What is Peer-to-Peer Fundraising and How Does It Work?

Raising funds for a cause is an essential thing to do in many situations. There are many ways of raising funds, out of which, peer-to-peer fundraising is an important and popular one. Now, this is also a very powerful strategy for raising funds for any cause. Suppose you or your organization is unfamiliar with how it works. In that case, it is good to take a step back and find out what this mode of fundraising is all about and how it can possibly fit into your existing fundraising strategies.

What is Peer-to-Peer Fundraising?

To begin with, peer-to-peer fundraising is an online fundraising strategy that empowers and allows people to fundraise on behalf of a cause that’s worthy enough. Fundraising campaigns are designed and with these, volunteer fundraisers share their personalized campaign pages in their individual social networks comprising friends and family. By following and making the most of the best practices, individuals can secure crucial fundraising dollars and spread awareness for a cause that they been fighting for and upholding.

Peer-to-peer fundraising generates revenue and offers a great way of acquiring and retaining donor strategies. Once your true supporters start donating money to your cause, their peers will also eagerly support them and become regular donors themselves in the long run.

How Does this Fundraising Strategy Work?

In order to be able to leverage the peer-to-peer fundraising strategy in the most effective way, one should understand how the strategy works. The working of a typical fundraising strategy is explained below in a few steps:

A Fundraising Goal is Set – Whenever an organization decides to raise funds, it has to first set a revenue goal that the team would be working towards achieving. Ideally, this goal would be marginally higher than the last one the organization has met, based on its past successes. Ideally, you should not overdo it because too high a goal would mean keeping it unfulfilled and too low an objective would be discouraging.

A Platform/Software for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising is Selected – For any online fundraising venture. An organization’s choice of the platform will largely depend on its needs and budget. However, you should always select a platform that offers the right features to support your organization’s peer to peer fundraising goals and objectives. An ideal platform will enable your team to work more efficiently with the required tools in hand.

The Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaign Page is Designed – The campaign is somewhat the face or the representation of your fundraising campaign. The page must contain comprehensive information such as the mission statement or story along with a fairly detailed purpose of the campaign. This page also serves as a template for the volunteer fundraisers to use. This, in turn, ensures that the brand is effectively conveyed across every individual’s personal fundraising pages. Further donations can be requested or encouraged by displaying the progress towards the revenue goal of the campaign too.

Creating Individual Pages for Each Member of the Team – A team of passionate volunteers is a must in every peer-to-peer fundraiser. In fact, organizations just cannot do anything without them. So, it is necessary to look for as many loyal volunteers, board members, donors and other advocates as possible. These people will then create their individual campaign pages, which would be then personalized with their own connections to the larger cause. This way, the fundraising venture will reach out to a maximum number of people.

Promoting the Campaign – Promotion of the campaign comes at the end of the process but determines the campaign’s overall success. Marketing, again, is a truly team effort. Your team should ideally post regular updates while the volunteer fundraisers can proactively share these updates through their personalized campaign pages. A variety of educational and guidance materials can also be used to support and maximize the reach of the campaign.

The Benefits of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Strategy

To put it in a nutshell, peer-to-peer fundraiser is an opportunity for great engagement and increased revenue for any non-profit. For any organization, irrespective of its size and cause, this fundraising strategy is very effective and works well in most situations. It is more successful than traditional campaigns in many ways. 

One of the significant ways is that people are much more likely to engage online when they find someone they trust is advocating your cause. These people might well be unfamiliar with your organization’s work yet; they can be pulled to form a personal connection owing to the power of social proof. That is the reason why campaign pages and social media posts are given so much importance in this fundraising strategy.

So, by knowing in detail how the fundraising strategy works and by choosing the right online platform, you can create a powerful and rewarding campaign that generates considerable revenue for your cause.