Peer-to-peer fundraising strategies to promote P2P campaign

Erin Booker

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July 29, 2024

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7 minutes

Nonprofit Trends

P2P Fundraising

This article is part of a series

Keep learning with related articles.

What is peer-to-peer fundraising? (P2P Fundraising Tips, Statistics, and Guide)

How to plan and launch a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign

Nonprofit best practices to recruit P2P fundraisers and supporters

Best practices to create effective P2P fundraising pages for nonprofits

Peer-to-peer fundraising strategies to promote P2P campaign

With your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign planned and your fundraisers recruited, we now turn our attention to peer-to-peer marketing strategies. Advertising and promoting your P2P campaign is similar to other marketing tactics, with added emphasis on and communication with the supporters who will be raising money on your behalf.

The importance of peer-to-peer promotion

Promoting your nonprofit's peer-to-peer fundraising campaign is important because it's how you reap the benefits of P2P fundraisers. Specifically, P2P relies on an army of supporters who believe in your mission, plus the strength of their personal connections—friends, family, colleagues, and followers. To build that army, you need to shout about your fundraising goals and impact needs.

So, what are the benefits of a peer-to-peer fundraiser? Glad you asked...

Benefits of promoting your P2P campaign

The benefits of peer-to-peer marketing are similar to the benefits of regular marketing: increased brand awareness, more website visitors, and a rise in donors. But peer-to-peer marketing is slightly different—it has specific benefits such as instilling FOMO into your supporter base, laying the groundwork for future P2P campaigns, and gathering additional marketing assets.

Andrew Chappell, Digital Marketing and Web Development Lead at Action Against Hunger, puts it this way on the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast:

"...to me, marketing is fundraising... and fundraising is marketing. Marketing is telling the story of the organization. It's introducing yourself to potential donors as well as acquiring new donors. It is a direct ask."

And if that's not enough to make you want to expend resources marketing your P2P campaign, just look at the peer to peer fundraising statistics: On average, P2P fundraisers using Funraise's peer-to-peer fundraising platform raise $1,220, 2x the amount of top P2P programs.

What are the best marketing strategies for peer-to-peer campaigns?

To effectively promote a peer-to-peer campaign, organizations need to implement a strong marketing strategy that will attract participants and encourage donors to support their cause. Here are some key marketing strategies for promoting a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign:

Leverage social media
Utilize email marketing
Host virtual events
Create compelling content
Offer incentives and rewards
Partner with influencers or ambassadors
Pay to advertise wherever your audience spends time

A peer-to-peer fundraising campaign marketing plan

Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns are a powerful way to engage supporters and raise funds for a cause, but to effectively promote a P2P campaign, it is important to have a well-thought-out marketing plan.

The elements of a solid P2P marketing plan include:

Goals
Marketing channels
Budget
Schedule
Tracking

Goals

As with any fundraising campaign, the first thing you need is your goals. Yes, before your budget, before your theme, even before you have a glass of wine. A rounded, successful campaign won't just be focused on financial fundraising success, though; your goals will range from traffic to awareness to, yes, money.

Here are a few suggestions for prizes on which to keep your eyes:

Fundraisers recruited
Number of individual donations gifted
Average donation amount
Donor base expansion rate
Donation form conversion rate
Recurring subscriptions set up
Partnerships and sponsorships established

Multi-channel marketing

Leveraging social fundraising and email marketing in addition to placing ads and communicating through text or phone calls is multi-channel marketing. Choosing just one of those is omnichannel marketing. While both have benefits, mostly in the budget, multi-channel marketing is the best way to market a P2P fundraising campaign to a wide donor database.

Write out how you expect to shout about your campaign in each channel as part of your marketing plan.

Social networks

Facebook and other Meta properties are your most obvious bet for spreading the word about your peer-to-peer campaign with social media posts. The bonus here is that with a P2P fundraising software like Funraise, your donor database can see your bat-signal, sign up to be a fundraiser, and begin fundraising using a social post with social proof.

