10 Fundraising Tips for Effective Peer-to-Peer Campaigns

Peer-to-peer campaigns equip passionate supporters with powerful fundraising tools, transforming them into an extension of your development team. These advocates not only help secure essential funds but also expand your nonprofit’s reach by helping you connect with new donors. 

Below, we share 10 key peer-to-peer fundraising tips to inspire greater engagement, drive more online donations, and strengthen your overall strategy. 

1. Expand your reach with the right tools

The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer report found that 48% of people trust recommendations from friends and family when making decisions compared to 33% for ads and 17% for the news. 

This aligns with an overall shift toward trusting individuals over institutions. GoFundMe provides the tools to adapt to these trends.

Nonprofit Pages on GoFundMe

GoFundMe has long united peers to raise funds for individuals and causes they care about and has naturally evolved into a platform where people also rally behind nonprofits. In the past year alone, over 70,000 nonprofits have received support through GoFundMe.

One way GoFundMe helps nonprofits leverage supporters’ giving enthusiasm is through Nonprofit Pages, which enable individuals to easily find, donate, and fundraise for your organization. 

Nonprofits can claim their page for access to GoFundMe donor and fundraiser data to better understand the platform’s audience and benefit from more supporter-led fundraising efforts. With integrated SEO capabilities, Nonprofit Pages have the power to reach waves of new supporters to drive greater acquisition and growth for your cause.

2. Coach, equip, and encourage your fundraisers for success

To achieve an impactful peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, you must help your fundraisers be successful. Providing education and resources on the process mobilizes participants to deliver their message and reach more donors, raising more for your mission and deepening their connection to your cause. 

To coach, equip, and encourage your fundraisers, you can:

• Provide a toolkit with all the essential fundraising resources that supporters need to set up their fundraising page and be successful.
• Share fundraising ideas and examples of heartfelt storytelling to inspire giving through their donation forms.
• Prepare branded assets, sample social media posts, email templates, and other resources for easy sharing with their network.
• Host a weekly online webinar that covers fundraising FAQs and provides networking opportunities.
• Send milestone emails throughout their peer-to-peer campaign, congratulating them on their progress and providing tips and motivation for achieving their goal.
• Offer incentives for participation, such as raffle tickets, special T-shirts, and other swag.

Peer-to-peer fundraiser support in action

Hillel International teamed up with Classy from GoFundMe to make peer-to-peer fundraising as user-friendly as possible during the organization’s Hillel Global Giving Week. Our platform helped the nonprofit create a prefilled template easily customizable for 170 different campus Hillels. 

Classy experts also hosted a training session to ensure everyone within the organization could access our platform’s full fundraising capabilities. As a result, campuses saw 27% growth year over year for the 2024 giving week, and all campuses combined to raise a record-setting $5.5 million in four days.

Read the full story

3. Empower supporters to do more for your cause

The future of peer-to-peer fundraising is in empowering your supporters to do more for your nonprofit rather than creating more work for your already busy internal team. It also lies in showing up in the places where your supporters are likely to be. That’s why Classy and GoFundMe focus on supporter engagement and empowerment solutions.

GoFundMe has several new and upcoming features to help nonprofits achieve this, such as:

• Live fundraising tools that integrate GoFundMe with popular livestream channels so individuals can elevate your cause while livestreaming a performance, gaming session, or interactive event
• GoFundMe Profiles where individuals can show their commitment to your nonprofit and encourage their communities to do the same

4. Use peer-to-peer fundraising to connect with younger donors

Social media platforms are excellent for peer-to-peer fundraising as charity becomes more of a passion for younger generations. GoFundMe’s The Social State of Giving report found that most Gen Zers and Millennials follow impact creators online. In fact, one in four Gen Zers said they donated as the result of a social media creator, and 51% said they would trust impact creators to make donations on their behalf.

Here are some ideas to socialize peer-to-peer campaigns:

• Leverage Classy’s social sharing integration with Meta, which allows supporters to share campaign links on their Facebook feeds, Instagram profiles, and Instagram stories for larger reach and easy conversion.
• Encourage fundraisers to seamlessly boost their reach by duplicating their Classy peer-to-peer fundraising page to Facebook using Classy for Facebook.
• Leverage videos on Instagram reels and stories, TikTok, and YouTube to engage your audience of supporters and fundraisers.
• Deliver real-time updates on supporters’ peer-to-peer campaign successes on your nonprofit’s social media pages.
• Introduce some friendly competition by inviting followers to vote on elements like fundraiser creativity to build awareness of the many pages they can support.
• Support fundraisers in updating their social media profile pictures and banners to showcase their peer-to-peer campaigns and include links to their personal donation pages.

