5 Ways to Motivate your Peer-to-Peer Charity Fundraisers

Written by Serrie Fung

Energize your nonprofit’s supporters to fundraise on your behalf.

You’ve set a specific fundraising goal, made a great graphic to show the impact that this money can have, and told a great story about a client that your organization serves, but you’re still not getting the response that you want out of your peer-to-peer fundraising program. What gives? While we hope that our supporters will all clamor to fundraise on our behalf and that the dollars will come rolling in, the reality is that we’re all human, and sometimes we need a little encouragement to get started. We’ve compiled a list of the top five ways you can energize your supporters to start a fundraiser (or keep going!):

1. Recruit a group of first-movers

A strong start to the campaign builds momentum, making people feel more likely to jump onboard. In other words, it’s important to get a critical mass of fundraisers started during the first few days (or even hours, depending on the nature of your campaign), because it creates an energy of success and energy that helps drive others to do the same. Before you launch your campaign to the public, consider reaching out to a core group of champions and asking them to commit to starting an online fundraising page on SparkRaise for you. Make it personal – give them a call or meet with them in person – and share with them your goals for the campaign and why you need their help. Staff and nonprofit board members should be key advocates during this phase and should commit to leading by example.

2. Double (or triple!) the impact

A great way to incentivize charity fundraisers (and donors) is to share how their dollars can be leveraged further. Is there a major donor, foundation, or corporate partner who might consider matching donations made through your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign? There are many ways you can structure a matching gift (e.g. donations are only matched if a certain milestone is reached, donations are only matched up to a certain amount), but whatever the model, your nonprofit’s donors can see that their money is working twice as hard. A great way to make the most of this incentive is to use this news as a pick-me-up during a mid-campaign lull in activity.

3. A little competition goes a long way

Depending on your nonprofit and your audience, setting up a friendly competition can be a big motivator! This can work especially well when you have a lot of schools, companies, or other “groups” of individuals who support you. Get creative about offering prizes for the top fundraisers (in addition to the highest amount raised, you can also consider awarding the fundraisers that have the largest number of unique donors, the highest average donation size). Make it visible by using a leaderboard to track progress and posting social media shout-outs to your top performers.

4. Cheer them on

A fundraising campaign is much like running a race – it takes courage to start, stamina to keep going, and focus to get across the finish line. If you’ve ever run a race, you know that race organizers motivate runners by celebrating runners at the start and finish line, and offering fuel, entertainment, encouragement along the way. You can do the same for your charity fundraisers by kicking off your campaign with a video to get everyone excited, notes of congratulations your fundraisers hit certain milestones, resources to help them with their fundraising, and a celebration (online or offline) at the end of the campaign to acknowledge the hard work of all your fundraisers. Don’t forget to share updates on your campaign page or SparknShare channel to keep up your campaign’s momentum!

5. Add perks

Motivate your fundraisers to keep going with perks or rewards at each fundraising milestone. Be creative and think beyond giving your fundraisers “things” and focus more on money-can’t-buy gifts like artwork or a personal note from a client, an invitation to a special interactive activity at your organization’s headquarters, a framed photo of your supporter at one of your events. A note of caution about giving gifts as a nonprofit — while fundraisers want to feel appreciated, they don’t want to see you waste the money that they’ve worked hard to raise on junk! Focus on perks that are authentic to your charitable organization and meaningful to your supporters.

There you have it. What are your favorite ways to motivate your fundraisers? Do you have a fundraiser coming up? Let us know here.