Mark Becker  0:16  
Welcome to Six Tips for Retaining Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Participants. We're gonna go over just a couple really quick housekeeping things. And then Mark, we'll go ahead and get started. If you're not familiar with me, my name is Abby Jarvis and I am part of the team at NEON one. I'll be moderating the chat today, keeping an eye on questions, and generally trying to make this experience as great for you as I can. If you are not familiar with me on one, that's great. Everything that you're going to learn today is applicable to you. If you are a neon, one user, that's also wonderful. You have any questions about how to apply anything you learned today, using the tools you have? Let me know. And I'll get you in touch with the right folks. In the meantime, you'll notice there are two options for you to interact with us. One is the chat box. So this is a great place to talk to me and Mark and talk to each other swap ideas. The chat can move pretty quickly, though. So if you have a question throughout the webinar that you would like us to go over at the end, please drop that question in the q&a panel or the pain. The chat, especially when it goes fast can be hard to keep track of and I want to make sure we get to all of your questions. That said, I always get one really popular question. And that question is always Are you recording the webinar? And the answer is yes, we are recording this, you will get a copy of this tomorrow morning in your inbox, we'll also send you a couple of links to other resources. And you can share that with as many people as you would like. Alright, now that we've gone over all of that, Mark, I'm going to turn it over to you, everyone. I'm so excited for you to hear from him. He is an expert on this topic. And he has a lot of great stuff to share today.

