How to Use OneCause Peer-to-Peer to Drive Year-End Giving

Peer-to-peer fundraising makes year-end giving a fun, social activity meant to be shared with others.

With the world of fundraising moving online, virtual and creative peer-to-peer campaigns that spread awareness and engage donors anytime, anywhere might be the perfect solution for your year-end fundraising.

Whether it’s a fundraising challenge or even a giving day campaign that sparks a donation wildfire, using peer-to-peer fundraising to get people involved helps keep your mission top of mind. The right strategy makes people care and gets others to join in as well!

The OneCause Peer-to-Peer solution redefines peer-to-peer fundraising, making it as simple (and engaging) as possible to deliver a robust, easy-to-use solution to nonprofits across many types of charities and organizations — especially for year-end fundraising.

Getting Started

Before we jump to number 1, make sure to plan and set goals for your peer-to-peer year-end fundraising campaign following these steps:

  • Determine your campaign’s structure and goals.
  • Find the right peer-to-peer fundraising platform for your campaign.
  • Create your central campaign web page and begin promoting it.
  • Develop a campaign timeline and plan additional engagement opportunities.
  • Recruit your peer-to-peer fundraising team and train them for the campaign.
  • Kick off your campaign and begin tracking donor engagement.
  • Direct the momentum of the campaign and give your volunteers a boost when needed.
  • Focus the campaign’s energy for the grand finale.

Now that we see the big picture, let’s break down the OneCause Peer-to-Peer software into the top 5 features that you can use to optimize your year-end campaign.

  1. Site Design & Personalized Fundraising Pages
  2. Easy to Navigate Registration
  3. Fundraising Gamification
  4. Social Networking
  5. Reporting & Data

#1: Site Design & Custom Fundraising Pages

Your site, participant pages, and registration are the backbone of any peer-to-peer campaign. Style and ease go hand-in-hand to elevate the participant experience and drive donor conversions.

Beyond adding a logo or a photo to a pre-built landing page template, OneCause Peer-to-Peer allows for customization options and design flexibility to truly brand your campaign as your own.

Your peer-to-peer campaign will encompass both your nonprofit’s main fundraising page and your fundraisers’ individual pages — with no need for technical set-up support.

While your supporters customize their pages to share why your cause is important to them, your organization is responsible for designing a main fundraising page that serves as the hub of your peer-to-peer campaign.

Tip: Don’t forget to provide event details (especially if virtual!) if you’re hosting one alongside your campaign. Check out some virtual peer-to-peer campaigns using OneCause software, here

The true advantage of a peer-to-peer campaign lends itself to the peer network — which is even more reason to optimize your participants’ pages.

With OneCause, participant pages include:

  • Name
  • Unlimited number of high-quality photos and videos
  • Personal message from the participant about why they’re fundraising
  • Fundraising goal and current total
  • Challenge network
  • Real-time timeline with donations and any personal comments from donors

See it in action with real-life homepage examples!

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#2: Easy Registration

Registration is key to acquiring new donors — especially at year-end. That’s why peer-to-peer software with an easy-to-navigate registration process is a must-have to grow your donor reach.

Not sure where to start? The answer is in the palm of your hand. Donors outside of your network are looking to social media for new causes to support, so get the word out about your mission! Create campaigns that inspire people to share photos and videos with your hashtag and allow them to join your campaigns directly from social media.

OneCause Peer-to-Peer allows you to:

  • Customize the donor experience  (donation levels, donation form questions, donation receipt, etc.).
  • Create registration types (supporter, volunteer, sponsor, exhibitor, etc.).
  • Enable participants to add additional registrants (at the same time as they register).
  • Design custom discount/promo codes with maximum usage.
  • Create personalized registration questions.
  • Define suggested as well as minimum fundraising goals for individuals and teams.
  • Tailor registration by campaign type (i.e. one-step registration for a simple challenge and a more robust registration for an endurance event).

See it in action with real-life registration examples!

