Tips to Improve Your Nonprofit’s Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising is a powerful approach for nonprofits. It gets your constituents more involved with supporting your organization. It helps you reach new supporters through your constituents’ networks. It also helps you build a stronger sense of community and raise more funds.

And peer-to-peer fundraising programs are doing well these days. According to the 2024 Top 30 and P2P Benchmarking Survey, 18 of the top 30 peer-to-peer fundraising programs in the U.S. increased revenue in 2024, and the top 30 collectively raised $1.14 billion.

So, how can you take your nonprofit’s peer-to-peer fundraising to the next level? Let’s look at some top tips.

Create unique experiences.

Peer-to-peer campaigns and events that really stand out offer compelling experiences to participants and donors. And while traditional run/walk/ride events are still powerhouses for peer-to-peer fundraising, there are lots of ways to create unique experiences within these types of events.

For inspiration, take a look at examples of creative and successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns from other nonprofits. You just might find new ways to create fresh and engaging experiences within your existing event or campaign.

Make the most of your participant portal.

Your participant portal is the website landing page where your peer-to-peer participants manage their fundraising and find resources to help them support your campaign or event. Most peer-to-peer fundraising software products offer some form of participant portal functionality.

Be sure to build and optimize your participant portal to help your participants recruit team members, access resources that help them fundraise, showcase their personal fundraising pages, ask for donations from their social networks, and track progress toward their fundraising goals.

Embrace mobile tools and tactics.

Since our mobile devices are always within reach, it makes sense to incorporate a mobile-first strategy for your peer-to-peer fundraising program.

Evaluate your peer-to-peer event and campaign experience from the standpoint of someone using a mobile device to register and fundraise, and make sure the process is user-friendly. Also, incorporate tools like mobile messaging, mobile payment options, and mobile apps to help participants fundraise.

Level up your emails.

Of course, there are a lot of effective ways to communicate with your peer-to-peer fundraising participants, including social media, apps, text messaging, and direct mail. But email is still a powerful tool for peer-to-peer fundraising, so make sure you use it to the fullest.

Take time to revisit your overall email strategy, including audience segmentation, email timing, and email content. For tips and best practices on building strong email communications, read the guide Building Powerful Email Communications for Your peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns and Events.

Optimize the full peer-to-peer fundraising lifecycle.

It can be easy to focus on one or two aspects of a peer-to-peer campaign, such as recruiting participants or answering participant questions once they sign up. But a truly successful program requires optimizing the full peer-to-peer fundraising lifecycle. This includes:

Recruiting participants: Make sure you articulate why different groups of people might care about your program, event, or cause. Once you have targeted audience groups in mind, create demographic and psychographic profiles for each group to help you visualize who you are reaching out to in your marketing.
Activating and motivating participants: Make sure that participants fully understand that you are asking them to help your organization raise funds—this helps get them activated. Then, motivate them to fundraise by helping them understand the impact their efforts will have on your organization’s mission. Give them specific examples of what fundraising dollars help your organization to achieve, and let them know how their efforts impact the community you serve. Continue to remind them of their impact on your mission throughout your event or campaign and beyond.
Supporting participants: Help them raise funds by providing them with support in every aspect of fundraising. For instance, provide them with easy-to-use technology for registering, sending emails to friends and family, and enabling people in their network to make online donations. Also, give them tools and messaging to help with their fundraising, including email templates, tips, and best practices. Plus, have an appropriate level of staffing to help answer participant questions, and provide participants with contact information so they know where to go for answers.
Retaining participants: Build an ongoing relationship with participants to keep them coming back year after year. An effective approach is to acknowledge participants’ contributions through personal thank-you messages and public recognition. Also, ask for their feedback during and after the event or campaign. Keep in touch with them throughout the year by letting them know what your organization is doing and how their efforts have helped.

There’s almost always an opportunity to take your peer-to-peer fundraising up a notch. Use the tips in this article to try something new and watch your peer-to-peer program grow to new levels!

Author Bio

Mark Becker founded Cathexis Partners in 2008, providing technical and consultative services to nonprofits of all sizes and types. He previously served as director of IT consulting at a fundraising event production company focused on nonprofits. For more than 20 years, Mark has supported hundreds of nonprofit online fundraising efforts.