Peer to Peer

As peer-to-peer fundraising continues to establish itself as a major pillar in the nonprofit sector, fundraisers must make sure they provide the best experience for their participants and volunteer fundraisers. And that starts with the website.

At the 2014 Bridge Conference, three fundraising professionals provided a checklist for launching a peer-to-peer fundraising run/walk/ride event. In their session "From Zero to 5K in 10 Months: The ABCs of Launching a Peer-to-Peer Based Run/Walk or Bike Ride," Sharon Kessler, interim director of special events at Children's National Medical Center Foundation; Hossein Noshirvani, executive VP and co-founder of Mationsoft; and Philip Schmitz, partner and CEO of CharityEngine, shared their insights.

Peer-to-peer fundraising events continue to grow in popularity across the nonprofit sector, and the most common form is the run/walk/ride event. They are a great way to raise awareness, raise money, and actively engage participants and supporters. Plus, the participants and their friends do a large portion of the fundraising for you. However, planning and […]

Will peer-to-peer donors give again? Will they become organization donors? We’ve debated this topic for years, and while jury’s still out on what to do with peer-to-peer fundraising donors, I think it’s time we started making some headway on this topic. Why now? The fundraising world continues to evolve, now more than ever with the emergence of crowdfunding. In my mind, crowdfunding is simply another, albeit new, term for fundraising.

Nervous about your crowdfunding campaign’s wobbly, uncertain success? Perhaps your campaign is not going as well as you expected or you’re not getting the traction and publicity that you thought you would. It’s not all lost. You can still change it! Let’s look at what the common symptoms are for a failing crowdfunding campaign and what you can do to change how things are going.

If you’ve never launched a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign before, it might seem pretty daunting. You might be unsure of where to even start or whether you’ll have the resources to make it successful. Essentially, you may just feel like you’re starting from zero. And we know that can feel scary.

If you’re feeling this way, you might be one of the following types of organizations who have never tried peer-to-peer fundraising before, and are wondering how to get started.

The majority of all crowdfunding campaigns fail to reach their monetary goals. Ouch! Crowdfunding campaigns that hit their goals start with a comprehensive plan. While there are plenty of success stories in nonprofit crowdfunding, there are also many failures.

What are the most common reasons for why a campaign is unable to meet its goal? Here are five: lack of preparation, lack of promotion, lack of engagement with personal networks, lack of press relationships and lack of video.

Can you imagine starting a new campaign and bringing in 584 new donors in the first 17 hours? OK. Here’s how a crazy successful crowdfunding campaign happened.

Shana Pennington-Baird, along with her friend Amanda, put together a campaign to raise $25,000. The money would be used to fix an historic glass structure in Seattle. The structure had been damaged by some excited fans after the Seattle Seahawks had won the Super Bowl.

Lisa Van Giesen from Billhighway shares 10 low-cost donor engagement strategies and five peer-to-peer fundraising tips she gleaned from the second annual Engage Conference.

A roundtable discussion during the second annual Engage Conference consisted of an open share of ideas on how to get a peer-to-peer campaign off the ground. I compiled five of the best ideas that you can implement quickly without much headache (or overhead!): 1. Host an open house. 2. Leverage a computer lab. 3. Encourage "friendly co-opetition." 4. Host a fun run/walk/ride event. 5. Enlist community service groups.