Turning Fundraising on Its Head

"We wanted to give our account executives a really simple and easy tool using the best practices of peer-to-peer fundraising to engage patient family groups, sponsor groups, community organizations to not only get people to join the registry, but to donate funds," says Amy Nelson, former director of public engagement and giving at the Be the Match Foundation. Nelson recently left the foundation and is development engagement officer at nonprofit CaringBridge.

Building the platform

Once Be the Match came up with the peer-to-peer concept, it needed a platform to execute it. Nelson says the organization worked closely with its network of recruiters out on the front lines in developing the campaign, getting feedback and doing training on how the technology works.

The foundation built the Team Be the Match website on the Convio peer-to-peer platform in February 2010. On the site, potential fundraisers can search for a team by location and elect to set up their own personal fundraising pages. It provides plenty of information on Team Be the Match, what it's all about, how to join and who it helps, as well as ways to contribute.

"We took the team model and adapted it a little bit," Nelson says. "Our account executives serve as the team captains, and they're the ones that kind of oversee all of the people that join their team and invite people to join their team. Then friends and family groups join under our account executives."

The goal was to put the power in the hands of those recruiters out there every day, and leverage their networks.

No timeline

What makes Team Be the Match so unique is that it doesn't come with the typical deadline of most other peer-to-peer campaigns. Normally, peer-to-peer campaigns revolve around some type of event. Once the event is over, so is the campaign. Not so with Team Be the Match.