Speaker 1  6:55  
Thanks, Abby. And please, yeah, please add any color commentary or thoughts along the way. And as Abby said, please anybody out there ask questions as you think of them. We'll get to them along the way. But definitely at the end, I don't have a ton of slides, I wanted to leave plenty of time for conversations, because this is I try to keep all of my my webinars kind of pretty broad topic and kind of cover it at a high level and see where what resonates with people and what we want to dig dive deeper into. So definitely feel free to ask your questions and go down different rabbit holes as they relate to the topic. So we're gonna talk about six tips for peer to peer fundraising. I'm Mark Becker, I'm the founding partner of Cathexis. Partners. I started as a company coming up on 15 years ago now right when the market crashed in 2008. That was a good time to start a company. And we've been helping nonprofits with their fundraising technology ever since then helping with selection of platforms of implementations support. We are platform agnostic, we have partnerships with a lot of different platforms. We're really here, I started going to conferences, and nonprofit space about 20 years ago, and I just heard a lot of pain points from from folks working in nonprofits about how much harder it was to wrangle their software or find the right platform or get the support they needed while they were trying to focus on their mission. So I realized that with my technology background from the corporate America space before I came into here that I could help out and knew a lot of folks, developers, and, and coders and DBAs. And so we've been doing that ever since we've been virtual since before it was cool, that helps keep our costs down. And unlike Elon Musk, and some others, I don't have a problem saying we're virtual, I think, you know, you find talent, where they're at, and have them help out. Most of our team is folks that have been in the nonprofit space themselves, working in similar chairs to yourself, and I think they make the best consultants. Alright, so let's go ahead and dig in. So we're going to kind of the six tips I have listed here are, you know, good storytelling, easy to use software, coaching and support along the way, incentives? Thanks. And thank yous along the way, not just once, but continuously along with the rest of the messaging and also listening. So let's dig into each one of these. Right? Give them a good story to tell when you're talking about peer to peer fundraising. What makes your organization unique? What impact are we having on the mission? And what problem does this peer to peer fundraising campaign solve in relationship to all that right? What does their participation and their friends and families donations? How to They help with that mission. How do we want people to feel about the campaign? You know? What's their emotional connection? Should they feel sad and raged, happy little mix of all of that. So make sure you have a good story to tell. Right? One group I often go to, when it comes to looking for good stories to tell is the Susan G komen three day I started volunteering and supporting them. Back before the turn of the century, that's this gray hair is real. I've been doing this for a while. And I was inspired by my own connection, my mother passed away from breast cancer. And my wife also later had that breast cancer, but she's a survivor now. So very close connection to this cause. And I think they do a really great job with their messaging. And I think they, the message really resonates that anybody has been touched in that world. So if you ever want somebody to look at, I would, I'm sure you have your own organizations and your own inspiration points. But this is one of mine. And I think they do a great job of storytelling. So I always recommend that. Whenever you're thinking about your own messaging and reviewing it, always look at your peers and any organizations that inspire you, and really lean into them and and learn from them and what resonates with you about them. All right, next, let's get into easy to use software, right? What does that mean? And you know, you have to find the right software, it has to be versatile and intuitive. Maybe you only have one type of campaign you're doing maybe you're doing a walk straightforward enough, right. But it has to be able to take registration fee, if you're charging a registration fee, it has to be able to have people give the self donation, it doesn't have to, but it should be able to allow people to give a self donation at time of registration, because it's a great opportunity to start their fundraising and you know, start getting funds in right. Maybe you're also doing DIY fundraising, if you doing a walker a 5k, I highly recommend you also have a DIY campaign set up. And by that I mean that do it yourself kind of third party fundraiser. Think of it is going beyond just Facebook, fundraising for birthdays, think of it is allowing people to set up a fundraiser in Memorial or in support of somebody or for a birthday or instead of, you know, wedding gifts. Maybe they're running their own marathon and they want to fundraise for your cause. You have to have software that can do both five K's and DIY fundraising. If you need to be able to do that, otherwise, you're using separate tools for each. So the more versatile and intuitive it is for both your participants and your donors to use. The better off you're going to be obviously, you want it really easy to set up a registration so people can can join and also make it really easy for people to support individuals, teams and the overall campaign. Make it also very easy to send out communications, right? Maybe it's emailing from the platform itself. Maybe it's social media integration, maybe it's texting your friends and family, maybe it's an app that makes it easy to connect with your contacts, your participants, contacts within their phone, right? You have to all these are available in a lot of the different platforms. But getting the right mix for what you need to do is really important. Gamification is really important to a lot of folks write badges and kind of top fundraising lists and little competitions that you can put into the system, potentially, anything that gives people a challenge, pitting, you know, teams against teams, making competitive in the proper spirit of things, right. Progress meters always helped with that. And then integration. I mean, integration means so many things, making sure that, you know, your peer to peer fundraising is only one part of what you're doing at your organization. Right. Maybe it's the biggest part. Maybe it's the smallest maybe it's something you know, one of many fundraising streams, grants, a bunch of general campaign fundraising major gifts, maybe it's a part of a large portfolio. So you're probably gonna want to integrate with different things, your CRM, right your database of record. You might want to definitely want to integrate with social media platforms, Facebook, fundraising, possibly and app, right? A lot of different things, email marketing tool. So making sure that all of these things can communicate, it's all really important and very possible these days. So quite often, inertia will kind of make organizations continue to use what they've been used to, and getting by, but know that there's really powerful tools out there.

