6 Peer-to-Peer Holiday Giving Campaigns You Don’t Want to Miss

Just as the holiday shopping season can significantly boost a store’s profit for the year, holiday giving campaigns can help your nonprofit achieve its year-end goals and reach new fundraising benchmarks.

Peer-to-peer holiday fundraising is a great way to leverage the spirit of the season to make an impact toward your mission. Invite your supporters to connect with their networks to bolster your year-end initiatives. They can ask friends and family to donate in lieu of gifts, turn the campaign into a good-spirited holiday tradition, or simply tap into a time when more people are thinking about making donations.

Below, we’ve rounded up six peer-to-peer holiday fundraising campaign ideas to inspire your year-end strategy. We’ll look at how each nonprofit used peer-to-peer fundraising best practices to create a successful campaign, and how your nonprofit can do the same to encourage participation in your own seasonal fundraising efforts.

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1. Add Friendly Competition to Your Holiday Giving Campaign

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is a nonprofit that facilitates getting essential services to people with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses through the talents, resources, and generosity of the American theatre community.

Their holiday giving campaign targets high school and college students to become the “next generation of theatre stars” by fundraising for their cause. The page uses bright colors and creative imagery to draw supporters into their challenge.

Offer Incentives

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS ups the fun factor by using a custom text block to list the four prizes fundraisers can win, each aligning with their mission.

Showcase Your Teams

Participants can join one of three teams, each named after “some of Broadway’s most iconic songs about coming together, supporting others, and creating change.” The holiday giving campaign uses impact blocks to showcase the teams, allowing supporters to immediately join and feel a sense of community and friendly competition.

Celebrate Your Supporters

This nonprofit also leverages a list of the top individual fundraisers and teams to keep supporters motivated. An activity wall feature makes it easy for donors to see the social proof of others getting involved and feel more inspired to make a gift.

2. Utilize Videos and Infographics on Your Holiday Campaign Page

WholeSchool Mindfulness is a nonprofit dedicated to integrating mindfulness practices into school communities. Their holiday giving campaign communicates their story in creative, compelling ways to encourage supporters to sign up as fundraisers.

Grab Donors’ Attention With Compelling Video

The campaign page begins with a two-minute cartoon video telling the story of a student named Rosa who could benefit from their services. It follows Rosa over three years as mindfulness practices make her better able to cope with life’s stressors. The video makes the nonprofit’s mission and impact clear.

Create a Clear Path to Give

Following the video, the nonprofit emphasizes a sense of urgency by highlighting the increased demand for their services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The brief text encourages supporters to sign up to fundraise for Giving Tuesday before moving into an on-brand infographic titled “The Path of a Mindful Champion.” This infographic helps fundraisers see how they can be successful with their holiday fundraising goals in six easy steps.

By the time supporters scroll through the infographic, they know exactly how to get started and why their involvement matters. The impact blocks sitting immediately below offer a seamless path to start fundraising right away.

PRO TIP: When creating an infographic, stick to just one main point and allow your visuals to do the talking. Design with too much text can be overwhelming and ineffective.

3. Leverage a Matching Gift

Keep Tahoe Blue is a nonprofit taking action to address the environmental challenges threatening Lake Tahoe. In its holiday giving campaign, the nonprofit leverages both the spirit of the season and the power of a matching gift to drive donations.

Offer a Match

One in three donors say they’d make a larger gift if they knew it would be matched, and 84% are more likely to give in the first place if a match is offered. To engage donors as soon as they land on the page, this nonprofit wisely highlights their matching gift upfront, sharing that donors have the opportunity to double their impact through a dollar-for-dollar match up to $30,000.

The holiday campaign’s progress bar shows the full amount raised—including match dollars—to emphasize how donations can have an impact of up to $60,000.

Motivate Donors With Strong Visuals

To further encourage supporters, the page includes a short, one-minute video reminding donors of the “why” behind the campaign. This clear message incentivizes donors to act before the donation matching period ends.

Explain the Tangible Impact of Each Gift

Keep Tahoe Blue also uses impact blocks to suggest fundraising amounts that align with their unique donor base, including specific highlights of how each individual amount can help the organization.