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#3: Fundraising Gamification

Harnessing the power of peer influence keeps a peer-to-peer campaign rolling. Social engagement tools, such as gamification, are critical to reaching new social networks. After all, why not let your donors have fun while they raise funds? Yet, gamification functionality is often lacking in many peer-to-peer solutions.

With real-time leaderboards, team pages, personal fundraising thermometers, and comment walls, donors and participants can see who is in the lead, what others are saying, and have fun with the competitive aspect of charitable giving with OneCause Peer-to-Peer software.

Take our advice with these gamification strategies for your year-end fundraising campaign:

  • Use leaderboards. Display the top fundraisers and how much they’ve raised using a leaderboard. Donors will be more motivated to fundraise when they see their name on the top of your list.
  • Give badges for significant milestones. Badges are images that participants can place on their peer-to-peer pages to mark fundraising milestones. The more badges a fundraiser receives, the more money they’ve raised for your cause.
  • Display a fundraising thermometer. It’s important to update donors on your progress. Having a fundraising thermometer for your overall campaign, as well as for each individual, shows participants how far they’ve come.
  • Offer prizes to top ranking fundraisers. Who doesn’t love winning an awesome prize for their hard work? Motivate your fundraisers to finish the campaign strong by rewarding your top performers. You can even utilize the built-in point system for a variety of activities.

Remember that part of keeping donors motivated is interacting with them. Keep your supporters updated on the top fundraisers and stoke the competitive fire with fun and regular progress updates. This could be as simple as a social post or an email update to your subscribers.

See it in action with real-life gamification examples!

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#4: Social Networking

The power of social fundraising lies in the features you can use to share the word about your year-end campaign.

With easily shareable peer-to-peer fundraising pages, Ambassadors, family members, and donors alike are able to spread the word about your year-end fundraising campaign with their social networks.

To optimize the social community (especially in a virtual world), the OneCause Peer-to-Peer solution has the following features:

  • Hashtag listening and automatic replies to join or donate
  • Social suggestions to encourage team participation and additional donations
  • Live gallery and timeline to aggregate photos, videos, progress and social posts
  • Recruitment and fundraising via social channels
  • Provide social proof to increase peer influence

Let’s see it in action with real-life social network examples!

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#5: Reporting & Data

Get ahead of next year’s year-end fundraising campaign by utilizing the data OneCause software provides post-campaign.

It’s one thing to have technology and tools at your fingertips – it’s another to have tools that provide fundraising insights.

Here’s just a handful of the insights and features you can get from your OneCause Peer-to-Peer reporting:

  • All past campaign data
  • Year-over-Year results of a campaign
  • Automated dashboard and progress email for quick campaign results
  • Filter and define parameters (date ranges, campaigns) for custom reports
  • Easily exportable data
  • Scheduled reports

Make Peer-to-Peer Engagement Easy and Effective 

With so many ways to fundraise, planning a smart peer-to-peer campaign and dropping it at the right time with compelling engagement is sure to drive in revenue and help you achieve your goals just in time for the new year.

If you aren’t already convinced with a year-end fundraising peer-to-peer campaign, here are 3 benefits to think about:

  • Engage existing supporters. Peer-to-peer campaigns make it easy to boost engagement with your supporters by providing a fun, interactive way to get involved with your cause. Plus, when you add elements like events and gamification, your donors will be even more excited to participate.
  • Draw in new donors. Since supporters are sharing their campaign page with their own networks both online and offline, an effective peer-to-peer campaign can raise awareness with tons of new supporters! Check out our resource on How to Launch an Awareness Campaign.
  • Raise Funds Efficiently. A peer-to-peer campaign isn’t just easy to launch—it’s highly cost-effective, too! Given how many new supporters you’ll be able to reach, peer-to-peer is one of the most inexpensive fundraising strategies available.

 

It’s always a mad dash to the finish line with year-end fundraising — take the pressure off and kickstart your peer-to-peer campaign today.