Engaging youth for peer-to-peer fundraising in action

To Write Love On Her Arms has fostered a highly engaged younger audience through thoughtful social media posting and engagement. This has allowed the nonprofit to encourage giving opportunities that resonate with Gen Z and Millennial donors. 

With Classy, TWLOHA has created a robust network of peer-to-peer fundraisers, securing more than 60% of its online donation volume from peer-to-peer fundraising.

Learn how TWLOHA achieved this

5. Think creatively with your community outreach

Raising funds through peer-to-peer campaigns requires outreach to different audiences to encourage their participation. Consider what partnerships you can form with untapped community groups or themes related to your mission that can heighten interest in the fundraising opportunity. For example, you can ask:

• Are there any local clubs, professional organizations, or service groups we haven’t engaged with whose members might be interested in our cause?
• Do any local events already exist that align with our mission and could pair with peer-to-peer fundraising opportunities?
• What media resources have we yet to explore to share our message and highlight the power of peer-to-peer fundraising?

Peer-to-peer creative outreach in action

Starlight Children’s Foundation provides colorful hospital gowns, toys, video games, and gaming stations to seriously ill children in hospitals across the country. When the nonprofit partnered with Sony Pictures to create “Ghostbusters”-themed hospital gowns, it saw an opportunity to share its work with new audiences. 

It connected with the Los Angeles Ghostbusters—a cosplay group that provides fans with an authentic “Ghostbusters” experience—and activated Classy’s peer-to-peer fundraising platform to recruit over 20 Ghostbusters groups around the United States and one in Italy to reach a wider donor network. Tapping into niche fandom communities through podcasts, online forums, and conventions, the Ghostbusters groups raised $40,000.

Get the details

6. Get corporate partners involved

Research shows that 88% of company leaders believe effective employee engagement programs help attract and retain employees. With more workers wanting to see charitable behavior from their employers, this is an excellent opportunity to bring in peer-to-peer fundraising to strengthen your corporate giving program. 

Here are a few ways to connect peer-to-peer fundraising efforts to large companies and local businesses:

• Empower employees to fundraise: Share a time-based initiative or a year-round campaign with corporate partners to engage their teams. Employees can create personalized fundraising pages to tell their unique stories and share involvement with their broader network of family and friends to raise more for your mission.

• Host a company competition: Build a campaign template that corporate partners can brand to their organizations and introduce company-wide. Teams and departments can compete for a reward, like a day off or a team dinner. Imagine a fun and engaging competition between the finance team and the marketing department that entices donation amounts from broader audiences outside the company.

• Uplevel to a corporate challenge: Expand your reach by bringing team fundraising to corporate partners to compete against one another and see who can collectively fundraise the most. This could include the opportunity for companies to match donations from employees and increase the overall impact they make together.

Corporate partner peer-to-peer fundraising in action

Feed More, a Virginia-based hunger relief nonprofit, partners with the Virginia Bar Association to recruit law firms for a friendly competition to see which can raise the most through its peer-to-peer campaign pages. 

The nonprofit focuses on retaining the individual firms and offices that have participated in the past through a retention strategy that includes a thoughtful communication plan before, during, and after the fundraising competition. 

They provide fundraisers with all the tools they need to be successful, including a fundraising toolkit, and assist them with any Classy-related fundraising page questions.

Learn from Feed More

7. Leverage a matching gift for peer-to-peer

According to Double the Donation, 84% of donors are more likely to give if there’s a matching gift, while 1 in 3 would give a larger amount if a match applied. Additionally, a well-executed matching gift strategy can have more than 75% engagement—5x the average rate. However, nonprofits may overlook this opportunity with peer-to-peer campaigns.

While you may have used a match to drive online fundraising for a year-end campaign or other signature event, it’s worth considering leveraging one for peer-to-peer fundraising, too. Nonprofit organizations can cultivate corporate sponsorships to support peer-to-peer campaigns or ask a major donor for a gift to drive momentum for the fundraising effort. 

Matching gifts for peer-to-peer fundraising in action

buildOn has a strong community of students, families, and corporations that support its mission through peer-to-peer fundraising. Thanks to a generous donor, it offers a match for student fundraisers one day every year—known as Match Day. 

To qualify for the match, fundraisers must raise a minimum of $750 before Match Day starts. Once they meet that goal, any Match Day donation to an individual fundraising page receives a match up to $500.

The buildOn team uses its Classy and Salesforce integration to easily see who’s eligible to participate in the Match Day. This enables the team to closely monitor campaign performance and tailor communications and targeted support to help fundraisers reach their goals. 

Through this, 35% more individuals met the $750 fundraising minimum in 2023 than the previous year. Additionally, participants raised $30,000 in the first five minutes. Match Day has proven to be an effective acquisition tool, with 150+ unique donors on that day alone and hundreds more in the months leading up to it. 

