3 Ways To Encourage Supporters To Start Their Own Peer-To-Peer Fundraising Campaigns

As you know, fundraising campaigns are crucial to the success and sustainability of nonprofit organizations. After all, more money raised means more funding for programs and more flexibility to carry out your mission. It’s why you likely put a lot of your focus on fundraising initiatives and lean on the in-house fundraisers who are in charge of bringing in those donations.

If you spend your days wishing you could bring on more fundraisers to support your efforts, we’ve got good news: Your in-house fundraisers no one longer have to work alone. It’s all thanks to something called peer-to-peer fundraising.

Benefits Of Using Peer-To-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising, also referred to as social fundraising, involves individuals organizing personal campaigns to collect donations from their peers. These fundraisers can include asking for donations via crowdfunding, throwing occasion-specific fundraisers (like birthdays fundraisers), and participating in events like team fun runs.

Peer-to-peer fundraisers are great for:

• Generating passive income
• Extending your reach and mission
• Creating multiple revenue streams compared to a single in-house fundraiser

So, how do you recruit your supporters to start their own peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns? The OneCause team set out to find the answer.

How To Recruit Social Fundraisers To Your Cause

OneCause is a fundraising software company that has helped more than 20,000 people raise $1.5 billion. In order to learn more about peer-to-peer fundraising, they funded the Social Fundraiser Research Study.

Based on responses from more than 1,100 U.S.-based social fundraisers, OneCause shared three recommendations for recruiting peer-to-peer fundraisers to your cause.

1. Get Them To Connect With Your Mission 

According to the study, a person’s connection to a company’s mission is a driving factor in their decision to solicit donations on behalf of an organization. In fact, nearly three-fourths (72%) of respondents cited this connection as their reason for campaigning.

Want to win supporters over to your cause? Figure out how you can share your mission in a way that encourages people to take action. Think about the compelling stories, photos, and videos you have on hand and share them in email newsletters and on social media.

Check out this great example from charity: water. The first thing they recommend someone do is recognize the problem they’re trying to solve: providing clean water to people who don’t have access to it.

And here’s how To Write Love on Her Arms encourages people to donate their birthdays via Facebook. As a mental health nonprofit, they tie the reason for this occasion fundraiser in with their mission.

2. Provide Them With The Assets They’ll Need To Recruit

Social fundraisers engage with campaigns through family, friends, or colleagues and are commonly recruited via social media platforms and email campaigns. Your job is to make recruitment easier.

One way to do this is by offering sample recruitment templates. By offering these templates, you’re removing the barrier to access for many people because you’re not relying on them to create content for your organization. It should be a “no brainer” to join your cause and handing them all the tools, images, and assets they’ll need is one way to ensure that it is.

It’s important to remember that these templates should be tailored to the specific communication channel on which they’ll be shared. For example, your email copy will likely be much longer than what you’d share in a Twitter post. Think about what people expect to see on each social media network and in their inboxes and create a strategy for the various pieces of content you need to create.

You should also update your website so potential fundraisers can find everything they need in one place. As you can see here and here, charity: water and To Write Love on Her Arms created pages on their website specifically to encourage people to start peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. Your current fundraisers can then easily share the pages with prospective fundraisers.

3. Create Clear Impact Statements

After you’ve rallied the fundraisers behind your mission and given them the tools they need to succeed, your job is to motivate them by communicating their impact on the cause.

Offer clear, concise, and compelling messages and attractive imagery to communicate the impact their dollars will have. One example might be: For every X dollars raised, we will send one kid to school. These should be included with the assets you provide them with when getting them set up for their fundraisers.

If you’re looking to raise more money in 2020, think about how you can engage your network of supporters and their wider communities. To learn more about peer-to-peer fundraising, download your copy of the Social Fundraiser Research Study here.

Looking for more information on planning and executing your best peer-to-peer fundraising campaign? We’ve put together the most up-to-date peer-to-peer and crowdfunding resources to help you get started.

Go To Peer-To-Peer Resources »