When creating impact blocks for your campaign, remember to:

• Get specific with your copy to clearly explain how far donations will go
• Get emotional to encourage higher gift amounts
• Get creative by taking a unique spin on their traditional use cases
• Get strategic with placement on your page to boost visibility

4. Highlight Feel-Good Holiday Content

Lab Rescue LRCP is a nonprofit that rescues, fosters, and finds homes for abused, neglected, and abandoned labrador retrievers. While the nonprofit’s work can be emotionally heavy, their holiday giving campaign leans into the lighthearted side of their work to engage supporters.

Establish a Connection With Imagery

To begin, the campaign uses a hero image of a dog with the text “Grant a Lab’s Wish” written over it. This creates an emotional connection to the cause, especially for dog owners.

PRO TIP: On Classy, the ideal background hero image size is 1280 x 720 px.

Personalize Your Leaderboard

The page also includes a list of the top individual fundraisers for the holiday giving campaign, but with an adorable caveat—the fundraisers’ names and profile pictures are those of their pets. This is both on-brand for the nonprofit and provides an opportunity to make donors smile.

While giving your donors a smile may seem extremely simple, it’s a powerful way to connect.

5. Tap Into the Holiday Giving Spirit

Childhelp is a nonprofit that supports the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of abused, neglected, and at-risk children. For their holiday campaign, they help their donors get into the giving spirit with festive design elements that encourage donations.

Tell a Story With Your Design

An engaging hero image has the power to grab a supporter’s attention and inspire support for your cause. Make sure the photo you choose reflects the tone of your campaign and sparks feelings of generosity.

The imagery and messaging of Childhelp’s “Home for the Holidays” fundraising campaign is closely tied to the time of year. The page’s hero image of a classic holiday meal and use of warm colors contribute to a “cozy” holiday feeling.

Use Statistics to Support Your Ask

In its brief “About the Campaign” message, this page highlights key figures related to the increase they’ve seen in calls and texts sent to their hotline since the start of the year. This data reminds donors why their gift is critical right now and how it supports this specific fundraising goal, as well as the nonprofit’s larger mission.

Customize Your Copy to Align With Your Goal

To ensure supporters feel welcomed and connected to the cause, Childhelp refers to their fundraisers as “chefs” who are helping to provide resources to those in need by sharing their favorite seasonal recipes. Supporters can either become chefs themselves or support a “special chef” who is already participating.

6. Keep Your Fundraising Message Simple

National Writing Project is a nonprofit that helps teachers connect with their students in more impactful ways to support and inspire young writers.

Be Direct

Streamline your campaign to drive donors directly to your donation form. This page has a simple design with a progress bar and strong hero image, and offers the options to either donate or fundraise.

PRO TIP: Keep the progress bar hidden until you’ve reached one-third of your goal.

Keep Donors Moving

The brief text at the bottom pulls everything together by explaining how this campaign contributes to their larger mission.

Especially during the holiday season, your audience is getting inundated with emails, social media posts, and other information from a variety of organizations asking for their attention and support.

By taking a minimalist approach to your holiday giving campaign, visitors won’t get lost scrolling through too much information. They can quickly visit your page, donate or sign up to fundraise, and keep moving.

Make sure you’re providing enough context to communicate your campaign narrative in a compelling way. Be deliberate with your messaging by using descriptive language and offer something unique to your audience that leaves a lasting impression, like powerful statistics, imagery, or testimonials.

Use Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Best Practices for Successful Holiday Campaigns

Peer-to-peer holiday fundraising campaigns offer fun, impactful ways for your supporters to give back during the holiday season. With some creative campaign page ideas, you can leverage the spirit of the season and engage your audience to fundraise on your behalf.

If you’re looking for more ways to implement a strong year-end fundraising campaign, make sure to check out some of our other resources, including:

• The Smart Guide to Strong Year-End Fundraising
• 5 Post-Giving Tuesday Strategies to Boost Your Year-End Impact
• 11 Winter Fundraising Ideas You’ll Want to Try in 2021
• Top Matching Gift Q&A for Impactful Year-End Fundraising