Speaker 1  15:27  
And they don't have to cost a ton of money. And make sure that you have the platform you need for your staff and your participants and constituents be able to do what they need to help you fundraise, right? For example, I, these days, I think about people's dashboards or when they participate in any kind of event. And I think, you know, I used to see the ones who you'd log in, it'd be just really text heavy. And these are the things you can do. And here's some fundraising tips. And, and it just was a lot of reading, right. But now, I always think of this as an example one of our clients, that makes it really more like Candy Crush, you know, like a big chunky buttons that make it really clear what you're to do next. And even highlights in a different color or use a gray scale, if it hasn't been completed yet. This these little simple things to make it really straightforward, you know, how you can earn that next badge, or what the next call to action is make a personal donation, you know, that's grayed out in this example, that'd be in my mind, I have a hard time of struggle with that, like, that's great, I got to turn that purple. So I would go and make yourself donation. And you know, thank your donors is great. So you know, send messages right from the system to thank your donors, things like that, that just make it really simple for participants to have the tools at their hands to really help you with your fundraising goals. Now, neon didn't ask me to do this, I put this in here, just showing that they're a great example of a very versatile, easy to use tool. I love the you know all the different ways all different types of campaigns, you can set up donation pages, ticketing, simple donation processes, and I also put in a screenshot of the sample, personal page, and then drag and drop and an easy to replace, edit your image makes it really easy to use text editor to allow non technical people, your participants to be able to set up their personal pages and help spread the word. And so tools like this, make it super simple and highly recommend that you make sure you have the right tool for the type of campaign that you're running. On number three already offer outstanding coaching and support, right. And this means a lot of things, I've added a couple of examples here, email templates, right, give them sample emails so that they can send to their friends and family. And I put email templates here. But this should also be social media templates and examples and images to put on to Instagram, and to put on to Facebook, whatever whatever or wherever your constituents are at and make it easy to have templates for them to be able to share their fundraising because that's what they are, they're helping you fundraising are an extension of your team. So make it as easy as possible. tips and examples, right? Include a video from one of your top fundraisers, that they can say in their own voice, how they did it, what, how they were successful, make it really easy for people understand that they too can, can can raise money without a lot of work. It's always you know, for a lot of people, it's really hard to ask that. Make that first ask of somebody you know, so make it really simple by giving them examples and inspirational stories about someone who benefit from benefited from your mission, person and animal, whatever your whatever your mission is. share those stories of both how people fundraise for them, and how those funds helped at all. And then make those really easy for them to share so that they can use them to fundraise. And as much as you can. Don't forget to call and reach out individually and ask folks how things are going and and offer up support. Some examples move on here. Chalk I came across this one the other day is a great example some fundraising tools really basic, you know page you can have up in supporting pages that makes it really easy to have some links up here. Um, fundraising guidelines, live streaming guidelines, some fundraising, fundraising toolkit, safety guidelines. And also kind, if you want to do your own, as in this case, it's a sample kind of DIY event. So directional arrow templates, and it's all the things to like a DIY event in the in a kit. And I think it's really a great example of making it easy for your constituents, your participants, to fundraise for your, in your behalf. And if any of you have examples that you'd like to share, or other thoughts about any of these topics, please put those in the chat or the question and answer that be really handy. I don't want to be just a talking head here. That's not my intention. So I'm just showing you a few ideas. On Chicago. Here's another example with their fundraising Resources page, a lot of you know, information about fundraising resources, a lot of this is coming soon, but you get the idea. And I have some other examples here, I'm going to show you in a second, provide incentives. Alright. Number four, give them an extra nudge to keep the fundraising momentum for participants who reach specific fundraising milestones. So I put my least favorite on the bottom online gift cards, right? It's sounds very transactional. In fact, I'm Katrina and Otis over at turnkey. I think they're their big. I think this is where I most recently heard the saying about, you know, don't make it transactional, your your, your relationship with your participants, they shouldn't feel that you shouldn't be buying their, their, their action, right there. Their donation, it's more of recognition, I would say, I'd say stay away from like, monetary gifts, as much as possible unless they are connected to the cause. Right? Or the campaign. Focus on recognition. Right. And I'll show you some examples on that on event perks. Right, maybe you have a really huge event and maybe have something that the individual, the team that raises the most funds gets a private porta Potti. Right. And area, you know, that's huge. If it's big enough event, or maybe it's the then there's a separate one for the team that has the most donations per person so that they don't feel like well, we're only a team of four, how can we compete with a team of 20 and keep those kinds of things in mind, maybe it's T shirts, jerseys, socks, that that all have logos and and sponsorship and involved. And that's that's where you can really tie in, and keep people fundraising towards different levels, without trying to feel like you're buying their their commitment, right. bike for for chai is a great example. They have their different club levels. So as your as your fundraising for them. And you might be a small organization that goes this is crazy. Some of these people are raising more than then we are per campaign. That's okay. You know, put your own scale to it, right. But they have different level of clubs and kind of helps people see and compare and again, compete for those next clubs for that next level of recognition amongst their peers in fundraising, I think it's a great way and they have this right up on the site. Roswell Park Lions does a great job, I can't recommend enough checking out ride for Roswell and their website and all the different things that they're doing. Karen and the team over there have been a client of ours for for years, and they just do amazing things. And it's all all their their rewards are kind of connected to the cars, especially the big ones being bricks in gray brick in the park, pathways in the park. But even just for raising $100 Get a yard sign. You know, sure it's transactional, but it's connected back to the campaign, right? And it helps them further fundraise and show off the factors to connect it to it. So I think it's just brilliant. Extra Mile club jerseys. And on the team side, they have like 10,000 If you want to raise $10,000 As a team, then you can you're one of your team members can ride in or walk in the parade of teams during the event. And those aren't event experiential things if you have an actual physical event are very exciting and don't necessarily have to cost you a lot of money as an organization but really mean a ton to the people involved. Say thank you right. Say thank them throughout the campaign and event obviously thank them for registering send a wrap up email Call your top. Top fundraisers if you can, again, yes, it's really easy to say call these people. But how much how many hours are in the day, right. And you're spending a lot of you wearing a lot of hats, you're spending a lot of plates. But as much as you can, or

