Peer-to-peer fundraising is an online fundraising strategy that empowers your supporters to raise money on behalf of your organization by tapping into their existing social networks. With a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, your supporters are transformed into volunteer fundraisers with the ability to support your organization on a grassroots level.
By leveraging these three tips from Powered by Professionals, you can help your peer-to-peer fundraisers take their fundraising efforts up a notch, raising more money and awareness for your vital cause.
1. Make it Easy: When setting up your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, you want to be sure to pick a platform that is easy and straightforward to navigate for both fundraisers and donors. The more fundraisers you get signed up for your campaign, the more networks you have the potential to engage and get involved with your organization.
If your fundraisers must go through a complicated process to create their fundraising page, some of them might just not sign up and you are not only losing out on their donation, but also losing out on any donations that would have come from their friends and family as well. On the other side, if the process for donating to a specific fundraiser or team is overly complicated, many people will choose to simply not donate instead of jumping through technical hoops to make their donation.
If your organization is already locked into a contract with a platform that some may find difficult to navigate, consider offering to set up and manage the fundraising pages for some of your less tech-savvy fundraisers. That way they can just focus on sharing the campaign with their network instead of getting stuck on the set-up process.
2. Personalize the Page: Encourage your fundraisers to personalize their fundraising pages. You want to make sure that their reasons for supporting your organization shine through when someone first clicks on their page. Many potential donors will first be accessing a fundraising page via Facebook or another social media platform and may know very little about your organization or the important work that you do.
You definitely want your fundraisers to include a welcome message on their page that explains their involvement with your organization and why the cause is important to them. Even just 3-4 sentences is enough!
You also want your fundraisers to upload a profile picture (and a banner picture if applicable) as this will remind people of why they are donating when they navigate to the page.
3. Facilitate Outreach: If no one in your fundraiser’s network is viewing the fundraising page, then no one is donating to the campaign! Below are a few ways to help make sure that your fundraiser’s page is getting in front of their friends and family:
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- Social Media Graphics: Photos are the most engaging type of content on Facebook. Consider providing your fundraisers with a personalized graphic for them to share on social media to promote the campaign.
- Printable Materials: Peer-to-peer fundraising occurs just as much offline as online. Create a flyer that you can personalize for each fundraiser or team with a link to their fundraising page. You can use this website to create a QR code that can be scanned to open the fundraising page for free.
- Template Letter: You may want to create a template outreach letter that your fundraisers can use to reach out to potential donors in their network. It should ensure that recipients will get an accurate and succinct campaign description, a powerful and memorable story from the story, and a clear, doable call to action. You could also add a QR code here as well if these will be sent out via snail mail.
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Peer-to-peer fundraising can be both a timesaving and rewarding fundraising strategy for your organization. But your fundraisers won’t be able to succeed without your help! By providing them with the right tools, you can alleviate a lot of the stress that can come along with asking friends and family for money which translates directly to more funds and awareness raised for your organization!