Hey, everybody.
It is so good to see you all here.
I really appreciate you hanging out with me today.
I know that you are very busy and that taking a half hour out
of your afternoon is no small commitment to you.
So thank you so much for being here.
I'm really excited to talk to you today about getting people
involved in peer to peer fundraising.
This is a really special topic to me.
I love peer to peer fundraising.
I participated in peer to peer fundraising,
and I really love this topic.
So couple little little things about me.
If you are not familiar with me, hello. My name is Abby.
I've been in the nonprofit tech sector for,
thirteen years, actually, as of last month,
which is wild to think about.
I am really passionate about understanding what people want
out of the relationships they have with the nonprofits they
support and how you can use their motivations and their
desires to build better, stronger communities.
So to that end, couple things.
So I'm gonna be sharing some examples from
Neon One and our peer to peer fundraising tools,
but I promise if you are here and you are not a Neon One customer,
everything we're gonna talk about today is applicable to you too.
If you are a Neon One user and you have questions about
how you can apply any of this to your own activities in Neon
One, I will have some some resources for you in the email
that you're gonna get from me tomorrow.
Speaking of which, yes, this email is being recorded.
That is something that is,
really commonly question really commonly question?
A really common question that people ask.
You're gonna get an email from me tomorrow morning.
It will have a link to the page where you can see the recording.
It will also have some other helpful links for you there.
Also, you may have picked up on this.
I really like it when you talk to me in the chat.
Nothing bums me out, like,
feeling like I am talking to a, like, void.
So please talk to me in the chat.
Share your ideas with me and with each other. I love it.
However, that does mean that the chat can move super fast.
So if you have a question that you would like me to answer at
the end, try to drop it in the in the q and a box.
I if you forget, if you drop it in the chat,
I will try to remember to answer it,
but getting it in the q and a box is the fastest way for me
to catch it.
Okay.
So speaking of talking to you,
I'm gonna ask you all a question before we actually get started.
Well, first, how many of you are actually love it,
don't love fake live webinars?
I don't like them either.
I've done them a couple of times just out of necessity,
but they're not fun.
So question for you before we get into the real question.
How many of you either are actively running peer to peer
campaigns or are thinking about it?
That will help me kind of tailor what I talk about today
to your experiences.
Last time I talked about peer to peer,
a lot of people were kind of considering dipping their toes in.
Others were, like, super into it.
We got a little bit of everybody.
Oh, I love the idea of a write a thon.
That's awesome. I'm a writer. Love writing. Okay.
So it seems like we've got a good mix.
Oh, Madison's running two major peer to peer campaigns.
That is a lot of work. I am extra proud of you for me.
Okay. Cool.
So for those of you who are running a campaign now or
haven't in the past,. I want to ask you,
how do you feel about your peer to peer participants?
This is just a quick vibe check.
Do we love them, but they're not super active?
I I love Bob's. Burgers. I love you.
You're my children, and I love you, but you're terrible.
We don't necessarily think they're terrible,
but there's room for improvement.
Or maybe they're just absolutely phenomenal.
I feel like Joe's answering here, a few are amazing.
A few are okay. If you do nothing, very standard.
Would love to see more engagement.
They surprised me.. That's a good thing.
I hope it's a good surprise.
Mixed bag, definitely. Bob's Burgers.
Okay. Okay.
Alright. Great.
So we've got a pretty we got a pretty mixed bag. I love them.
They can be a lot of work, but they are the best. Okay. Great.
So the reason I ask, is because in the past,
when I have talked about the significance of getting people
I won't even say it that way.
The significance of proactively taking steps to
get people to raise money,
some of the responses I've gotten have been, well,
I don't really think that I need to.
Wouldn't people just know when they sign up to
participate in my peer to peer campaign?
They should just know that we're asking them to raise money.
So is building a proactive plan actually really a big deal?
And the answer is yes.
I'm sure all of you are surprised by me saying that.
But the reason this is so important is because of
something called the. Pareto principle.
You have probably heard this before.
Around applied to the peer to peer world,
around eighty percent of people who sign up to
participate in a peer to peer event will not raise a single dollar.
They feel like Bill's participants feel it's not
really their role.
But you know so and I will say,
it's uncommon, but some organizations will run peer to
peer campaigns where there is a minimum fundraising requirement.
I'm not sure if any of you are doing that.
That's one way, to get people to for sure raise money,
but it's it's not particularly common.
So what you can do is take
proactive steps to get as many of your participants
involved in fundraising as possible.
Let's be super frank.
You're probably never gonna experience a hundred percent
participation rate, But you can take some really
great steps to not only, like,
get your participants to raise some money.
We've all seen the folks to get, like,
one donation from their mom or something like that.
But we're gonna look at some steps that you can take to
really get people excited about your event.
