Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: Families and Friends and Peers ... Oh My!!!

By Joe Boland

While peer-to-peer fundraising has been amplified with the rise of the Internet and especially social media, the strategy itself is not new. As Eleventy Marketing Group's Angie Moore noted on her Navigating Off the Napkin blog last year, "This strategy has been around forever and has gone through a lot of shifts but continues to be a fantastic source of new donors, new volunteers and bottom-line revenue for organizations."

In her blog post — "Families and Friends and Peers ... Oh My!!!" — Moore spoke with Kimberly Haywood, vice president of direct-response fundraising for the March of Dimes, and Ken Dawson, president of Eleventy Marketing Group, about peer-to-peer fundraising.

Here are a few choice quotes from the post:

"True peer to peer, where the participant has a true relationship with a possible donor, transcends proximity and most economic factors and has led to more stability in the returns and ROI." — Ken Dawson
"… organizations have studied the lifetime value of the peer-to-peer acquired donors and have discovered that they have provided more overall value, and net, to the organization than DM-acquired donors." — KD
"Investing in a P2P campaign is a way to accomplish many goals: revenue generation, new donor acquisition and multichannel involvement. It’s definitely a way to bring new donors on the file." — Kimberly Haywood
"A successful P2P program has a well-thought-out and planned strategy to stay in touch with their volunteers through the process." — KD

Read the full post here.

And since peer-to-peer has become such big part of the fundraising sector, we here at FundRaising Success have launched a brand-new event on the topic, Engage P2P: Redefining Peer-to-Peer Fundraising.

We have a full of day educational sessions centered on peer-to-peer fundraising, including a keynote from Special Olympics' Marty Coelho; general sessions on retaining and converting P2P donors and understanding data analytics on P2P campaigns; smaller breakout sessions; case studies from Girl Up and St. Baldrick's Foundation; and a closing keynote on takeaways.