Email

Peer-to-peer fundraising email templates will be your best friend when it comes to the email marketing channel. Keep it simple, encouraging, and direct, whether you're recruiting peer-to-peer fundraisers or updating your donor database on the campaign's progress.

Phone communications

We call this "phone communications" because there are lots of ways to make contact through the phone: calling, texting, or even voice messages. We know folks love a personalized thank you or ask, so consider applying that same idea to your phone communications.

Ads

Get your logo on a bus, a bench, a billboard, or even the inside of a bathroom stall. Use your Google Ads Grant or Microsoft Ads Grant for Social Impact. Run ads on social media platforms—the average ROI for Meta ads makes the potential juice worth the squeeze.

Budget

More than planning your budget, tracking your actual expenses is a key piece of building and maintaining finances for your marketing plan. Naming and setting expectations for each expense, recording the actual cost, and keeping an eye on remaining funds is table stakes. The rest, however, is up to you.

There are plenty of budget templates out there; certainly there is one that will fit your needs in the format that works for you. We say do a quick Googley-moogly and get started.

Timing

Scheduling your marketing outreach is an often-overlooked way to either maximize your peer-to-peer fundraising efforts or completely kill your peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. When it comes to marketing P2P fundraising campaigns, there are three main moments for maximization: before, midway, and after your fudraiser.

Before your fundraiser

Not too early, not too late. The bigger your nonprofit organization, the larger the campaign, the more lead time you'll need—even if you have a team of people working on your campaign.

Midway through your P2P campaign

Whether it's when you hit the halfway point to your overall goal, or get halfway through your time-based campaign, that midway mark is the moment to send encouragement to your fundraisers and a progress report to donors.

Our suggestion? Use automated email templates based on fundraising activity to build momentum and engagement. And yep, Funraise has the goods to make it happen.

After the fundraiser has ended

You may be thinking that the fundraiser's over, the funds are in the bank, the excitement has exited the building, so why keep marketing? But as a nonprofit fundraiser, you know that there's huge value in the follow up. Let's discuss.

There may be even more value in post-P2P fundraising campaign marketing than in the lead up and mid-campaign marketing. For one, any marketing efforts are good for mission awareness. Secondly, videos, fundraising thermometers, and P2P fundraiser accounts are the best way to cause big ol' FOMO and get supporters stoked to join in next year. Finally, the aforementioned assets will accelerate marketing efforts for your next P2P campaign.

Other ideas

You know we love fundraising ideas. We actually love all ideas, so here are a few "other" peer-to-peer fundraising ideas that may help your P2P marketing campaign.

Swag

Pretty standard idea. Raise this much, get this thing. But the "thing" is where you can get creative. Is it a physical thing? Or maybe an experience, or money, or a subscription. We would move heaven and earth to raise enough money to win a prize involving a daily delivery of puppy snuggles.

Host a live event

Whether your mind goes to a fun run or gala, or whether you immediately think of a livestreamed per-to-peer fundraising event, it doesn't matter. Your peer event is in the service of celebrating your fundraisers, so plan events that they want to join. Play video games on Twitch or cook a shared meal or take the whole crew to a water park.

Gamify fundraising

Funraise makes it easy to gamify peer-to-peer fundraising through progress bars on each individual fundraiser's donation page and lists of recent and top donors. Set prizes and rewards for successful fundraisers at different stages of the campaign and market those rewards heavily to recruit fundraisers.

Evangelists

Collaborate with influencers, corporate sponsorships, and ambassadors to get more fundraisers involved and donors donating. The benefit to peer-to-peer fundraising programs is the networking, so tap into it for more than just fundraising—use these evangelists to build out the fundraising program itself.

Tracking

This isn't a situation where you can just throw together a dashboard and export a report after the fundraiser. Recording individual donations and activity is one of the most important things you can do during the campaign so that you can pivot if things are shot to heck or double down when you see a specific fundraising segment or channel is making tsunami-sized waves.