But in order for us to do that,
in order for us to get people excited about raising money for
the work that you're doing,
it's important to understand why people don't raise
money to begin with.
And I am betting that there are probably a few
different reasons.
A huge one.
This was my biggest issue when. I was participating in a peer
to peer fundraiser.
Your participants are really busy,
So they're balancing raising money to support your cause and
to fund your work with going to work and taking care
of the family and doing the dishes on a Tuesday night and
pursuing their hobbies if they have time.
People can love you.
They can love the work that you're doing.
They can be really passionate about the mission,
but participating in your event is not always going to be top of mind.
So that's a big one.
Another one I, in common, really in common,
encounter really commonly, especially at at local events
here in town, people are really intimidated by fundraising.
Think back to when you were a little baby fundraiser and you
were sending your very first fundraising appeal or you were
launching your very first fundraising campaign,
you were probably pretty scared.
And that's fine.
Being scared or being anxious means that you care about
having a good result.
But, your participants may be
anxious because they care about doing a good job,
but we still need to help them get over that initial
reluctance reluctance to start,
and it may kind of help them build some confidence.
And then another one is that really commonly,
people don't know where to start.
That is especially, exacerbated by people who are very
busy or people who are intimidated.
If you combine any of those,
you're busy and you don't know what to do or you're
intimidated and you're busy,
that's that's really hard to overcome.
So what we're gonna focus on today is finding some really
practical steps that you can take to help people overcome
all of these mental barriers that prevent them from getting
involved in fundraising during your peer to peer campaign.
The first one that I hope at least one of you laughs when I
show you this, because it does sound very straightforward.
The number one thing you can do to encourage people to
fundraise for you is to make it clear that you
want them to fundraise.
That may sound really obvious.
It may sound really silly,
but you would be amazed at how many peer to peer campaigns
I have seen over the years that do not mention
fundraising at all.
It is never established that people are expected to
raise money when they sign up to participate.
So
you know that this is a fundraising campaign,
but a lot of people might not.
I suspect this is especially true of,
events where there's a an actual event.
An example, a friend of mine signed up to participate
in a local charity's five k.
She was not interested in fundraising.
She wanted to run the five k.
So if you have people like that,
they may not know that they are signing up to Fundraise.
So just be extra communicative about it.
So one, let people know straight up you are asking
them to raise money for your cause.
Again, it sounds really obvious,
but like Andre pointed out,
sometimes common sense isn't so common,
especially if you've been doing this for a while.
And now these next two things are really important.
So we know that people who participate in peer to peer
fundraising campaigns are generally really passionate
about the work that you're doing.
When you are trying to get people excited about raising
money, a really,
really straightforward and very powerful way you can do that is
to help them connect why what they're doing in participating.
They're raising money for you and then helping them
understand what the money they raise is actually going to accomplish.
This is a great example here.
It's a couple little paragraphs that explains what people are
going to achieve when they participate in this peer to peer campaign.
They are going to make this possible.
They're going to bring together thousands of animal lovers,
and they're gonna help provide lifesaving programs and
services to animals in need.
So they're not even just establishing that, yes,
we're asking you to raise money for us.
They're telling people,
here's what you're going to achieve when you participate in this event.
That's huge.
You're taking someone's personal connection to your
work and your mission and the outcomes that they wanna see
and helping them understand exactly what they're going to
do and how it's going to benefit everybody.
And I would encourage you not to talk about this only once.
I would encourage you to talk about this as as many places as possible.
How many of you have ever sent an email to someone and you
get their response and you're like, wow.
You didn't read that at all.
It happens to me all the time.
If you have ever sent one of those emails,
you know that people do not read everything they see.
Sometimes they don't read everything or even a fraction
of what they see.
So as you are talking about fundraising and why it's
important that people raise money and what's gonna
happen with the money they raised,
talk about it repeatedly.
Repetition is going to be key to getting people to
read and remember what you have to say.
Talk about fundraising on your event page.
Talk about fundraising on your registration form.
Talk about it in your receipts and in your thank you emails
and in your updates and in your social posts and anywhere that
your participants are engaging with you and with each other
in the context of this event.
People read in braille. They do.
Yes. We're gonna repeat this all the time. Okay.
So talk about fundraising.
Do it repeatedly and in multiple places.
Here's an important one.
So when you are talking with people, telling them, hey.
This is a fundraiser.
We expect you to raise money,
and we're gonna support you while you do it.
Here are the amazing things that are gonna be possible
because of your participation and your support.
That's great.
You're gonna get people hyped about raising money for you.
But that knowledge alone isn't going to overcome the busyness
they have and the anxiety that they have and the feeling of
not knowing where to begin.
So your next step is to help them overcome
those obstacles.
And one of the easiest ways you can do this is to actually
help them learn to use whatever tools you are giving
them to raise money.
