Peer to Peer

There is a worrying trend that may sound familiar to some of you: Fundraising event revenue online is down in the first half of 2015 versus the same time last year. Not in all cases of course, but in enough situations to warrant a discussion. Some of the data I have examined tell a pretty clear story. As audience shifts from desktop to mobile, the average gift online is declining. So even though there are more donations, the overall revenue is less than 
the same time period last year. What’s going on here...

The 2016 presidential election cycle, with its parade of minor candidates, makes it easy to forget that grassroots fundraising isn't limited to the campaign trail. If Ted Cruz can raise $14 million in three months of grassroots fundraising, imagine what nonprofits can do over the course of a year or more. Here's how one nonprofit raised $15 million, almost entirely in grassroots fashion...

A senior White House adviser was struck and killed by a car when he lost control of his bicycle while participating in a charity bike ride raising money to fight cancer. Jacob Thomas Brewer, 34, was entering a sharp bend in Mt. Airy, Md., when the married father and senior policy adviser crossed into an…

The eyes that matter most on your event T-shirt are the eyes of the person wearing it. The value of the T-shirt is that the person wearing it sees him or herself in it frequently over the next year. When we reinforce the intrinsic label of a person by helping him or her overtly self-identify as someone who performs certain behaviors–in this case being a fundraiser for our nonprofit–we increase the likelihood we will get he or she back next year to do that same behavior...

There are a ton of conferences out there. It's impossible to make it to all of them, unless your job title is Professional Conference Go-er, or something. And even then, you'd need to hire an Associate Conference Go-er to keep up. There are that many. But, trust us, if you're a nonprofit professional whose work is even remotely related to peer-to-peer fundraising, you don't want to miss the NonProfit PRO P2P: Redefining Peer to Peer Conference, Oct. 1 in Baltimore. Here are five reasons why...

Total 2014 P2P event revenues were down 2.47 percent from 2013, and six of the top 10 programs saw losses, with three of them down double-digit percentage points. Those three events still grossed a combined $498.6 million last year, but the downward trend signifies that, even for big-time nonprofits, P2P fundraising events aren't exactly a sure thing. Does that mean you should abandon that run event you were planning? Far from it. But you should arm yourself with the latest in P2P event science to better your chances for success...

By August of last year, more than 3 million people had donated to the Ice Bucket Challenge, the majority of them first-time donors. It was a massive influx of dollars and donors, and ALS Association now had at its fingertips a deep pool of potential future donors. It was a huge opportunity. Converting even a fraction of those first-timers into repeat donors would have a massive, profound effect on future fundraising efforts...

Masumi Herota, a 41-year-old South Carolina native, plans to run for 72 hours straight and cover up to 300 miles as part of a solo P2P fundraising effort to benefit the American Cancer Society. Herota is an "ultra" runner (a sort of elite class of runners who specialize in solo runs covering distances greater than a marathon) whose résumé includes multiple 50K's and two 24-hour runs of more than 90 miles...

Your chief development officer wants to tap into the endurance market. The CDO's expectation of this new event is colored by your organization’s experience with your existing peer-to-peer events. But, there is a missing variable. It is “market relationship” versus “social relationship.” Retail-attractive events yield market relationships for the most part. Retail-unattractive events (walks, for example) yield social relationships...

Last year, Project HOPE set out to implement its first P2P fundraising program. We were intrigued: Here was this respected, well-established nonprofit with five decades of fundraising experience and a reputation for efficiency, and it had never invested in P2P until now. How would it go? Does experience in traditional fundraising methods translate to P2P success? We wanted to find out...