People give to people and not to organizations, which is why peer-to-peer fundraisers (P2P) are such an effective way to leverage the power of your supporters to help your organization acquire new donors and expand your network on GivingTuesday.
Case Studies
Tommy Nobis Center, in Georgia, had their most successful GivingTuesday ever in 2018, raising over $40,000. Of the gifts raised, 66% were staff-solicited through their fundraising efforts, and 45% of those gifts were from new donors.
Team Telomere, in Idaho, raised their entire operating budget in one day by rallying P2P fundraisers for GivingTuesday 2019
Camp Kesem, which operates free summer camps for children who have been impacted by a parent’s cancer, raised over $2 million from 40,000 donors by deploying a P2P strategy The team credits their 5,000 college-student volunteers, who promoted the campaign on social media.
How To Leverage P2P Successfully
We talked with a group of fundraisers at the GAGives kick off last week about how they pulled off their wildly successful P2P campaigns.
Monica Oliveira, Development Specialist, Tommy Nobis Center offered up her three S’s, “all of which are linked to each other and will lead to the fourth S: SUCCESS!”
- Supply: Be sure to provide your campaign fundraisers with every tool they need to be successful. Distributing a toolbox of sorts to each fundraiser will supply them with various resources to access throughout the campaign. Provide written instructions, ideas and images to help them build their online fundraiser profile. A campaign timeline with reminders will help keep them on track with their asks. Simplified, email, social media, and text templates are helpful to help folks craft and personalize their asks. Ideas for fundraising resources will help lead them to their networks and audiences (i.e. ask your neighbors, church or civic groups, fraternities/sororities, etc.). The more resources you provide to your fundraisers, the more return you will get.
- Support: It’s important to be mindful of the comfort levels of your fundraisers. Unlike Development and other nonprofit pros, not everyone is 100% comfortable with raising money. Be sure to support them in their efforts. Supplying them with resources is one important factor, but take it a step further with personal coaching and motivation. Last year, our Development team provided personal attention to our fundraisers, offering one-on-one help sessions to set up online profiles. This resulted in the number of our online fundraisers increasing by 53% since last year’s GAGives on GivingTuesday. Our organization also held two staff pep rallys to get our internal fundraisers excited about GA Gives, as well as dedicated time on GivingTuesday to sit together as a team and make those last fundraising pushes online and through emails and phone calls. Sending the message of your campaign being a team effort truly makes a difference in their investment.
- Share: Share, share and share some more! Broaden your fundraising reach and impact by sharing online as much as possible. Utilize your personal social media and encourage your contacts, followers, etc. to also share your posts. Make sure your organization is actively posting about GivingTuesday on social media, and this makes sharing for your fundraisers so much easier – simply share the organization’s post on your pages! Also encourage your Board of Directors, Advisory Board, Subcommittees, etc. to do the same.
Lee Ann Else, Development Director, HealthMPowers added that they encourage staff involvement through a FUNraising team building day. “We engaged corporate social media ambassadors, Big Green Egg, Georgia Grown and Royal Foods. We planned a #DoingTuesday (Facebook Live/media) event with Georgia Grown in Bainsbridge, GA. We made it fun for donors with a Big Green Egg Give-away!”
Grace Murphy. Director of Development, Canine Assistants reminds us not to forget to say THANK YOU! “Whether it’s a video post from your Executive Director or from some of those you serve, take the time to say thank you to those who donated and shared your campaign.”
Go forth and create your most successful GivingTuesday campaign to date by harnessing the power of people.