Speaker 1  25:17  
at least try to send customized email, conditional eyes, segmented emails to your participants based on how they were involved. And I'll show you an example of that in a second. So you can still think do things in an automated fashion, but target it and segment it so that they feel like you're talking to them individually. Hope host a wrap up events if you can write and then recognize folks in your newsletter. And on the event, as I've been showing examples, here's an example of one of those emails that's really targeted. Again, it's automated, you send it out afterwards, post event. And it can just be segmented to based on the audience of anybody that did do some fundraising. And then also those that did absolutely no fundraising, but did register messaging should be slightly different. And you can even get much more specific than that, for example, pull in, hey, thank you so much for raising, and then having a pull in, you know, $500, or however much you raised this year, during the campaign, it'll go a long way towards x or y, and really personalizing it. So while you're, it's still automated, you're, you're still making them feel like you know who they are and what they did, right, making them feel very involved and connected, and listened and heard, right. And speaking of that, listen, use online surveys to ask for feedback. Only do surveys, if you're actually planning on taking action based on those goals, applies still, right? Host get togethers, if possible in person, or virtually zoom, to get feedback from your team captains, all participants, invite them to participate, whatever, whatever kind of scale you can support, but at the very least, kind of reach out to your team captains. And if that's still too big of an audience, reach out to some of your your most committed alum, team captains that have been doing it for several years, and really get their feedback and listen to to, you know, what's working and what's not. They can barely infer it really easy for them to contact you. Right? Don't make it really basically make it really easy for them to reach out and get support however they need. And offer incentive for folks that do provide feedback. That's the time that it is okay to basically, you know, give them a $25 gift card or whatever you can do or enter a drawing to get x. So that it makes it worth their time to fill out these forms or their involvement. Here's an example of a one post event survey that just went out shouldn't be long, should be very straightforward and should you know, really get to the core things that you specifically kind of closed ended, you know, wanting to ask, and then a general question should always be involved, like any other feedback, how can we improve this and leave it kind of open ended, but for the most part, a lot of closed ended questions, a brief amount of closed ended questions that folks can, you can really use to dig in and get information to make your campaign better for everybody in the future. And analytics is another version of listening, right? Make sure I was ours. If you ever said that. Before, I always talk about making sure you're reviewing, doing a post mortem of the campaign, looking at what worked and what didn't. And looking at all the analytics. Here's an example of one of our clients comparing this year's campaign to last year's and might kind of ring true, or it might be completely different than what you're experiencing at your organization. But their participation numbers were up slightly, probably about 10%. But the biggest thing that I saw, stick out was in 2022, that first line, personalized their page, nearly 38% Or just over 38% of the participants updated their personal page, which is kind of on board with industry standards. I think it's somewhere around 40 to 43%. Anyway, it's it's less than half the people when you can update your personal page as a participant. I think you'll find that less than half actually update their personal page. But do you care You know, that's not the real call to action that you want you want them to raise money is an indicator of how connected and motivated they might be. And to the cause and to fundraising. Yes, the people that update your personal page or have a likelihood to fundraise more. But in this case, I saw this number I'm like, Okay, I don't know, to advise on that. Because their numbers this year went down to 20%, which is about 17% change. But overall, I mean, year over year, percentage wise, it's, it's like half. So very interesting. But their fundraising pretty much stayed flat, there's some red in there, but it's by tenths of a percent. And I thought that was interesting. Another thing I found interesting was that they're each level of their fundraising that they're tracking to the first few levels kind of cut in half. So there's 61,000 participants, 31,000 of them raised $50, which earned them t shirt, and then half of them 15,000, and some raised $100. And then half of that raise 250. Kept on, as you would expect, getting smaller from there. But you know, nothing really surprising there. But kind of thinking about how to bring that list, right? You're always looking at, and this might resume with you, right? Where are your dots? You know, how many $0 fundraisers Do you have? Right? And can you convert any of them, you should spend a little effort, you should spend effort on doing that. But there's just people that especially if you're having like a 5k, or fun lock, they're just there for the activity, they're not there to fundraise, necessarily. So you should put some effort into it, obviously, but don't, you know, try to bang down a door that isn't going to open. But those people that do raise the first 50, maybe you can pull them further in to the 100 250. And beyond, by further engaging them or filling out what resonates with them or giving them tools that make it easier for them to fundraise. All these things have kind of highlighted, come back into question, and really make you think about, Okay, now what we can do to to increase this number, like if we wanted to increase the number of participants, that's one thing, if we want to increase the number of people that raise $250, from 12% to 15%. Next year, what some ideas that we can do for that, and getting your teams together and listening to your past participants to help you get there, right. So our website has a ton of free resources available, check them out, a lot of them are around peer to peer fundraising. Like I said, I've been doing this for a while. So while we support a variety of organizations, and a lot of different ways, peer to peer fundraising is really where my background and passion is. So a lot of resources available there and happy to chat about any of those things, and a lot of others. So I went through that not to have our pretty good. So love the Abby, thoughts questions?