Track your P2P campaign performance with UTMs

One effective peer-to-peer fundraising strategy to promote your P2P campaign is to track your campaign performance using UTM parameters. UTMs, or Urchin Tracking Modules, are codes that you can add to the URLs of your campaign materials, such as emails, social media posts, and website links.

These codes allow you to track and analyze the effectiveness of each marketing channel in driving traffic and donations to your P2P campaign. For example, if you notice that a certain social media platform is driving a lot of traffic but not many donations, you can focus on optimizing your messaging or targeting for that specific channel.

Additionally, UTMs can help you understand the behavior of your donors. By tracking the source, medium, and campaign name in your UTMs, you can see which specific ads or posts are driving the most original donations.

Funraise's donation forms offer UTM tracking and our industry best P2P fundraising platform provides corresponding analytics. This information can help you tailor your marketing efforts to target high-performing channels more effectively.

Fundraising Intelligence: reports and dashboards

And for those nonprofits that want to level up the analytics, Funraise has you covered. Funraise's data dashboards and reporting feature, Fundraising Intelligence, provides more than just static up-and-down graphs and charts.

With schedulable, exportable reports and dashboard templates, Fundraising Intelligence reveals intelligent insights into nonprofit sustainability and growth and helps you make smart fundraising decisions with smart fundraising data.

In addition our awesome peer-to-peer fundraising tools, Funraise's Fundraising Intelligence offers awesome reporting tools for nonprofits, and is always expanding. Check it out!

AI Forecasting
AI Explanations
Data Alerts
Report templates
Scheduled reports
Custom formulas
Conditional formatting
Editable permissions
Cross-object reporting

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Peer-to-peer campaign promotion FAQ (Thanks, AI!)

What is a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign?

A peer-to-peer fundraising campaign raises funds for a cause or organization by leveraging the personal networks and resources of individual supporters. In this type of campaign, individuals create their own fundraising pages and reach out to their friends, family, and social connections to solicit donations on behalf of the cause.

What is the best way to promote a fundraiser?

One of the most effective ways to promote a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign is to leverage the power of social media. With countless users on platforms like Facebook, social media provides a vast audience for spreading the word about your cause—plus, with Funraise's Facebook integration, P2P fundraisers can sign up and start fundraising immediately.

How do you make money from peer-to-peer?

Nonprofits make money from peer-to-peer by having their supporters spread the word about the campaign to their network of supporters. Additionally, partnering with influencers or organizations that align with your cause can drive more donations. Another strategy is to offer incentives or rewards for fundraising milestones; gamifying the fundraising process can make it more fun and engaging.

What are the disadvantages of peer-to-peer fundraising?

While peer-to-peer fundraising can be an effective strategy for promoting a campaign and increasing audience reach, there are also some disadvantages to consider, such as lack of control, limited reach—both for fundraisers and one-time donors—and fundraiser burnout. Despite these challenges, a well-planned and executed peer-to-peer fundraising campaign strategy can result in both donations and impact.

What is peer-to-peer strategy?

Leveraging the networks and connections of individual supporters, peer-to-peer strategy raises money on behalf of an organization or cause. There are several key elements to a successful peer-to-peer fundraising strategy: empowering your fundraisers, setting clear goals, utilizing social media, and communicating through modern tools such as email and text.

Does peer-to-peer cost money?

While there are costs associated with running a peer-to-peer campaign, it is possible to minimize these expenses. Funraise, for example, offers affordable options for nonprofits looking to run a peer-to-peer campaign. Additionally, there may be costs associated with marketing and promotion efforts, such as social media ads or creating swag for fundraisers.

What is peer-to-peer marketing?

Peer-to-peer marketing is a strategy that leverages the power of social connections and encourages individuals to promote a product, service, or cause to their friends, family, and networks. In the context of fundraising, peer-to-peer marketing plays a crucial role in promoting P2P campaigns and generating donations.