So even if you know how to raise money,
even if you're talking to someone who has participated in
a zillion different different peer to peer campaigns,
if they don't know how to use the fundraising tools available
to them, it's gonna be really hard to get them to start.
So I'm gonna say this.
The average peer to peer fundraiser is thirty eight years old.
They're my age.
So your nana probably isn't supporting her
favorite cause by setting up a peer to peer fundraising page.
As a general rule, your participants are gonna be millennials.
There may be some some other folks mixed in there.
You may have some boomers in. Gen X. You may have some Gen Z.
But as a general rule,
the people who are raising money for you are probably
pretty adept at learning the basics of of any
kind of software tool that's given to them.
They just need a little guidance and a little bit of help.
So, your job is to give them enough
that they can kind of learn on their own.
So you have a few options here.
So one thing that worked really well for an event that I
participated in was an actual workshop or
an in person get together where the participants
sat down, we hung out, we had dinner,
and we learned how to use our tools.
We set up our fundraising pages. We practice with emails.
Now I will say, great tactic for small groups.
I was in a group of about twenty,
so having a a little gathering was fine.
That may not work if you're running a big campaign with
hundreds of participants.
Now if you do have a big campaign with lots of
participants, another option for you would be to do, like,
a virtual workshop, maybe on Zoom or something.
Another option that I've seen work really well,
and it's probably the most common one,
is I've seen organizations put together, like,
a guide or a reference sheet.
So, this is something that you can do really easily.
You can do typed instructions.. You can do screenshots.
You can do instructional videos.
It really depends on how much bandwidth you have,
to to get people, trained on this.
This is an example that I think thought was really cool.
This is a guide that one of our clients put together.
They did it like a it was in a frequently asked questions
section of their event page.
So this is for all donors.
So you just see this is for everybody.
So if someone's not participating,
but they wanna donate to a team,
there's an option for them to learn more.
But it did include an entire section of frequently asked
questions and instructions for participating fundraisers who
needed to learn how to use the platform.
Now this is a big deal because we
know that if someone knows how to update their personal
fundraising page or if they know how to send an email,
they're gonna have they're gonna be much more likely to get started.
And we know that when people get started,
when they set up their page,
when they get their first couple of donations,
they're much more they're much more likely to stay engaged
long term because there's some momentum behind what they're doing.
Now, oh, Morgan asked a really great question.
Should you target your peer to peer campaigns to particular
age groups or cast a wide net?
I would say cast a wide net for two reasons.
One, unless you have absolutely ludicrous amounts
of demographic information, it's
gonna be really hard for you to build, like,
an email list that you're gonna send out to everybody and
invite them to participate.
It also if you do that,
you may prevent people who are older or younger than your
target age from participating even though they may be very good at it.
What will probably happen instead is you will cast a wide net,
and you will notice that most of your participating
fundraisers will fall into a particular age group,
but you'll have outliers on either end.
So don't stress yourself out trying to to recruit a very
specific age group.
The only exception, I guess,
may be if you are running a very small campaign where you
have, like, a curated hand selected group of people that
you're asking to participate, then you may wanna consider
age, but I wouldn't I wouldn't lean that way.
No.
That's too much work for you.
And you're denying people the opportunity of participating if
they want to, and they don't fall in that demographic.
Okay.
This is perhaps, the most important the most important piece.
So I'm gonna take off my peer to peer hat,
and I'm gonna put on my research hat for a second.
We know that people who feel very
closely connected to a nonprofit, like,
a personal level, are more likely to get engaged.
They're more likely to stay engaged.
They're probably gonna be supporting you in multiple ways.
And while it is not reasonable to
build a one to one relationship with every single
person that maybe even signs up for a peer
to peer fundraiser,
especially if you're running a big campaign.
But if you if you help people feel connected
by giving them experiences that feel very personal,
you can really encourage fundraising,
and you will encourage long term relationships that play
out in lots of different ways.
So you can give people,
an idea of what they're raising money for,
what their participation will achieve.
You can give people training on how to use the tools that
you've given given them to raise money and achieve those outcomes.
But when you give them asset or when you give them access to
you, when you are a resource for them,
they will be off to a strong start.
So what does that look like?
What is what is actually helpful?
So remember, in your head,
these are not experienced fundraisers.
They've probably never sent an email appeal before.
They maybe ask their mom for gas money
sometimes when they were in in
college, but these are people who are not not fundraisers.
Anything you can give them to make them effective fundraisers
is going to be helpful.
The most useful asset I received when I was raising
money as a peer to peer participant was I got a
document that had a couple of talking points and a couple of
stories that I could use when I was talking about my
fundraising or sending email appeals or posting on social media.
For example, I got I think every dollar that I
raise results in three dollars of services to the
group of people that we were serving to.
It was a it was a clinic.
