GUEST POST // Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Outlook for Spring 2021
By Maria Clark of Good United
There’s no denying that the unique circumstances of 2020 led many of us to go against the traditional fundraising methods, removing in-person interactions and transitioning annual events to the digital sphere seemingly overnight. While some organizations excelled, others experienced noticeable drops in overall engagement and revenue.
At this point, we’re a year into the pandemic and we have data on what worked and what didn’t in last year’s virtual peer-to-peer fundraising efforts. We can use this data to predict the P2P fundraising outlook for 2021 and take clear actions to fulfill supporters’ expectations of the virtual environment.
At GoodUnited, we help nonprofit organizations better understand, inspire, and cultivate relationships with their peer-to-peer supporters through social media. While thoroughly researching Facebook fundraising and the current peer-to-peer landscape, we’ve noticed a few trends that can help your organization navigate P2P in 2021. This guide will explore the outlook of peer-to-peer fundraising in a pandemic world through the following points:
The State of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Following 2020
What’s Coming Down the Pipeline for P2P Fundraising Trends
Before we dive into the trends that you can incorporate into your 2021 fundraising calendar, let’s take a look back at 2020 and how the year’s uncertainties impacted the peer-to-peer landscape.
The State of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Following 2020
Following the Peer-to-Peer Forum 2021 in early March, we can now access the annual Peer-to-Peer Thirty Survey results to see how the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing challenges have impacted the P2P fundraising landscape.
The results showed one thing definitively: the COVID-19 crisis had a major negative impact on revenue for the top P2P programs in the U.S. In fact, last year brought the largest single-year revenue decline in the 15-year history of the survey. Of the top five peer-to-peer programs, each saw anywhere from a 20% to 50%+ decline in revenue.
This was in large part due to the pivot to virtual P2P events resulting in fewer participants in campaigns. However, the survey also found that those participants who did show up were more engaged than ever. While participation in the top 30 programs dropped by nearly two-thirds, the average funds raised per participant was up 83%.
Does this mean a grim outlook for future peer-to-peer fundraising? No, definitely not. The survey results also showed that:
Peer-to-peer programs containing events that were traditionally held virtually experienced increases in revenue. Children’s Cancer Research Fund’s Great Cycle Challenge USA, which has always been a virtual event, made it into the top 30 campaigns for the first time.
Campaigns that used innovative virtual event formats— beyond the popular running, walking, or biking events— experienced revenue growth as well. St. Jude’s video-gaming Play Live reported a 46.9% increase in revenue.
Successful campaigns were due to participants who were more engaged than ever— not an increase in participants. Children’s Miracle Network’s Extra Life experienced a 23% drop in the number of participants, but found new ways to incentivize those who did participate and had revenue increases.
While many campaigns made significantly less revenue, those that increased their revenue were unique in one way: they found new ways to engage and grow relationships with P2P participants, whether through unique P2P events or additional incentives to connect.
For the rest of this guide, let’s focus on a few P2P fundraising trends that will allow your organization to draw on this key takeaways.
What’s Coming Down the Pipeline for P2P Fundraising Trends
Growing during a crisis requires embracing change, getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, and taking risks to receive bountiful rewards. So, let’s talk about three trends that will enable you to make the most of 2020’s peer-to-peer key takeaways and run successful campaigns in 2021 and beyond.
Hybrid events are on the rise.
A new survey conducted by the Peer-to-Peer Professional Forum discovered that more than half of the organizations surveyed have already decided what form their spring P2P campaigns will take— and unsurprisingly, most are opting-out of full in-person gatherings.
While nearly half are planning to hold fully virtual campaigns, about a quarter are planning to host hybrid programs. Put simply, a hybrid event is an event that combines both virtual and in-person elements.
A virtual event can be completed without ever leaving your computer— for example, a livestreamed comedy show that has live donation appeals. However, a hybrid event challenges participants to interact in real-time— whether cooking a meal alongside a live-streamed chef instructor or forming a pod with close acquaintances to complete a walk-a-thon from your own geographic location.
Remember how we said that engaged participants, rather than a large number of participants, are what saved P2P fundraising programs in 2020? With that in mind, consider hosting hybrid events as a part of your spring P2P calendar as they challenge participants to directly engage with the experience, rather than just observing it.
Non-traditional events are growing in popularity.
In addition to hybrid-events on the rise, we’ve also noticed that non-traditional peer-to-peer events— think: events that stray from simple walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons, or 5k races— are also growing in popularity.
For example, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Cancer Society (of course, known in the peer-to-peer world for its game-changing Relay for Life fundraisers) was already moving toward a peer-to-peer model that provided fundraising activities beyond walks. And, two video game-based fundraisers, Play Live and Extra Life, both experienced immense success through the non-traditional peer-to-peer activity of gaming.
