Peer to Peer

I Have a Facebook Problem (Or, How Not to Drop F-Bombs on Social Media)
February 1, 2017 at 9:19 am

On Facebook, it is ridiculously fun to quip, banter, engage, taunt, delve, disembowel and titillate. It is so much fun that a few times I have wandered into “Not-Niceness.” I had to find a way to stop being not nice. And I did. I Facebook-friended every church friend I could find, including my pastor. I friended them all so that they would see what I wrote. I thought that would constrain me. And I was right. It did make me nicer. But why? And more importantly, how could I make use of this behavior modification technique in fundraising?...

Getting Ingroup: A Dispatch From the Women's March
January 25, 2017 at 9:08 am

I was at the Women’s March in D.C., and as I went through the experience, I couldn’t help but think about the psychological principles we apply each day in the course of our work. We figure out how to use natural human biases to create conditions in which people are likely to say “yes” to our ask for fundraising, volunteerism or donations. The biggest bias at work at the Women’s March was ingroup bias. Here's what that means...

12 Ideas for Powerful P2P Fundraising
January 19, 2017 at 11:22 am

Success in P2P requires more than simply hosting a cool event and telling participants to go fundraise. It’s an art, as or more nuanced than traditional fundraising methods and perhaps even less understood. So, we’ve called in some help. Here, straight from the experts—the people on the front lines of P2P—are 12 ideas to take your peer-to-peer fundraising to the next level...

Gamification: Easy to Screw Up
January 11, 2017 at 3:09 pm

The problem with gamification is that often it turns into a pay for play system, rewarding fundraisers for behaviors, instead of reinforcing in fundraisers the idea that they love fundraising for their nonprofit. How can we avoid this?...

When Doing Good Is Bad
December 21, 2016 at 10:30 am

Since I work for nonprofits, I figure everyone wants to participate in do-gooding. Predictably, I make contributions to charity on behalf of the recipients for gifts. Call them socially responsible gifts. It makes me feel good to do that. I always presumed it made the recipient feel good, too.

Evolutionary Psychology: A Fundraiser's Best Friend
November 30, 2016 at 10:36 am

One might think that evolution has little to do with consumer behavior—after all, our ancestors didn’t stop at Starbucks for a morning latte. But they carry into Starbucks the same DNA with which they ran around half-naked in the wild, millions of years ago. An understanding of evolutionary psychology can give us insight into the motivation of our supporters...

Anything Can Be P2P: How One Town Turned a Neo-Nazi Walk Into a Human Rights Fundraiser
November 2, 2016 at 10:07 am

At Turnkey, we often say that the activity used in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising endeavor does not matter. Getting a “yes” in P2P fundraising is about the relationship between the potential donor and the peer doing the asking. The relationship between the donor and the organization is a distant second in importance. Here’s proof...

Social Listening: For-Profit Strategies for Nonprofit Success
October 28, 2016 at 12:57 pm

In a recent article for Social Media Examiner, author Zoe Summers outlined some ways businesses can use social listening. Many of her ideas can be applied directly to nonprofits. I’ve adapted four of them here...

Hostage-Themed Charity Run Angers Military Families
October 14, 2016 at 8:56 am

A local charity run is infuriating military families in metro Atlanta. Organizers of the so-called "Hostage Run" say the profits from the event will be donated to a military charity, but the wives of deployed soldiers say the entire premise is disrespectful. The run basically mimics a kidnapping, with the runners having black bags over…

Millennials: The New Majority
September 28, 2016 at 10:27 am

While many nonprofit peer-to-peer programs have been able to connect with the Millennial audience based on school or institution structures, the audience often does not often transition to post-academia participation. Why is that?...