Engaging Top Supporters for Greater Fundraising Success

Ensuring successful fundraising practices is a critical goal for the vast majority of nonprofit causes. However, few organizations have truly optimized their efforts for maximum giving and engagement results.f

In this blog post, we’ll dive into some key practices for teams looking to elevate their nonprofit fundraising strategies through increased engagement with supporters. Specifically, we’ll cover the following topics, many of which are based on the tenets of peer-to-peer giving:

• What to know about peer-to-peer fundraising
• Informing donors and fundraisers about matching gift opportunities
• Providing fundraising support and resources throughout the process
• Thanking your donors and your fundraisers for their support

Ready to dive into optimal engagement tactics to increase giving and fundraising success within your organization by encouraging supporters to reach out to their own personal networks? Let’s begin with the basics.

What to Know About Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising is a popular strategy utilized by nonprofits of all shapes, sizes, and missions to better engage with their supporters, magnify the reach of their existing networks, and raise additional funding for their causes.

This idea, which is also referred to as P2P, social, and/or team fundraising, essentially places an organization’s supporters in their most hands-on roles yet as fundraisers themselves.

Here’s how it typically works:

Let’s say your organization has a dedicated donor who we’ll refer to as Supporter A. Supporter A has been giving to your cause on an annual basis for several years now. One day, they hear about an opportunity your nonprofit is offering where top supporters are encouraged to fundraise on behalf of your organization, and they are excited to participate. They launch a personalized online fundraising page (supplied by your organization), which they then post on several social media platforms and share personally with some of their family members, friends, and colleagues.

As a result of their efforts, Supporter A’s mother, brother, aunt, friend from college, neighbor, co-worker, and more decide to contribute to your organization via this person’s fundraiser. In the end, these individuals become Supporters B through G—many of which decide to engage with your organization beyond a one-time donation.

As you can see, peer-to-peer giving essentially enables nonprofits to multiply their fundraising efforts in an exponential manner. Though it begins with an organization’s top supporters, the strategy allows teams to reach new individuals who have otherwise never interacted with your cause at all, let alone contributed financially.

Best Practices for Engaging Supporters with Peer-to-Peer Efforts

Peer-to-peer fundraising is one of the most effective strategies for organizations aiming to better engage supporters with their causes. Not only does it allow individuals to feel more connected with your internal team and the mission you serve, but it also provides a new and unique way for donors to give—both of which help improve the donor journey in the long run.

Here are three key ways organizations can do so:

1. Inform donors and fundraisers about matching gift opportunities.

Matching gifts are a popular form of workplace giving program where companies agree to match.

donations their employees make to qualifying charities. Millions of individuals are eligible to participate in these programs, though the opportunities go continually underutilized year after year—largely due to a lack of awareness.

When it comes to elevating social fundraising and increasing engagement among peer donors, prioritizing matching gifts is the way to go. Check out these best practices for doing so:

• Provide educational resources on matching gift opportunities to fundraisers so that they will be well informed to share with their support networks as well.
• Share information about matching gift programs on your social media channels and encourage fundraisers to repost content for their own followers to view.
• Highlight matching gift program information within your prewritten fundraising appeal templates (more on those below).
• Leverage matching gift software that triggers automated matching gift reminder emails after a donor makes an initial donation.

When you make an effort to spread the word about matching gifts to both donors and supporters, you can proactively overcome some of the most common roadblocks to these giving programs and raise more for your organization overall.

After all, matching gift research reports that 84% of donors are more likely to give, and 1 in 3 donors indicates they’d make a larger gift if they know a match is being offered.

2. Provide fundraising support and resources throughout the process.

Though some of your peer-to-peer fundraisers may have a history of fundraising (perhaps through previous efforts with your organization or external experience), many will be soliciting funds for the first time. Thus, it’s essential that your team is prepared to walk them through the process, providing support and resources whenever possible to ensure things run as smoothly as possible.

Here are a few best practices to consider as you aim to best equip your volunteer fundraising team:

• Provide customizable donation request letter templates (such as the free downloads here) and powerful online donation forms (following the advice in this free downloadable guide) to aid fundraisers with their gift asks.
• Encourage fundraisers to personalize their fundraising requests with their own connection to your organization (e.g., they’re raising money for the animal shelter from which they adopted their own furry friend).
• Empower fundraisers with easy-to-use online fundraising tools, such as peer-to-peer fundraising, with the ability to set up personal fundraiser pages.

It’s also a good idea to keep up with fundraisers’ progress in their personal campaigns. If individuals have raised a ton of support from a range of donors, be sure to congratulate them on their success and motivate them to keep going. On the other hand, if you notice that a fundraiser is struggling to collect funds (or has yet to begin their fundraising after creating a fundraising page), offer advice and support to help get them on track.

3. Thank your donors and your fundraisers for their support.

Following a peer-to-peer giving campaign, it’s important that your organization makes it a priority to thank both the donors who gave financially to your cause as well as the fundraisers who offered their time and energy in order to raise money on your behalf. You can download free thank you templates for letters, text messaging, social media, and phone calls here.

Here are a few additional examples you can work off of:

• Donor — “Dear Brenda, thank you so much for your generous donation of $200 to the local animal shelter. Because of your gift, we are able to provide much-needed food, shelter, and medical care to our furry friends as they await their forever homes.”
• Fundraiser — “Dear Alex, thank you for taking the time and energy to raise money on behalf of the South Detroit Humane Society. Thanks to your fundraising efforts, you were able to collect more than $1,265 from nine generous donors to help provide for the pets in our shelter. We can’t thank you enough!”

Everyone who contributes toward your cause deserves to feel appreciated for their support—whether that is the dollars they donate, the time they volunteer, or the effort they give to reach out to other potential donors.

The better you communicate gratitude, the more likely donors are to continue supporting your efforts, and the more likely fundraisers are to raise additional funds on your behalf in the future.

It’s important to prioritize focus on your organization’s supporters in order to maintain long-term relationships, reach new donors, and ultimately raise more for your cause. Luckily, peer-to-peer fundraising offers unique and impactful opportunities to do so.

When you empower supporters to bring their support of your organization to the next level as social fundraisers, you set your team up for increased success.

Just be sure to encourage top supporters to secure funding on your behalf, inform everyone involved about the power of corporate gift-matching opportunities, provide support throughout the process, and thank each and every individual for getting involved with your cause.

Integrating matching giving technology right at the point of online giving of all kinds will greatly elevate and optimize your fundraising yield. Reliable software for doing so is Double the Donation’s 360MatchPro solution, which can be fully integrated with Arreva’s ExceedFurther, All-In-One, Digital Fundraising, Donor Relationship Management, and Auction Software.

For a free fundraising consultation and software, demo click here.