Ultimate Guide To Setting Up A Peer-To-Peer Campaign For Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday has earned the reputation of being the single biggest giving day for nonprofits. Many nonprofits take to social media, engage in livestreams, and send direct mail appeals to raise money for their mission on Giving Tuesday. Many of these campaign strategies ask supporters to give, but they don’t ask supporters to fundraise on your behalf. This year, instead of a traditional Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign, ask supporters to go the extra mile with a Giving Tuesday peer-to-peer campaign. New to peer-to-peer fundraisers? Download Qgiv’s ultimate guide to peer-to-peer fundraising for helpful tips for hosting a successful peer-to-peer event.

What are the benefits of a peer-to-peer campaign?

The major benefit of creating a peer-to-peer campaign is the ability to ask supporters to fundraise for you. Instead of just donating for Giving Tuesday, peer-to-peer events encourage supporters to keep the giving going. Your nonprofit gains access to your supporters’ social circles thanks to your supporters sharing your event via their personal fundraising pages. The peer-to-peer element of your campaign makes it easier to grow your fundraising for Giving Tuesday.

Peer-to-peer campaigns are also highly shareable. Supporters can share a link to their personal fundraising pages on social media, in emails, and over text to their friends and families. The ease of spreading the word about your campaign can greatly improve your reach and even make it possible to recruit new supporters to join the campaign.

A peer-to-peer campaign for Giving Tuesday also adds entertainment value to your fundraising event. Your nonprofit can create a theme, add in virtual event activities, and gives your fundraising participants the option to fundraise in ways that entertain their friends and family. For example, a participant can ask for donations during a video game livestream their friends and family can watch.

Launching a peer-to-peer campaign for Giving Tuesday can also get donors giving before Giving Tuesday or keep giving even after this major day of giving. With a traditional Giving Tuesday campaign, fundraising ends within 24 hours. By contrast, a Giving Tuesday peer-to-peer campaign can launch before Giving Tuesday and go until Giving Tuesday ends, or it can start on Giving Tuesday and fundraise until the end of the year. That means you can launch your year-end fundraising campaign on or before Giving Tuesday and encourage supporters to make the season of giving really count. This is the time of year when people are feeling most charitable. With your supporters sharing your campaign, you make it easy for people looking for a cause to support to find and donate to yours.

Making it easy to give and giving donors multiple days to make gifts can seriously improve your chances of reaching your fundraising goals!

How do you get supporters to participate?

The easiest step in getting supporters to fundraise on your behalf during your Giving Tuesday peer-to-peer campaign is simply to ask them to participate. Send appeals to the supporters in your donor database asking them to help you reach your fundraising goal by fundraising on your behalf. Give them a compelling reason to support you and explain how you’ll use the funds you raise to help those you serve.

Make it easy for supporters to get on board. When you ask them to support you by setting up a peer-to-peer fundraising page, provide resources that can help them achieve fundraising success. These resources can be templates for asking their friends and family to support you, fundraising event ideas, and more.

Incentivize your supporters’ participation if you can. Offer awards to your top fundraisers to encourage participation. Figure out what excites your supporters and make it the prize for peer-to-peer campaign participation. These can be plaques or trophies, branded merchandise, exclusive invitations to your events, or gift cards to popular restaurants in your area.

How do you pick a peer-to-peer platform?

You have options when it comes to peer-to-peer tools, but not all platforms are created equal. Before committing to a particular peer-to-peer service, take time to consider what you need from your peer-to-peer platform. To start, ask yourself these questions:

1. What fundraising tools do you need to be successful?
2. Does the platform you’re considering include an email system participants can use to reach out to friends and family?
3. Are participants able to share their participant fundraising page to social media?
4. Can you customize peer-to-peer event pages and participant fundraising pages?
5. Do you need to set up a peer-to-peer store to sell merchandise or raffle tickets?
6. What reports and donor data are available with the peer-to-peer platform?
7. Are there options to export donor data to your nonprofit CRM, email service provider, or accounting tools?
8. Can I pay for the tool just for the few months I’m using it?

Some peer-to-peer platforms, like Qgiv’s peer-to-peer tools, have all of these capabilities. Others are designed for specific event types and have tools limited to that purpose. Do you need a peer-to-peer platform that can do it all or do you need a select set of tools for a specific event type? Don’t know where to start looking for the right peer-to-peer event platform? Here are Qgiv’s top picks!

Conclusion

A peer-to-peer campaign for Giving Tuesday offers an exceptional opportunity to grow your fundraising by encouraging supporters to fundraise for you. With the proper tools and the right motivation for your donors, you can launch an unforgettable campaign on Giving Tuesday and earn more donations for your mission through the end of the year. New to virtual fundraising events? Qgiv’s here to help. Check out this blog post for tips on hosting a virtual peer-to-peer event.