To incorporate this into your peer-to-peer planning for Spring 2020, consider the innovative events you can host beyond what’s been popular in the past. Use this GoodUnited guide to virtual fundraising events to spur your imagination, with ideas such as:
Game Nights: Participants compete against one another in console-based or computer-based games.
Scavenger Hunts: Participants compete to find all of the items on a list first.
Book Clubs: Participants pledge to read a certain number of books within a set time period.
Each of these ideas would function similarly to the hybrid walk-a-thon, bike-a-thon, or 5Ks you’ve hosted in the past year— participants still raise peer-to-peer funds in support of their efforts in the fundraiser. What changes is the activity they complete— which, if you choose a non-traditional activity— will help your organization stand out from the crowd and engage a new audience of P2P participants.
Social fundraising is here to stay.
Last but certainly not least, we need to discuss social fundraising. While some nonprofits struggle to embrace social media in their fundraising, moving beyond a fundraising plateau and toward growth requires replacing what’s comfortable with what works.
By social fundraising, we mean donations raised directly within social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Social fundraising isn’t meant to replace other P2P efforts, but to supplement them. At GoodUnited, we’ve found that up to 90% of social fundraisers on Facebook who we’ve engaged with are new to the cause they’re raising for.
Let’s focus specifically on Facebook, which was the first social media platform to build out nonprofit fundraising tools. Engaging with peer-to-peer participants in-channel, directly on Facebook is the key to understanding those participants, inspiring them to continue engaging with your mission, and cultivating relationships for the long term.
There are two main ways this will occur with peer-to-peer fundraising in 2021:
1. Via Facebook Messenger.
During an in-person P2P event, you can speak face-to-face with individual participants, thank them personally for their efforts, and share information about other ways to engage. Facebook Messenger empowers you to bring this into virtual and hybrid peer-to-peer fundraising as well.
Invite P2P participants to connect with your nonprofit via Messenger, and then send communications of gratitude, share tips for fundraising success, encourage participants to overcome their challenges, and ask questions to better understand supporters. These one-on-one conversations are crucial not only for raising revenue, but raising your relationships with each individual participant long after the campaign ends.
2. Via Facebook Groups.
Did you know that Facebook has been deprioritizing posts made on individual pages in favor of those made in groups? This, added to the fact that a group approach drives a sense of community by allowing all participants to engage with one another, means that it’s time to incorporate them into your P2P planning for Spring 2021.
Create a group for your peer-to-peer participants and invite them to share photos, stories, and experiences related to the fundraiser. According to re:Charity, Facebook is one of the top livestreaming platforms for nonprofits— you can actually go live within groups to stream portions of your P2P events. We recommend starting a new group for each individual P2P event you hold, whether across different regions or activities.
Think of it this way: in the past, the goal of social fundraising was to build up an audience, and then secure contact information for that audience to reach out through a variety of new channels. With these new methods, you can connect with P2P participants where they already are and provide a cohesive experience for participants.
Wrapping Up
Going forward, the only losing strategy for P2P fundraising in 2021 is to expect things to return to how they were pre-COVID-19. The pivot to virtual and hybrid events and new models for engagement are not only where we are now, but also the direction that P2P fundraising is moving going forward.
Embrace the risk of new, non-traditional peer-to-peer events and social fundraising methods heading into your spring fundraising calendar. Not only will these changes empower you to continue raising revenue in the evolving P2P landscape, but you’ll also grow relationships that last with your more-engaged-than-ever participants.
Regardless of the combination you select, expanding to new platforms naturally increases the number of messages you’re sending, but don’t stop here. Your donors expect consistent updates on whatever platform they engage with, so build out a timeline to ensure you’re being consistent and fulfilling those expectations.
Plan the types of messages you want to share and when you want to share them, whether they’re program updates or donation requests. This will make things easier in the long run to ensure you’re communicating frequently enough.
This guest post was written by Maria Clark.
Maria Clark is a nonprofit executive and technology evangelist with 30+ years of industry experience. Today she serves as Executive Vice President of Partnerships and Chief Evangelist for GoodUnited, the social fundraising solution. Maria is a champion of the new and has fearlessly led change management efforts throughout her career.
Previously, Maria spent 33 years at the American Cancer Society, a top #20 US nonprofit and the leading cancer research nonprofit with an annual $800+M budget, in roles spanning all aspects of nonprofit communication, operations and fundraising. Most recently, as Senior Vice President for Peer to Peer Development, Maria led strategy development, planning and implementation for name brand ACS events like Relay for Life, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, a robust gala and golf portfolio and the Raise Your Way DIY platform, as well as championing new digital strategies that support community fundraising.
Maria lives with her husband Derek in Dallas, Texas, where she has a deep history with the nonprofit community. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Notre Dame School, a special needs Kindergarten through post high school in Dallas, and remains active in the Leadership Dallas Alumni Association. Maria is mom to two adult daughters, Devin and Corrie and her fur baby, Ozzy.
