Given this, articulating your mission can help fuel your peer-to-peer campaigns, which means it’s time for you and volunteer fundraisers to brush up on your storytelling abilities.

 

Across all campaign communications, it should be evident that your cause is powering the fundraiser, and that goes beyond simply branding pages with your official colors and logo. Emphasizing the cause requires you to:

 

  • Build a strong narrative. Share an on-the-ground perspective of your work. Ask a volunteer to share a personal story from their time serving the organization, or ask one of your clients to share an example of how your organization has benefitted them.
  • Add a visual element with images and videos. We often hear that a picture’s worth a thousand words. Communicate with your audience by showing engaging photos of your work or a testimonial video from a staff member or volunteer.

 

Considering that participants will make solicitation appeals to their networks, encourage your volunteers to leverage these same best practices. Ask them to think about their connections to your cause, share anything they’ve helped accomplish for your mission, and do their best to tell their stories in a compelling way that resonates with their audience. Your peer-to-peer software should provide the opportunity for them to share these elements with personal photos and customized descriptions.



2. Use social media to increase campaign visibility.


As of 2019, 90.4% of millennials are active on social media due to their strong desire to connect and socialize with others. In other words, social media presents the perfect opportunity to expand your audience and connect with passionate new networks of prospective donors.

 

The great thing about peer-to-peer campaigns is that they naturally lend themselves to social media. These campaigns rely heavily on networking, so your organization and anyone participating in the campaign should use these channels to your advantage.

 

To increase visibility across networks, double-check that your peer-to-peer fundraising platform offers social sharing capabilities. Social integrations should include leading platforms like Facebook and Twitter as well as standard email sharing. From here, your team should optimize each post by including these elements:

 

  • Hashtags. A great way to keep track of all posts about your campaign and establish brand recognition is to create a hashtag for the campaign. Your hashtag should be simple, short, and unique. Create one that concisely represents your cause, such as #FundAPaw for an animal shelter rather than #August2021Campaign.
  • Clear calls-to-action (CTAs). People are much more likely to engage with your posts when it’s clear what you’re asking them to do. To encourage donations, your posts should call people to donate with a clear CTA like ‘Donate Now’ with a link to their individual campaign page. Salsa’s guide to donate buttons explores in-depth what goes into a standout CTA, whether you’re sending emails, optimizing your site, creating fundraising pages, or posting on social media.

 

While you might know what goes into a dynamite social media post, your volunteers might not. Train them in these best practices and create optimized templates for them to personalize and easily post on their pages, complete with your hashtags and CTAs. This makes it incredibly easy for them to post about your campaign, encouraging them to follow through.



3. Offer a streamlined donation experience.


Millennial donors are often influenced by quick, seamless, and easily accessible experiences. A streamlined donation experience will drive users through the process quickly while still emphasizing the cause, leaving them with a positive impression of your organization.

 

First and foremost, that means condensing each fundraising page down to the essentials. It can be tempting to fill up the page with every detail about your cause and work. After all, this is your opportunity to connect with people who relate to your cause, but any excess information will distract your prospects from the task at hand: donating.

 

You’ll want to limit the number of fields to capture only the essential information, such as the donor’s name, contact information, and payment details. Consider all other elements on your page, too. Stick to one photo or image, and keep the text appeal short.

 

Another essential part of a streamlined donation experience is mobile accessibility. Recent studies have found that 98% of millennials own a smartphone and 37% of them have used it to donate. With millennials’ heavy smartphone usage, you’d be remiss not to optimize the mobile giving experience.

 

Mobile accessibility starts with mobile-responsive forms. Your peer-to-peer platform should automatically resize the content to fit each user’s device accordingly. For instance, the font size should automatically be larger and buttons should be enlarged and easy to click. Otherwise, users will be forced to rotate their devices and zoom in and out just to read your content, let alone donate.

 

Limiting the amount of information you feature also plays into this. Too much information will make users feel like they have to endlessly scroll on their mobile devices just to submit their gift.

 

Along those same lines, make sure the fundraising experience is just as seamless for those who want to solicit donations on your behalf. It should be incredibly easy for them to get up and running with their campaign pages. All they should have to do is optionally customize their personal connection to your organization, add their own photo if they want, and start sharing.