Read on for full details

8. Encourage teams to elevate causes

While individuals can create peer-to-peer fundraising pages, these campaigns are also a powerful tool for community-building through team efforts. Nonprofits can look for ways to help like-minded individuals increase their impact by organizing team-based peer-to-peer fundraising efforts around specific causes.

This is an especially effective approach to peer-to-peer fundraising for nonprofits that span wider geographic areas, contain multiple different chapters, or have a set of distinct causes with set fundraising goals. These cohorts lend themselves well to forming peer-based fundraising teams.

Team-based peer-to-peer fundraising in action

The YMCA of San Diego County has 14 locations that participate in its Annual Campaign, a peer-to-peer fundraiser that rallies support around the county’s highest-need communities. To better personalize donor experiences, the nonprofit decided each of its branch locations, social services, and overnight camps would have a campaign. This allowed supporters to join teams around the fundraising priority that mattered the most to them.

Creating separate campaigns for each location might seem like a daunting task. However, with Classy’s templating functionality, the nonprofit streamlined this process by creating a single campaign that it could duplicate for each location, customizing the name, hero image, and programs for each branch. This saved time cross-checking all the backend settings to focus on creating the best giving experience.

Dive in to learn more

9. Incorporate peer-to-peer fundraising at events

Fundraising events add an extra level of engagement to peer-to-peer efforts. In-person or virtual attendees can set up a fundraising page using event registration software for nonprofits. The fundraising experience may include an endurance event like a walk-a-thon, an entertainment opportunity like a benefit concert, or other exciting ideas your donor base enjoys.

Coming together for the event adds a personalized and timely element that can energize fundraisers. Supporters can root for participants to achieve a time-based fundraising goal, even if they can’t attend, creating added reach. 

Events with fundraising help nonprofits offer:

• Wider accessibility for participation across in-person, hybrid, and virtual event audiences
• Flexibility for donors and participants to get involved how they’d like
• Interactive components, like activity tracking, gamification, and livestreams
• Smooth reporting to see engagement from pre-event to the day of the event

Classy powers events of all shapes and sizes, from endurance events to galas. Organize sports tournaments, cooking classes, or other themes that pair well with peer-to-peer fundraising. 

With Classy Live, you can even extend beyond registration to create a virtual venue for attendees anywhere or provide in-person event features like on-site check-in and digital fundraising displays for event staff.

10. Think about donor acquisition and retention

To get the most out of your peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, keep donor acquisition and retention strategies top of mind.

Potential donors naturally gravitate toward stories that create a feeling of connection to something greater. When recruiting supporters to participate in your peer-to-peer campaigns, review your messaging to ensure it tells a compelling story. For example, you may want to highlight:

• An opening email series that introduces your campaign’s story in bite-sized portions that each call on people to become fundraisers
• Impact stories that demonstrate your program’s potential to change lives and outcomes for people who need it
• Videos and photos that help people visualize your story and appeal to their emotions
• Testimonials that bring in the voices of your constituents, volunteers, staff, or board members for an additional human touch

Additionally, create a plan for after your peer-to-peer campaigns to ensure new givers leave with a positive impression of your nonprofit and fundraisers feel appreciated for their efforts. As you wrap up your campaign, be sure to send a thank-you message to every fundraiser and donor to show them how much they matter to your mission. 

For the best results:

• Add details to every thank-you message, like a fundraiser’s name, campaign goal, and total amount raised to show they’re deeply valued.
• Drive future engagement by sharing tangible results that participants’ contributions made.
• Build digital e-cards that fundraisers can share with donors to their campaign to extend the gratitude effect.
• Have your thank-you note come from your leadership, a beneficiary who received support, or another significant figure that adds a human touch.

Peer-to-peer donor acquisition and retention in action

Since joining the Classy community, Stadia has been growing peer-to-peer fundraising as part of its overall strategy to acquire new donors. Every staff member has an annual fundraising goal and can set up a fundraising page quickly for the nonprofit’s annual “Go The Extra Mile” campaign to appeal to their networks via built-in social sharing capabilities. 

The team uses templates to keep branding consistent across fundraising pages. A seamless checkout process then offers multiple payment options to make it easy for donors to give. The ease of fundraising, sharing, and giving on Classy helped Stadia bring in 100 new donors from the campaign and achieve a peer-to-peer conversion rate 25% higher than the industry average.

Read how Stadia achieved this

Use peer-to-peer fundraising to reach more supporters, build community, and increase revenue 

Successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns thrive on strategic planning, strong engagement, and a sense of community. Effective fundraising fosters authentic connections and makes it easy for participants to share their passion. 

Use the above tips alongside powerful solutions from Classy and GoFundMe to help meet your peer-to-peer fundraising goals while strengthening long-term relationships with supporters.

Copy editor: Ayanna Julien