5 Ways to Motivate and Recognize Your Peer-to-Peer Event Fundraisers

Most peer-to-peer fundraising events offer participants T-shirts and other branded merchandise for signing up or reaching set goals, but do those incentives motivate your participants to fundraise year after year?

Meredith Perkins, director of peer-to-peer fundraising at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Bryan Sherwood, senior director of Relay for Life at the American Cancer Society, shared various ways for nonprofits to motivate their peer-to-peer fundraisers in the breakout session, “Building a Comprehensive and Intentional Recognition Program,” last week in Philadelphia at the Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum. 

Here are five ideas to consider for your nonprofit’s peer-to-peer event recognition program.

1. Let Participants Opt Out of Branded Merch

For some participants, branded incentives might push them to raise more, but for others, the cause may be the sole source of motivation. Therefore, allowing an opt-out option for physical rewards, like a T-shirt, water bottle or other organization-branded merchandise, could save your organization money. 

“It’s not all about the stuff,” Sherwood said. “There’s something there, but it’s not all about the stuff.”

Perkins shared a story of a fundraiser who wears a jacket the organization offers as an incentive with pride. That pride stems from her earning the jacket as a result of fundraising for the cause. 

“But what motivates people to participate and then raise those different levels can be really different,” she said. “The higher that the people are engaged and bought into your mission just doesn’t matter after a certain level. Yes, they're really proud — 'I cannot go and purchase this shirt' or 'This jacket is a symbol that I earned this' will only go so far.”

2. Provide Unique Experiences and Opportunities

For some participants, it’ll be the unique experiences and opportunities that motivate their fundraising efforts.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center, participants’ gifts are usually unrestricted, but participants who raise $10,000-plus or teams that raise $25,000-plus can allocate their funds to a specific project of their choice. 

In addition, the nonprofit offers unique experiences to high-level participants. For example, individuals who raise $25,000 or more can opt to lead the start of the walk event. 

“So these things don’t necessarily have to cost you a lot of money,” Perkins said. “… But it’s that amazing experience that they have leading the walk start and recognizing that being called to the stage really motivates them at certain levels.”

To get individuals or teams to level up, your organization may have to find the experience that pushes participants to hit a fundraising goal. In order to push teams to reach $225,000 raised, the American Cancer Society offered teams the ability to name a research grant and see the impact of their fundraising through a three-year grant cycle. Sherwood noted this has incentivized teams to reach that fundraising goal year after year since the organization added the goal.

“Our top fundraising teams, we were starting to see a point where they were hitting their max and hanging out there at that six-figure level, so we’ve added some incentives to move them up to those next levels,” he said.

3. Make Participants Feel Like a Big Deal

Aside from offering incentives at set fundraising levels, don’t lose sight of stewarding and celebrating dedicated peer-to-peer participants in other ways too. That could be those who come back year after year, or those who raised the most for your organization in a given year. One option is to coordinate a recognition event for your top fundraisers. 

The American Cancer Society hosted its 2024 event for top participants across all of its peer-to-peer events last week in Nashville. The 100 volunteers who were in attendance raised $12 million for the organization. Not only can it be a fun social event, but they can also network and share fundraising tips with each other. 

“We really moved to a model where we bring them all together and we let them learn from each other,” Sherwood said. “We let them learn about best practices. ‘How are you raising your, in this case, $500,000 a year for the American Cancer Society.’”

4. Discover Effective Participants Who May Fall Under the Radar

A few years ago, MD Anderson Cancer Center received reports of its donation page not working. It turns out a patient who was participating in the organization’s Boot Walk to End Cancer shared a link to donate on her social media. Her outreach caused the donation form to crash because too many people in her network tried to donate at the same time. 

After the patient, Bindsu Oommen, got on the organization’s radar, the nonprofit utilized her to craft tips for mobilizing donors on social media in an email blast from the organization. This donor continues to have the largest number of donors, receiving 235 donations for last year’s effort.

“I like to talk about the ‘major gather effect,’” Perkins said. “So if you haven’t heard that term, think about the person that’s a Bindsu. She might not be able to have the capacity to even be in the top 100 [for dollars raised]. She might not crack the top 10. … But all of those people already have an affinity to cancer because of their personal connection with Bindsu. They’re already understanding the value of it. So for me, that’s incredible.”  

5. Request and Review Feedback

Whether it’s a post-event survey or asking top participants or volunteers for feedback directly, it’s important to gather thoughts on what works and what doesn’t from those who experienced the event from a different vantage point. 

“Have we talked to Bindsu about what she thinks about the recognition programs?” Sherwood said. “Have I talked to [a veteran lead volunteer] about what she thinks about our Relay for Life recognition program? Are those trusted volunteers that we know will give it to us straight and tell us if things are working or not?” 

So as your organization plans your next peer-to-peer event, reconsider the best ways to recognize your participants who ultimately make the event a success and raise money and awareness on behalf of your cause. 

“When we rebuilt the structure, we really built in the mission and the experiences into our recognition program,” Perkins said.