[I’m really psyched to share a post from one of my favorite colleagues in the nonprofit technology space – Carl Diesing from DNL OmniMedia. Carl and I often chat about trends in our industry and we’re both very passionate about the benefits of adding Peer-to-Peer fundraising to nonprofit giving programs. Carl’s written a post all about getting the best from your existing Peer-to-Peer fundraising program… just for our Accidental Techie community. Read on for some helpful tips to help your event or campaign stand out and raise more!]
Peer-to-peer fundraising continues to be one of the most strategic ways to engage your supporters and bring in money for your cause. With features to help nonprofits organize their campaign and event, mobilize participants, and more, Blackbaud’s TeamRaiser is one of the best peer-to-peer fundraising tools for facilitating stellar P2P campaigns.
If you’re ready to use TeamRaiser to plan your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign but aren’t sure how to do it, you’ve come to the right place. As a trusted Blackbaud solution provider, we at DNL OmniMedia are a team of TeamRaiser experts. We’re excited to share some of our favorite ways to get the most from TeamRaiser, such as:
- Offer custom fundraiser options.
- Incentivize donations with special perks.
- Create segments in your donor list.
- Train your staff (and your participants).
Remember: if you feel intimidated by these tips or need more hands-on help as you plan your fundraiser, you can always get a little extra assistance by bringing on a TeamRaiser consultant to help lead the charge on your campaign. With that in mind, let’s start with tip #1.
1. Offer Custom Fundraiser Options
Modern nonprofit supporters are always looking for unique ways to get involved with their favorite cause. Not only is it important to offer your constituents fun, inventive ways to show their support, but it’s equally important to keep these options as convenient as possible. After all, your donors are busy people, so you need to make it simple to start a fundraiser that’s exciting — and easy — to participate in.
Within TeamRaiser, you can give supporters the opportunity to create custom peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns quickly. For example, your supporters can build do-it-yourself fundraisers to raise money for special occasions, including:
- Birthday fundraisers.
- Wedding fundraisers.
- Bar/bat mitzvah fundraisers.
- In memoriam fundraisers.
In order to give your supporters the option to launch these types of custom fundraisers, do your research on what you’ll need to get started to have a successful project. Some custom fundraising capability comes built-in to the TeamRaiser platform, but more dynamic options require custom configuration with the help of a Blackbaud solution provider.
If you have an idea for a unique fundraiser that your supporters haven’t seen before, reach out to a top nonprofit consultant who can help you design a plan and put it into action using the TeamRaiser platform.
Incentivize Donations with Special Perks
Nonprofits know that asking for money online is never easy. You can make it easier for your TeamRaiser participants to solicit donations on your behalf by letting them offer donation incentives on their fundraising page. Great examples of donation perks include:
- Branded merchandise, such as t-shirts or water bottles. Not only can supporters of all ages find a piece of branded merch they love, but they’ll also promote your nonprofit as they show off their new products!
- Event promotions. If you’re hosting an event to cap off your P2P fundraiser, you can offer discounted registration, special seating, or other exclusive perks. You can also make the event itself the reward by setting a minimum donation amount in order to attend.
- Gamification features. A fundraising incentive doesn’t have to be a physical reward! You can inspire friendly competition and encourage donors raise as much as possible by offering fundraising milestones, badges, and social media recognition for high earners.
You can set up your incentives in a number of ways, depending on what the perk is and what your goals are for the campaign. For example, you could offer perks as part of a pre-set giving level offered to donors. In that case, a $25 gift might earn a donor a free t-shirt, while a $100 gift might earn them access to a VIP tent at your walkathon.
But you could also encourage competition among participants by offering them exclusive perks based on how much they raise, rather than offering the incentives to the donors themselves. That way, you inspire your most involved supporters to go above and beyond raising money for your cause (and to donate a bit more themselves, too).
Since your supporters will be fundraising on behalf of your nonprofit, make it a priority to get them excited about participating. By offering incentives, you make it more fun to take part in your P2P campaign and make it easier to increase those donation amounts, too!
