Refreshing your peer-to-peer fundraising strategy

As a nonprofit fundraising professional, you’re continually looking for new ways to maximize fundraising for your mission, expand your organization’s network, and bring in new supporters. Getting creative and re-evaluating old peer-to-peer fundraising methods has become especially important in recent years due to declines in household giving. 

Peer-to-peer campaigns are notable for their ability to connect with new donors through your current supporters and open up more fundraising opportunities. If your nonprofit seems to have exhausted these initial networks or has fallen out of touch without in-person events, it might be time to refresh your current peer-to-peer fundraising strategy. 

Make sure your donors are your primary storytellers

Peer-to-peer campaigns succeed because supporters have a personal relationship with the fundraiser asking them to donate. These personal asks will always be more effective than a cold ask from your organization alone. Leverage this strength of peer-to-peer campaigns and empower your fundraisers to present your organization and tell their stories. 

Onboarding is the process of training your peer-to-peer fundraisers to run a successful campaign on your behalf. As fundraisers are the core of your campaign, taking a second look at your onboarding process is crucial in improving your peer-to-peer campaigns. 

During your onboarding process, explain how to:

• Represent your nonprofit. Reports confirm that donors care about details, with 42% giving in part due to hearing a story from someone a nonprofit has helped. Equip fundraisers with tools to talk about your cause so that it will resonate with donors. Provide a list of talking points or statistics and help them transform stories into words.
• Set up donation pages. Peer-to-peer campaigns empower donors to give directly to their friend or family member who is fundraising. During onboarding, walk fundraisers through the process and teach them how to set up their pages to share their unique connection with your mission. 
• Connect with other fundraisers. Peer-to-peer campaigns are a social experience, and fundraisers will be motivated by knowing they are not alone. During your onboarding sessions, encourage fundraisers to connect with one another. This can provide motivation, create a healthy sense of competition, and even forge a community around your nonprofit. 

Make your onboarding process more personal by creating special training sessions for groups of supporters who signed up to fundraise together. This can incentivize groups, like corporate fundraisers, to continue working with your nonprofit in the future as their shifts will be more engaging when they’re working alongside people they know.

Integrate your social media and fundraising systems

Most of your peer-to-peer fundraisers will use social media to reach out to their friends, family, and followers. Connecting with social media is one of the reasons this fundraising idea is so popular— nonprofits can grow their online communities organically. 

Of course, social media platforms continually change how they interact with nonprofits, and your peer-to-peer campaigns will need to adjust these changes. For example, some websites allow users to donate straight to a nonprofit without leaving the platform, while others have limits on who is allowed to use these donation tools, which can make running a peer-to-peer campaign more challenging.

Improve your peer-to-peer fundraising management practices

Peer-to-peer fundraiser management consists of everything your nonprofit’s team does to recruit, train, and engage them. An effective management process can directly impact your nonprofit’s ability to retain them both after and during the campaign. 

One of the most straightforward ways to improve your fundraiser management for peer-to-peer campaigns is to collect feedback. 

Collecting feedback allows you to respond to fundraisers’ immediate concerns and create a more optimal experience in the long-run. Showing empathy and care towards your fundraisers can help turn them into even stronger advocates for your organization who are excited to take part in your current peer-to-peer campaign and join future ones.

Learn what the experience is like from a peer-to-peer fundraiser’s perspective. Do they have the right tools? Is there a strategy that might be useful for other fundraisers? Do they feel sufficiently supported by your organization? 

If you wish to collect anonymous feedback, send out surveys for your fundraisers to complete at their discretion. Or, to strengthen each fundraisers’ connection with your nonprofit, your peer-to-peer fundraising manager can hold short but impactful interviews with each fundraiser to gather and respond to feedback.

To ensure your strategies are up-to-date with ongoing trends and support preferences, continually re-evaluate your approach to online communication, technology, and fundraiser relationships. By evolving your strategy, you can earn more and build a stronger community of support.