4. Don’t underestimate millennial giving power.


While younger millennials might not have accumulated as much wealth as your senior supporters, they’re still generous when it comes to causes they care about. Plus, most millennials have steady jobs and disposable income. They’re just looking for worthwhile causes that deserve their support.

 

When engaging with them, consider more than their immediate giving potential. Rather than what they’re able to give right now, estimate their lifetime value, which is an essential nonprofit KPI that all organizations should track. As their generation ages, they’ll gather the resources to give even more to your nonprofit, which is why it’s critical to form solid connections early on.

 

You’ll be much more likely to secure their support for the long-term when you give them the attention they deserve before they have the resources to give major contributions.

 

Plus, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to wealth indicators. Both you and donors may not realize the full giving potential of millennial supporters until you make them aware of all giving opportunities.

 

When conducting research and looking into prospects’ giving potential, look into factors like who their employer is. There’s a good chance that you can tap into corporate giving programs like matching gifts, in which case their employers will send a donation to your organization often at a dollar-for-dollar ratio. To capture these opportunities, leverage a company search tool like Double the Donation and integrate it into your peer-to-peer fundraising forms if possible. Your team and donors can easily search their own eligibility this way.

 

Factors like this allow you to effortlessly multiply their contributions, and leveraging these extra opportunities allows you to tap into donors’ full giving potential.



5. Convey genuine gratitude.


Put yourself in a donor’s shoes. After receiving several appealing emails prompting you to donate to a peer-to-peer campaign, you decide to contribute. Then, there’s complete silence. You don’t hear anything from the organization regarding your contribution. After a few weeks, you receive another email asking to donate. Chances are, in this situation you’d feel unappreciated and unwilling to give again.

 

A simple thank-you letter can go a long way. If you really want to make progress in your relationships, report back to your donors on all the good they initiated thanks to their generous contributions after your campaign wraps up.

 

After all, millennials appreciate authentic relationship building and prefer to understand their impact on the world through their philanthropic efforts. With the Millennial Impact Report, Achieve found that more than 90% of millennials said they would stop giving to an organization if they began distrusting it. In a reflection of that trust, more than three-fourths would stop giving if they weren't told how their contributions help.

 

So when sending thank-you notes to donors, reinforce their confidence in their decision to donate by sharing fundraising totals and the exact goals you were able to accomplish thanks to their support. For instance, if you work at an organization that supplies underprivileged children with school supplies and your campaign helped send 135 children to school with backpacks filled with everything they need, share that information. Donors— especially millennials who have deep connections to the cause— love to see the tangible impact they’ve had.


Savvy organizations understand that connecting with younger supporters is just as significant as forming relationships with older audience members. Your peer-to-peer campaigns represent the perfect opportunity to expand your donor networks and reinforce existing relationships. Tap into the generosity of your millennial donors and start forming lifelong connections early on.

 

Whether you’re seeking donations from them or inspiring them to get involved, they’ll appreciate the opportunity to give back to a cause that resonates with their values. From creating standout appeals to conveying gratitude, the ideas we’ve covered here will encourage millennials donors to stick around for the long haul. The ideas we covered will get you much closer to forming meaningful bonds with millennial supporters that can help grow your mission today and for years to come.


About the Authors

Wendy Levine and Craig Grella


Wendy Levine is a Marketing Director at Salsa Labs, the premier software for growth-focused nonprofits that combines CRM and engagement software with embedded best practices, machine learning, and world-class education and support. In her role, she leads the charge with lead generation, content creation, and brand management.

 

Wendy is passionate about strong storytelling and believes it’s central to creating strong brands, powerful client relationships, and robust lead generation programs. Wendy is also an entrepreneur with an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.


Craig Grella is a Content Marketer at Salsa Labs, the premier software for growth-focused nonprofits that combines CRM and engagement software with embedded best practices, machine learning, and world-class education and support. In his role, he serves thousands of nonprofits and advocacy organizations across the U.S.

 

Craig focuses on digital strategy using email marketing, online advertising campaigns, SMS campaigns, CRM management, reporting/analytics for KPIs, and more. He’s also the founder of Think Big Campaigns, a full-service consulting firm that specializes in political consulting, digital organizing, and issue advocacy. 


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