Create Segments in Your Donor List
As with all forms of fundraising, you shouldn’t treat all of your peer-to-peer participants the same way. You need a plan for how you’ll engage all of your supporters and fundraisers in the most strategic way, and donor segmentation can be key for doing that. By creating targeted segments of your donor list, you can identify key pieces of donor data and use that insight to develop peer-to-peer fundraising strategies that reflect your unique supporters.
The ways that you can leverage donor analytics are pretty much endless, but some of the most important ways include:
- Building your peer-to-peer fundraising team. Your initial list of peer-to-peer fundraisers will be those supporters who’ve already demonstrated a high level of interest in your nonprofit. Create donor segments of those who’ve already led P2P fundraisers, regularly volunteered, or donated on a recurring basis.
- Choosing how to reach out to fundraisers. Segment donors based on communication preferences to determine the best channel and frequency for sending fundraiser updates, event invitations, training resources, and other important messages.
- Planning your peer-to-peer fundraising event. When it comes to deciding what type of event(s) to host with your campaign, you’ve got a lot to think about. Make the planning process easier by segmenting your donor base by geographic location, interests, event history, and more, to give you an idea of what your donors would like to attend.
Analyzing your donor analytics can also help you come up with the best plan for marketing your peer-to-peer fundraiser, too. By using your donor data to identify supporter personas, you can better understand who is most likely to participate in your fundraisers or support your cause in other ways. Then, you can build a plan to strategically reach out to those individuals and attract more supporters for your next campaign. For more on how your data can influence your fundraising tactics, check out DNL OmniMedia’s guide to nonprofit data management!
Train Your Staff (and your participants)
Lastly, in order to maximize every second of your peer-to-peer campaign, you’ve got to make sure everyone involved in the campaign is on the same page when it comes to how you’ll achieve your goals.
First, put a plan in place for training your staff to carry out your TeamRaiser campaign in a seamless fashion. Create resources that communicate your goals for this fundraiser and show your staff what success looks like for this campaign. You should also make sure everyone has a clear understanding of what their role is within the larger campaign. Providing a set of responsibilities and objectives for each individual (or dedicated task force) will give everyone a sense of how their day-to-day activities play into your organizational goals and make them feel like a valued part of the campaign. Lastly, invest time and resources into training your nonprofit staff on how to use the TeamRaiser platform. Though the Luminate Suite is pretty user-friendly, you might be surprised at how vast this product’s functionality really is, and you need to know how to use it to get the most from it!
To train your team, you might consider all of the following solutions:
- The Blackbaud eLearn series, which offers different tiers of training opportunities at varying price points.
- Free online resources, such as the Blackbaud community forums or educational blogs.
- Customized in-person or remote training from a specialized Blackbaud consultant.
For more training options for TeamRaiser (and other Blackbaud solutions), check out DNL OmniMedia’s ultimate list of Blackbaud training resources.
Because your nonprofit staff aren’t the only ones playing a part in your peer-to-peer fundraiser, your training can’t stop with them — you need to train your fundraisers, too! Supply your TeamRaiser participants with plenty of resources they can leverage when setting up their fundraising page and soliciting donations. For example, you might:
- Host an instructional webinar (or Facebook Live event) for participants.
- Plan a kickoff event in-person to walk participants through the fundraising process (and get them excited about raising money).
- Post informational resources on your website and social media accounts explaining why you’re fundraising.
- Offer fundraising email and social media post templates that participants can quickly edit to ask their peers for donations.
The more hands-on you are in the fundraising process, the easier it will be for supporters to secure gifts for your cause. Even better, when you make it easy for fundraisers to participate, the more likely they are to take part in your next P2P fundraiser, too!
There you have it: 4 tips for using TeamRaiser to run your best peer-to-peer campaign yet.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a tech expert to employ these strategies, but it doesn’t hurt to have some professional help on your side. If you need guidance as you launch your peer-to-peer fundraiser, reach out to a nonprofit consulting firm with experience launching successful TeamRaiser projects (such as TeamDNL!). We can’t wait to see how you take our tips and turn them into your best campaign yet.
Have you found a great way to engage your P2P supporters (and staff)? Share your tips in the comments!
About the Author: Carl Diesing, Managing Director, DNL Omni Media. Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.