Do you ever get caught along with your occasion planning? Is your group firmly hooked up to solely “tried-and-true” occasions? If you wish to get unstuck, think about increasing your peer-to-peer fundraising technique past the normal run, stroll, or bike occasion.
That will help you discover alternate options to been-there-done-that occasions, this put up will spotlight some actually inventive and barely quirky P2P experiences. The enjoyable issue is excessive, and so is the sum of money raised. However I wish to do extra than simply encourage you. I’ll additionally present helpful ideas for launching and selling your distinctive P2P problem, the whole lot from enabling solo DIY fundraisers to attain their typically zany private objectives to creating certain your app makes donating straightforward for his or her supporters.
And most essential, we’ll cowl the real-world outcomes of next-gen P2P occasions—actually spectacular outcomes. Let’s get to it!
Not That There’s Something Improper with Run-Stroll-Bike Occasions
Conventional run-walk-bike occasions stay common with nonprofits as a result of they’re nonetheless extremely popular with fundraisers and the communities that donate to their causes. In truth, walks have grown in recognition since 2020, in response to the Blackbaud Peer-to-Peer Benchmark Report, and nonetheless produce essentially the most income of any occasion sort.
So, there’s nothing unsuitable with run-walk-bike occasions. Nonetheless, we do know that donor demographics and fundraising strategies are all the time altering. To maintain tempo with the occasions and to make sure future engagement and outcomes, strategy-focused nonprofits are not concentrating their sources solely on legacy P2P occasions; they’re additionally seeing success in 4 fast-growing classes:
- DIY campaigns: Self-driven fundraising with out direct organizational involvement
- Social fundraising: Campaigns that exist solely on social media, unconnected to a bigger occasion
- Streaming/gaming: Fundraising occasions offered on streaming platforms with no connection to a separate marketing campaign
- Competitions/challenges: P2P occasions with leaderboards and incentives for high performers, with “ambassador” fundraisers competing to boost essentially the most cash, typically tied to social occasions and galas, however typically they’re stand-alones.
Different P2P Occasions
Even when your run or experience is a slam-dunk occasion yearly, increasing your engagement alternatives to incorporate non-traditional P2P occasions can construct new social networks and enhance your group’s visibility with untapped supporters. That may be a wise strategic transfer to your mission. Let’s check out some ingenious new occasions that might clean up your P2P technique.
As a substitute of a Stroll, Strive Gaming
Streaming providers that showcase avid gamers are big proper now. Creating live-stream fundraising occasions may also help you join with youthful audiences, offering a useful alternative to get the subsequent era of supporters concerned in your mission. Hit pause, although, in the event you’re pondering gaming is only for children:
- 35 years outdated is the typical age of a gamer
- 83% of oldsters play video video games with their children, with 51% enjoying with their children no less than weekly
Like gaming members, gaming occasions run the gamut. Typically, they’re a one-off, DIY fundraiser, like a well known Canadian gamer, Jonny Warren, turning his avid followers into donors for Parkinson’s Canada. He saved their curiosity with challenges and gimmicks, similar to shaving his head. He raised hundreds for the group.
Wish to construct relationships with stay streamers? Hearken to our podcast.
Gaming occasions additionally might be deliberate and managed by the group itself, similar to Sinai Reside, a 13-hour gaming occasion that includes NHL gamers and different celebrities, who raised greater than $64,000 for the Mount Sinai Basis in Canada.
Make-A-Want is aware of that youngsters with essential diseases typically really feel remoted. Gaming may also help them keep linked to their buddies. The group is so dedicated to gaming, they’ve a fundraising part of their web site devoted to streaming and encourage the gaming group to make a critically sick little one’s want come true by internet hosting their very own fundraisers for the group.
Make-A-Want makes use of strategies that might work for any nonprofit: They supply P2P sources—a toolkit with model logos, messaging, overlays, and ideas—plus numerous inspiration, with movies and graphics telling the story of how a selected reward quantity may carry delight to a Make-A-Want child who loves gaming.
- Outcomes: Make-A-Want focuses on gaming in two methods: Gaming as a want (it has granted 300 gaming-related needs this 12 months) and gaming as fundraising automobile. An instance of an org-sponsored P2P gaming occasion: the esports manufacturing firm Blue Mammoth Video games organized the Brawlhalla World Championship live-stream broadcast. Incentives all through the match rewarded gamers with in-game objects like avatars after they made a donation to Make-A-Want. In 2023, the live-streamed occasion raised greater than $8,200 for Make-A-Want Georgia.