Abby Jarvis  33:26  
I do have some questions. So you kind of touched on a survey, and I know that some of the survey questions that will be most appropriate will vary based on the type of event. Are there any survey questions that are pretty universally appropriate?

Speaker 1  33:43  
Yeah, did you have a good time? And did you find any barriers to registering or fundraising? I'd start there. Those are two really good ones. I'm gonna stop sharing, because that is getting annoying with the GIF continuing to run. So this is much better. Yeah. Those were a couple that come to mind. And then it kind of goes into specifics about what did you anything that you tested for the first time that year or changed? If it's a legacy event? You know, what did they think about that specific thing, even if it's a roundabout way. But then I'd also say whatever you ask in, in a survey, that's where analytics is also really important, because there's what they say. And then there's what you actually see, right, and actual actions and so forth. And it's important to pay attention to both of those.

Abby Jarvis  34:41  
Definitely. That's always one of my favorite point pointers was surveys as I catch myself answering donor surveys and then doing absolutely the opposite of what I said I thought I wanted. So I love that double check your survey results with your data. Jake asked a really interesting question. They said in past orgs that they've worked with, they were actually careful not to host too many wrap up events in person and they limited incentives. And the reasoning behind that was they didn't want participants and donors to feel like the money that was raised was being used mostly for those things. Most of the donors wanted the money to go to the organization or the initiatives rather than those thank you gifts. How do you feel? Or what do you think are some steps we can take to make sure that we're recognizing participants? Well, using money the way donors want it to be used?

Speaker 1  35:37  
Yeah, no, great, great point, Jake. And it's, whenever you offer up incentives, and they're monetarily based, the first thing is to make sure you always offer up the option to not accept the gift if you're the participant involved, and just donate the money back. Right. So that's the first thing. But again, that's another reason why I always say, yeah, stay away from those actual monetary gifts, and make it again, more experiential, or more connected to the actual campaign or cause or mission. And then everybody gets it more, I think, I mean, if you still have a problem with people sending out jerseys, and it's a bike ride for cancer, and it's jersey, that sponsor logos. And I think their rate gets that that didn't cost the organization a ton. Now, when it comes to organizing those local events, hopefully they're kind of very done classy, but it's obvious that they're more grassroots and you know, you're not, you know, at some tea room or at a country club, unless that was donated to you. Well done, take, if that is the case, but it doesn't have to be super expensive. And depending on organizational structure, and maybe maybe your Hospital Foundation, and you have facilities that you can post these type of things. So again, it's trying to do it, low cost, and that's again, where zoom, and a lot more people are warming up to that idea of doing things via zoom, because then opens up to everybody, and the cost can be very low.

