5 Tips for Analyzing and Improving Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Results

There’s a lot that goes into pulling off great peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns and events. One aspect that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves is campaign analysis.

There are multiple reasons why taking time to analyze your campaign or event is worthwhile:

• It helps you track how your campaign is doing so you can make adjustments and improvements along the way.
• It tells you how well the campaign performed against your goals.
• It puts benchmark data in place that you can use to improve future peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns.

So where do you start?

Here are five tips for analyzing your peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns:

1. Analyze While the Campaign Is Running

Don’t wait until the campaign or event is over to begin analyzing it. Review your campaign’s status on a regular (weekly and monthly) basis.

Start by thinking about what metrics are most important to your campaign or event. Then, set up your peer-to-peer fundraising platform to track results for these metrics based on the number of weeks out from the event or end of the campaign. This will allow you to compare your progress at each point in this campaign compared with the same point in your last campaign and make any needed changes as the campaign progresses.

For example, if the number of registered participants is down one week compared with the same point in the previous campaign, consider offering a discount code or other incentive for a few weeks to encourage participants to register. If total funds raised is down, then maybe engage participants more by offering tips and examples from participants who have been successful with their fundraising in the past.

Here are examples of helpful data to track and analyze throughout the campaign:

• Number of participants
• Number of donors
• Total funds raised
• Number of participant teams
• Average team size
• Average donation size
• Average number of donations per participant
• Number of $0 donation participants

2. Gather Numbers After the Event

Once all of your donations are entered, run final reports for the goals and quantitative metrics you set before starting your campaign. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How did the campaign results compare with the goals you set?
• What goals were too low or too high, and why do you think that was the case?
• How effective were your various marketing efforts?

Look for metrics including total participants, total funds raised, number of returning participants and average fundraising per participant. Plus, dig deeper to find trends, such as the amount raised based on registration date, number of emails sent and whether or not someone updated their personal or team fundraising page.

3. Look at Other Success Factors

Just as important as the numbers are the qualitative aspects of a campaign or event. For example:

• How much staff effort did it take?
• What did participants like/dislike about the campaign or event: registering, fundraising, and the campaign/event itself?
• Were the campaign website and peer-to-peer fundraising tools easy to use for both participants and staff?

Be sure to listen and respond to participant feedback throughout the campaign or event, and also be sure to include their post-event feedback in your analysis.

4. Debrief With Your Campaign Team

Bring together everyone who was involved with the campaign to review your original campaign goals, discuss campaign results, and consider lessons learned. Be sure to take notes so you’ll have them to look back on as you start work on your next campaign.

5. Start Thinking About the Next Campaign

Once you have another campaign under your belt and data to show your results, you can start thinking strategically about your next campaign. Some things to consider:

• If you’re going to continue with the same format, perhaps your focus for the next campaign will be to improve fundraising by making sure you aren’t leaving money on the table.
• If your campaign wasn’t as successful as you’d like, maybe changing your campaign structure would help.
• If fundraising was really successful this time, maybe your strategy will be to focus on recruiting more participants and retaining those who participated this year.

It’s well worth it to take time to analyze your peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. Gathering and studying data, as well as being receptive to feedback from staff and constituents, will go a long way toward making your campaigns the best they can be.