As a social entrepreneur, you are probably familiar with the challenges of working with time and resource constraints. It's a good idea to take a step back and learn more about peer-to-peer fundraising before your organization dives into the wonderful world of peer fundraising. Learn more about what it is, how it works and how it fits into your existing fundraising strategy.
Determine what kind of peer-to-peer campaign you want to run and a goal for how much money you wish to raise. If your community is already involved in peer-to-peer fundraising, create an online fundraising page, set a target of how much you want to raise, use existing social networking relationships and solicit donations to complete the fundraising campaign. For each campaign, volunteer fundraisers can share their own personalized campaign page with their social networks and find friends and family.
Peer-to-peer fundraising involves allowing your supporters to launch their own campaign page they can promote and share online. In peer-to-peer fundraising, individuals organize personal campaigns to collect donations from peers. These campaigns can include online fundraising, crowdfunding, throwing an event-specific fundraiser, birthday fundraiser, attending an event such as a team fun run, etc.
Peer-to-peer fundraising is an easy way for social entrepreneurs to raise substantial amounts of money and expand their donor base, also known as social fundraising or P2P fundraising for short. It benefits social entrepreneurs by extending their reach beyond their own contact lists and networks of others. If you are not familiar with the concept, it is when supporters in their networks ask for donations to raise money for your organizations.
A social entrepreneur launches a fundraising campaign by inviting its supporters to create an individual fundraising page on its online fundraising platform. These supporters then use the power of their social networks to draw attention to a P2P fundraiser and raise tons of money for their favorite causes. Participants set up their fundraising page set a goal of how much they want to raise, and ask for donations from friends and family members.
Contributors create their fundraising page on behalf of your social entrepreneur organization. Fundraisers use individual fundraising sites to update, upload pictures and videos, and publish content on their social media platforms.
Tracking repeatable activities allows contributors to commit participants to an activity instead of a lump sum donation. Choose activities - i.e., Steps, walks, mile runs, hours of voluntary minutes, live streams, minutes of mental health - that are repeatable, traceable, fit your brand, and tell your participants to move while recording.
It would help if you gave ambassadors a foundation with which to communicate so that you can remove barriers that make them pause before asking for a donation. Let them set their goals, coach them, set mini-goals, and award prizes along the way to their overall fundraising goal. Use their suggested language in fundraising profiles, appeals in emails, and appeals in social media.
Some of them offer exclusive items, incentives, or milestones, promise to donate more of their personal money, or undertake more activities than imaginable to encourage contributors to contribute. When deadlines and goals are met, social entrepreneurs, especially active ones, can host events to thank supporters and contributors.
In a way, these two methods are the best when it comes to social fundraising. If you are an individual who needs to raise money for a personal purpose, project, or event, crowdfunding is the best way to do it. Digital tools and communication platforms nowadays make it easier for supporters to raise money for their favorite organizations.
Simply put, there are strategies for raising money on your behalf with personalized fundraising sites. These strategies can help you raise money more efficiently, expand your donor base, and raise community awareness of your cause. Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns involve contributors and involve them in the fundraising process, which means they are cheaper.
It is easy to combine fundraising styles from other campaigns and operate online fundraising platforms, which means there is plenty of space to experiment and grow. Instead of meeting in person to complete a fundraiser or event, attendees can complete it at their own location or, if you plan to do so, connect over the Internet and be done. Facebook's challenge is to ensure that all aspects of fundraiser marketing and community building take place on Facebook.
The social entrepreneur is contacting key supporters to see if they are interested in a fundraiser. Funds from individual supporters are transferred to the main page of the charitable foundation, where the total sum is displayed as a fundraising thermometer.
Peer-to-peer fundraising (P2P for short) is a fundraising strategy that uses the network of your existing supporters to raise money for your cause. As the graph below shows, it can be very effective for a supporter to rally his network to donate more money than he could on his own. A friend of hers successfully raised money and suggested a peer-to-peer fundraiser.
Make it effective and relevant, and you are well on the way to success in fundraising. In addition to the impressive statistics in the Fast Company report, social media is changing how social entrepreneurs raise money through P2P fundraising, and we need to tell you about it.
Kinds of Peer-to-peer Fundraising
Single Tiered
This kind of peer-to-peer fundraising is when you fundraise by reaching out directly to the people you know to solicit funds for your cause.
Multi-Tiered
This kind of peer-to-peer fundraising is when you solicit others to support your cause and then turn those people into ambassadors also to solicit others to do the same.
Types of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
1. Campaigns – This type of peer-to-peer fundraising runs for a fixed period and has an overall fundraising or impact goal. This can be accomplished using a Single or Multi-Tiered model. Fundraisers participate by setting an attainable goal. For example, I had a client raise $10,000 in 7-days to purchase supplies for an afterschool program.
2. Personal - This type of peer-to-peer fundraising focuses on supporting someone in need. For example, a group of friends or family may set up a Go Fund Me account to raise $20,000.00 to $1,000,000.00 for healthcare.
3. Activity - This type of peer-to-peer fundraising is centers on events such as marathons or walkathons that encourage physical participation and team fundraising. For example, the Breast Cancer Association has a yearly walkathon to raise money for research. This can be accomplished by using a widget on their website or another fundraising platform.
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