Abby Jarvis  37:05  
Absolutely. And I love that rest commented that you can sometimes get those incentives sponsored. And I love the experiential incentive that you mentioned, like having a private Porta Potty made me laugh out loud, because the last event I participated in, had very public porta potties. And the lions were wild. So I would do embarrassing things to like, have gotten access to somebody

Speaker 1  37:33  
I love. That's huge, right? Yeah. Why not? Give them a you know, I see that a lot of events that larger teams or teams that fundraise a certain amount per person will get like a private tent area. And then there's a there's a whole section of that, then there's some private porta potties over there. So it gives everybody a chance to, to reach those, and it's really huge on the day, and they've also kind of a giggle factor to it. camaraderie. And, you know, everybody acknowledges, yeah, really grateful for it.

Abby Jarvis  38:03  
Molly has a really cool idea. In the chat today. They said that one of the most popular incentives they offer is a pass to be the one of the first out on the route, it doesn't cost any money. And they were surprised how high how incentivize people were, that's a truly a really cool idea. I never would have thought of that.

Speaker 1  38:23  
Molly Smith, fast is a really smart person. She's one of one of the great minds behind the three day.

Abby Jarvis  38:30  
So Molly, parking is a great Oh,

Speaker 1  38:33  
yeah, give them some VIP parking. Are you kidding? VIP, anything called VIP? And people automatically want to figure out how to get it right.

Abby Jarvis  38:41  
Absolutely true. So a question for you, do you so you really emphasize the significance of follow up communications, especially reporting participants impact and how much they've raised and what it will accomplish? Do you recommend sending any kind of communications between the like last event oriented communication and the next event invitation?

Speaker 1  39:06  
Yeah, and I should have spoken to that. on that slide. It's year round, right? And it's not bashing him over the head for donations. That's all the time it's it's year round communication to keep them engaged and tell them what other campaigns you have going on? Tell them what else is going on around the organization. Maybe you have a gala, it's not again, I'm trying to automatically getting them to sign up but just keeping them informed because obviously they now have a connection to your organization and thanking them throughout the year. So that it's not just radio silence until you know five cases and comes around again screen. Do you have

Abby Jarvis  39:47  
any tips for how you ask returning people to sign up in the first place?

Speaker 1  39:55  
Yes, a bunch of different if you if you charge a registry Shouldn't fee offer up a discount code for returning participants early bird rate but calling it something different, give them a separate special code, make them feel special because they are returning. Give them the chance to reclaim their their teams depending on how your software setup, maybe you can even reserve it for him. And yeah, really getting and I think even making it part of the the announcement phase like pre public e newsletter or news blast out to everybody send it out to past participants as kind of a sell before everybody else and make them feel as an insider that they can. And some of these campaigns three days a great example like these people are are insane. He just can't wait to participate the next year, they're trying to figure out how to register, they sometimes get a whole registration links before they're even supposed to be available. So, you know, use that and, you know, bounce it to them before you announce it to the general public. Wonderful.

Abby Jarvis  41:06  
Um, those are all the questions I had, Mark, thank you. This was such a big deal retaining participants year over year is a really great way I'm a little biased, because I've participated in some events here every year. But fundraising is way easier when you've done it once before, and you know what the system is. And so getting those participants coming back is such a great way to get some momentum going. And I really appreciate you sharing these tips with us. Everyone, I added a link to the Cathexis page where you can go get those resources, I'll drop it down in the chat again, make sure you go download those. And then as you keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow, note that you'll find a link to this recording and to some other resources, even an article that mark you wrote with us a little while ago. So we'll make sure you get those. In the meantime, thank you all for being here. I know how busy you are, especially if you're in the throes of planning or executing and peer to peer fundraising event. And I know there are a lot of other things going on today. So I really appreciate you being here. Keep an eye out from our for an email from me tomorrow morning, and have a great Wednesday.

Unknown Speaker  42:24  
Thanks Abby. Thanks everyone, everybody

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