3 Ways Social Media Can Boost Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

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Team Funraise

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January 8, 2025

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3 minutes

Nonprofit Trends

P2P Fundraising

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In 2024, the number of social media users worldwide rose to five billion—is your nonprofit taking advantage of the widespread use of these platforms in its fundraising efforts? Peer-to-peer is the perfect strategy for social fundraising.

Your organization can promote many types of fundraisers on social media, but crowdfunding initiatives like peer-to-peer fundraising are especially suited to this communication channel's community-focused nature. Plan your fundraiser as usual and then take to social media, encouraging supporters to secure donations from friends and family members on your behalf.

While this simple approach can bring in significant fundraising revenue, there are some more creative steps you can take to reach new heights. In this guide, we’ll explore 3 unique ways to enhance your peer-to-peer campaign using social media—let’s begin.

Create interactive challenges
Cultivate community with livestream
Put the "social" in social media

1. Create interactive challenges or initiatives.

Social media challenges motivate your audience to engage in certain tasks, record their attempts or progress, and post user-generated content about their experience. You can also ask them to tag their friends in the challenge, creating an ever-growing chain of participants that quickly reaches new audiences.

Why creating interactive challenges works:

Challenges could make your nonprofit go viral, exposing a large audience of brand-new supporters to your cause. Think back to the viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which garnered attention from celebrities like Taylor Swift and Conan O’Brien.
The interactive nature of challenges turns your audience from passive to active participants. This can make your campaign more memorable and inspire more people to give.
Successful challenges can become a core part of your brand. For example, The Movember Foundation organizes an annual event in November that challenges men to grow mustaches in support of men’s health issues. The challenge, which has been running since 2003, has amassed 6.8 million participants and funded over 1,250 men’s health projects.

How to create interactive challenges successfully:

Create the challenge. Your challenge could be as simple as creating a new dance that supporters film themselves performing or launching a month-long fitness challenge to promote your cause. Make sure you’re ready to accept a variety of payment methods to make giving easy for supporters.
Decide on a structure. Determine how you will raise money and spread awareness of the challenge. You might have supporters donate, call out the donation in their posts or videos, and tag specific people to join the challenge. Or, you might encourage them to use a custom hashtag when they post about the challenge to help others discover the campaign.
Promote the challenge. Choose the social media platform(s) you’ll launch the challenge on, making sure it aligns with the kind of content participants will post. For instance, Facebook challenges are popular among philanthropic organizations because participants can post many different types of content, from videos to text posts.

2. Cultivate a sense of community with livestreams.

Peer-to-peer campaigns are very effective at reaching new audiences and uniting supporters for a common cause regardless of geographic location. However, this can also make these fundraisers feel disconnected—it can be nearly impossible to get all of these supporters in the same room. This is where social livestreaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube Live come in.

Why livestreaming works:

Livestreams bring your community together in a single online space. Successful social media strategies are founded on fostering a strong, connected collective, and livestreams give remote supporters a space to rally.
Influential streamers have achieved massive popularity. Top-ranking streamers’ average viewer counts can climb to the hundreds of thousands. While your nonprofit won’t achieve this from a single campaign, consider the long-term impact of having hundreds of new eyes on your cause.
Regular livestream viewers are used to donating, as this is a key part of engaging with their favorite streamers on platforms like Twitch (chat messages sent with a donation are often more likely to be read). For your supporters who already engage with streaming platforms, donating will be quick and convenient.

How livestream successfully:

Challenge supporters. If you have any streamers in your supporter base, challenge them to fundraise from their audience on behalf of your organization. They’ll feel empowered to make a positive difference, and you’ll gain new supporters.
Seek partnerships with influencers. To make a bigger impact, look for successful streamers to partner with. Most streaming platforms offer built-in tools that allow streamers to raise money from their audience for a specific organization. Work with the streamer to organize a specific stream or series that will benefit your nonprofit.
Understand how to make the livestream engaging. Twitch offers a charity tool for nonprofits, making it easy to go live and accept donations. Draft some engaging talking points about your cause and plan activities like live reacting to content, recognizing top donors, conducting polls, or answering audience questions.
Be ready to accept an influx of donations. Often, livestreams convey a sense of urgency that inspires viewers to give on the spot. A popular streamer might send dozens of supporters to your donation page at once. To provide a positive donor experience, Jackson River recommends choosing a donation tool that integrates with your CRM, prioritizes security, minimizes processing fees, and includes recurring payment options.

3. Focus on the “social” aspect of these platforms.

It’s easy to focus on content creation and marketing when promoting your campaigns on social media, but, like with livestreams, special things happen when you make the effort to actively engage with supporters. In doing so, you’ll motivate them to engage with your social media accounts, fostering productive two-way communication and long-lasting support.

Why being social works:

Engaging with supporters drives deeper involvement, strengthening their emotional connections to your cause and inspiring future support.
Personal, genuine interactions make supporters feel valued beyond their donations. This is increasingly important as studies show that donor retention rates are continuing to fall year over year.
When supporters engage with your organization publicly, it builds social proof. Social media is a peer-driven environment, and people are more likely to engage with your nonprofit when they see their friends and family doing so. Consider this: 92% of consumers feel hesitant about buying a product if there are no customer reviews. In this case, social media engagement serves as a positive review or stamp of approval on your nonprofit.

How to be social successfully:

Encourage participation. As Allegiance Group + Pursuant’s guide to digital marketing explains, your audience is most likely to engage with compelling content with actionable calls to action that “motivate your audience to take the next action.” Make your content visually appealing and relevant to supporters’ interests, and clearly indicate what you want them to do (e.g., reposting on their account to encourage donations from friends and family).
Remember to follow up. Don’t just post and put your phone down. Instead, stick around to interact with supporters who comment or engage with posts from those fundraising on your behalf. If you have a particularly dedicated supporter, you might even send them direct messages to express your gratitude. Remember that interactions should always match your brand voice.
Target highly personal apps like WhatsApp or Venmo. These apps are where supporters connect with their friends and families and make personal financial transactions. WhatsApp has a whopping 2.95 billion users, making it a great place to find new supporters. Encourage supporters to share links to your donation pages in their WhatsApp groups and discuss your cause. Public transactions to your organization on Venmo can build social proof and get their friends curious about your cause.

Peer-to-peer fundraisers are a great opportunity to drive revenue, connect with your community, and reach untapped audiences. Since online giving makes it more accessible for young supporters and microdonors to participate in your campaigns, make sure you have a streamlined donation tool in place. This empowers your nonprofit to drive the revenue needed to fund its current initiatives while recruiting the next generation of loyal supporters.

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Author: Shannon Scanlan, Solutions Engineer at Jackson River

Since joining Jackson River in 2017, Shannon has been supporting clients in implementing the Springboard platform, a digital-first online fundraising and engagement platform that helps nonprofits catalyze support for their cause.

For more than 17 years, Shannon has been helping nonprofits grow their digital and direct marketing programs and use technology to reach new audiences, raise more, and improve efficiency. She has worked for major organizations such as the ACLU, the Clinton Foundation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others. Shannon is Salesforce Admin certified and a frequent speaker at conferences such as the Nonprofit Technology Conference and the AFP annual conference, as well as multiple podcasts and webinars.