In case you’re serious about producing (or encouraging) gaming occasions to your nonprofit, JustGiving® from Blackbaud provides free software program that enables P2P fundraisers to focus on fundraising pages on their Twitch channel, plus how-to steerage to launch a gaming occasion.
As a substitute of a Journey, Strive an Icecycle
Journey occasions stay common as a result of they’re such a vibe. Bike fans are there for the fellowship of the street (or the spin studio) and the grind of the bodily problem. The cash raised to your trigger is a bonus. However conventional rides usually are not the one approach to roll. Take a look at how one New York group is reinventing the wheeled occasion.
Roswell Park’s Alliance Basis Icecycle to Finish Most cancers shifts gears on the bike expertise by making it tougher—a spinning occasion within the snow in upstate New York—and by making it an actual group expertise, interesting not solely to bikers but in addition to most cancers survivors and people who love them.
- Outcomes: In 2024, 1,300 Icecyle members raised $685,000 for analysis, medical trials, and quality-of-life packages for most cancers sufferers and their households.
As a substitute of a Run, Strive a DIY (Fill-in-the-Clean) Occasion
Self-motivated supporters don’t wish to wait round to your run occasion. They’ve concepts! Like Jamie Campbell, working the London Marathon wearing a shrimp costume to profit BASICS Essex emergency care. Sure, it’s nonetheless a run, however it’s one thing else, too, one thing distinctly his personal.
DIY might be nearly something: skydiving to your trigger or donating the proceeds of a bake sale. DIYers wish to give their power and persona to their fundraising expertise, so that they create their very own little motion. Mobilizing assist on-line and on social media, they get behind your trigger in their very own means—typically with out you even understanding they’re doing it.
“Every of them clearly has a strong motivation to do good,” stated Jamie Parkins, Senior Product Supervisor for JustGiving. “And that motivation began with them. It didn’t begin essentially with an affiliation to the trigger. These motivations can’t merely be engineered by a company.”
How can your group take part in such a private effort? You may amplify the message of people blazing their very own fundraising path by responding enthusiastically to their social media posts and reaching out to congratulate them when their problem has been accomplished.
Ed Pratt’s Supply to Sea Problem: To boost consciousness concerning the well being of rivers within the UK, this adventurer accomplished a solo problem to paddle the size of the River Thames. He recorded his 19-day journey and uploaded movies to YouTube. Alongside the way in which, he set social media challenges for his followers, similar to naming his watercraft (Thamesy McThamesFace gained).
Pratt was a very good guess for a unusual DIY distance problem: He grew to become a little bit of a sensation in 2015 by unicycling 22,000 miles world wide, elevating greater than £300,000 for charity.
- Outcomes: By wading, swimming, and paddling the busiest river in Britain, Pratt raised about £22,000 for The Rivers Belief.
Tricks to Make the Most of Non-Conventional P2P Occasions
Now that you just’re impressed by the creativity and superb outcomes of outside-the-norm P2P occasions, let’s take a look at three strategies that can assist your supporters turn out to be profitable fundraisers to your trigger.
1. Go Cell
Individuals verify their telephones 60 occasions a day. Present a cellular app to your P2P occasions. It’s the place and the way you’ll drive essentially the most consciousness and engagement. An app makes it straightforward for P2P fundraisers to replace their private pages and tales. They will ship messages and thank-you notes and hook up with their social media posts within the app.
JustGiving discovered that fundraisers partaking with a cellular app elevate 89% greater than fundraisers who don’t use an app to fundraise for his or her occasion or DIY problem.
2. Gamify the Expertise
Everyone loves a problem, so add exercise monitoring or leaderboards for fundraisers to trace their progress. Exercise monitoring is a good way for fundraisers to problem themselves or compete with others. Fundraisers who have interaction in activity-tracking and gamification elevate 10% greater than those that don’t.
3. Add Push Notifications
This content material supply mechanism sends communications with a way of urgency, similar to a reminder or a problem. Push notifications hold your P2P fundraisers targeted on their objectives and motivated to attach with donors. They usually’re more likely to get learn. Roughly 2% of emails are opened vs. 20% of push notifications.
Begin Diversifying Your P2P Occasions
Rigidity and inflexibility won’t be rewarded in immediately’s fundraising atmosphere. That is the time to embrace new concepts, nonetheless large or small. Check out methods for non-traditional P2P occasions. Your prices and dangers are small relative to internet hosting a run, stroll, or bike. Carried out effectively, your P2P fundraising occasion can ship huge year-over-year returns and domesticate lasting reminiscences for members.
Wish to be taught extra methods for dynamic P2P occasions? Take a look at our webinar: Stage Up Your Participant Engagement—It’s Extra Than Only a Run/Journey/Stroll.