Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising, or social fundraising, involves having supporters fundraise on your behalf to leverage their networks to increase campaign success. This fundraising strategy has gained momentum in recent years. In fact, in 2022, America’s top 30 peer-to-peer fundraising programs raised an impressive $1.05 billion dollars. 

Your organization can use peer-to-peer fundraising to encourage event participation, spread awareness for your mission, or simply raise more!

You might wonder how you can tap into this peer-to-peer goldmine. We’ve provided five effective strategies to help you get started:

1. Start Planning Early
2. Combine Fundraising Events 
3. Recruit Mindfully
4. Offer Incentives
5. Equip Your Participants 

Let’s explore these strategies in more detail!

1. Start Planning Early

Like most projects, peer-to-peer fundraising experiences better results when it has a detailed plan behind them. Planning your campaign a couple of months in advance will help you reach your fundraising potential.

To ensure your plan is fully fleshed out, follow these steps: 

1. Set your campaign goals. Specify your P2P campaign goals ahead of time to determine your fundraiser’s purpose and monitor your progress. Common P2P fundraising goals include: acquiring new donors, boosting event attendance, improving website traffic, and retaining your current supporters. 
2. Choose your peer-to-peer campaign format. There are a variety of P2P fundraising formats to choose from, ranging from awareness campaigns to online challenges or even ambassador-style campaigns. Assess your campaign goals and choose the format that will most appeal to your supporters.
3. Develop a recruiting strategy. Ask your organization’s staff and volunteers to reach out to their connections.  Scout for individuals to join your P2P campaign who have a large network of connections.

Make your fundraising goals as detailed as possible by selecting ones that pass the SMART test–specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For instance, you might have a goal to reach 100 dance-a-thon event attendees and 50 social shares by the end of your campaign. 

2. Combine Fundraising Events

You can reach a wider audience by combining your P2P fundraiser with other fundraising events. Other benefits of combining events include: exposing supporters to more opportunities to give, keeping venue costs down, and maximizing each supporter’s time.

For example, you can increase fundraising for an online or in-person silent auction by encouraging your P2P participants to create personal fundraising pages to share with their networks. Then, their friends and family will not only donate to the peer-to-peer campaign but may go on to attend your auction and make a few bids. The P2P participant who raises the most money could win an enticing prize like a new set of AirPods. 

To appeal to the diverse crowd your supporters’ networks will bring to your auction, get creative with your procured items. Schoolauction.net emphasizes tailoring your item procurement to your anticipated audience, and what you know about their interests. Since P2P campaigns tend to bring in supporters to your organization, cast a wide net to appeal to the many interests and budgets your new donors will bring to your event.

3. Recruit Mindfully

P2P fundraising is all about leveraging supporter connections. Think about reaching out to supporters who have a large network and an investment in your organization’s mission. You can usually identify these top candidates by looking at these factors:

• History of engagement. Supporters who have a history of engagement with your nonprofit—like a large number of volunteer hours, consistent fundraising event attendance, or donation history—are great candidates for P2P fundraisers. 
• Community connections. People who are actively involved in the community are ideal P2P candidates. For instance, you might ask involved PTA parents to help spread the word about your upcoming fundraising event.
• Social media following. High social media presence and reach indicate a supporter has valuable P2P connections. Look for supporters who have a large following and ask them to promote your cause. 

Whether a supporter has one, all of, or none of these characteristics, they can still be an effective P2P fundraiser. Every supporter helps as long as they are educated about your cause and willing to help. 

4. Offer Incentives

Everyone likes to be paid back for their time and effort. To inspire more P2P collaboration, consider employing these strategies:

• Offer branded merchandise. As volunteers reach campaign milestones leading up to your main fundraising event, offer them branded t-shirts or other branded products to keep them going strong and inspire others to join in. 
• Make it a competition. Reward top-performing fundraisers with a free dinner certificate or branded swag. Brainstorm fun P2P challenges like a dance or cook-a-thon to inspire increased engagement. Then, offer prizes for who raised the most and who lasted the longest in the event. 
• Recognize fundraisers. Use social media shoutouts to recognize top-performing P2P fundraisers, so their efforts don't go unnoticed. Regularly thank all P2P participants personally and at public events. 

Keep in mind that the more engaging your P2P program is, the more participation you’ll likely have. Get creative and be open to trying different formats like a virtual 5K or online shopping store, which do not take extensive planning but can still generate increased engagement. 

5. Equip Your Participants

After you’ve recruited and incentivized your P2P participants, equip them with the right tools for success. Be sure your participants have access to: 

• Branding materials. Make setting up fundraising pages and communicating with supporters easy on your P2P fundraisers by providing them with premade branding materials like graphics and logos for them to post online. Also, be sure to share information about your event, your nonprofit’s top talking points, and anything else you would like your P2P participants to share with donors. 
• Event and contact information. Provide P2P participants with resources they can read through to learn more. For instance,  Double the Donation’s guide to marketing matching gifts recommends nonprofits hosting P2P matching gift drives create a matching gifts explainer page to keep supporters informed. 
• P2P technology. For P2P participants creating their own donation pages, offer premade templates and technical support to make the process as easy as possible. Create a short P2P onboarding explainer to help supporters get started. 

Equipping your P2P fundraisers with the tools they need makes getting involved easier. Consider compiling all of your P2P resources onto a dedicated page on your organization’s website for supporters to reference complete with detailed volunteer descriptions for upcoming campaigns.

About the Authors

Roger Devine

Roger Devine is a co-founder of Northworld, the developer and distributor of the award-winning SchoolAuction.net auction-management software. Before starting the company, Roger worked for many years in software, website development, and publishing. He's chaired at least 30 auctions over the past 20 years (one loses count after a while), has served terms on the boards of several area non-profits, loves all dogs on the planet, and lives in Portland, OR.