That's the most helpful thing I got.
When you give people that kind of information
or when you give them images that they can use or when you
give them infographics or statistics that they can cite,
you're giving people all of the building blocks that they need
to tell a good story to their friends and family and ask
their friends and family to donate to your campaign.
I would also really encourage you to consider giving people templates.
Templates for fundraising emails and social media posts
are absolutely invaluable.
I write for a living,
and I am intimidated when I sit down and go to write a brand
new email from scratch.
I'm sure that you all are too.
Even if you encourage people,
just just use your template as a starting place.
Simply starting with something other than a blank page can
mean that someone actually sends a fundraising email
instead of skipping it.
Give them templates.
If you are encouraging do you question for you.
Do you invite your participants to try their own, like,
fundraising activities in addition to just digital stuff?
For example,
when I was participating in a peer to peer campaign,
I worked with a local bar to have, like,
a a fundraising night where a certain percentage of their
funds from that night went to my fundraising campaign.
Okay. Kaylee does that. Cool.
Restaurant giveback nights. Okay. Awesome.
I would really encourage you to give folks
some ideas that can help get them started.
You if if you are a fundraiser and you know, like, okay.
I need to raise two thousand dollars.
I have no idea what I can do.
Even just having a couple little ideas will get them
thinking, and people people come up with really cool tactics.
Okay. So this is all great.
We like to talk about what we're gonna give people.
What does that actually look like?
This example here is from Walk for Friendship.
Each of these icons takes or buttons takes someone to
a different resource for them.
So this is an old event.
I don't think it's live anymore,
but it had fundraising tips.
It had some pointers for getting started.
They had ideas for how their, their teams could raise money.
They had a guide to matching gifts.
They had a couple of different things,
and they also had fundraising incentives,
which we're gonna get to in a second.
But, I hope this is kind of giving you some ideas.
Think about when you were a little baby fundraiser,
you needed to raise money, you didn't know what to do,
what would have been useful to you?
Offer those offer those things to your participants.
This is actually this is another,
cute inclusion from an it is an old event,
but this is from Oregon. Humane Society's Doggy Dash.
They had a ton of different graphics graphics in different formats.
So, like, these, for example, are, for Instagram stories.
They had all kinds of templates that people could use.
There was so much good stuff in there.
This is just a really great example of what you can provide
to your participants to make them more likely to get involved.
Okay.
The last thing I'm gonna talk about is keeping people motivated.
I'm sure you've experienced this.
People start strong, and then they lose steam,
and they stop participating.
Now giving people those tools and training will help
encourage them to get started.
Now you just need to keep them going.
And some of this will happen naturally. Right?
Like, you get your first couple of donations,
and it's exciting.
You've got some momentum behind you. You wanna keep going.
But it is really easy to get distracted,
especially when people are balancing participating in your
event with all of the other things going on in their lives.
So you can make it more likely that they stay engaged if
you make it fun and you are regularly communicating,
with and coaching your participants.
So gamification is actually a really big part of this.
If you're not familiar with that term because it is kind of
a nerdy tech people term,
gamification is the practice of adding gaming
elements to nongaming situations.
So if you've ever I don't even know if they do this.
Do you guys remember the little progress bar that LinkedIn had?
And if you, like, completed your, completed your profile,
you could fill up the progress meter.
Or I'm aging myself. Do you remember Foursquare?
When you logged in a place on Foursquare,
you could get a badge.
You were the mayor of a place or get little milestones.
Okay. Good. Joan Joan is what I'm talking about.
So goals are an example,
especially if you got progress meters.
That's a really common tactic that people use in peer to peer
to give people a progress meter.
They can they like to fill it up.
Humans are very goal oriented.. We love filling in a meter.
Checklists are another one.
If you've ever written something onto your daily to do
list just for the joy of checking it off, you know how,
compelling and how satisfying checklists can be.
Giving people badges,
giving them incentives for hitting certain fundraising
milestones, running contests.
All of those are examples of gamification,
and they're useful and effective for a lot of
psychological reasons.
We don't have time to get into today, but,
the the whole point is that you make participating in your
event feel like a game instead of, like,
it's something that they have to do.
These are some examples just of other gamification pieces,
and a lot and I depending on the platform that you're using,
these should be built into you.
I love this.
This is actually from. Neon CRM's new peer to
peer tool.
There's just this little digest.
Like, welcome.
You your fundraisers collected three donations.
They've raised this much.
You've inspired three people to donate towards your cause and
just a little celebratory marker.
You've got the, progress meter here.
This over here is something I actually love.
This is also from the. Oregon Humane Society.
They had different prizes that people could win when they hit
specific fundraising milestones.
Now this is a lot of work,
and I noticed a couple of you have cited capacity as an issue.
Totally understandable. This is probably more your speed.
But if you have the capacity to do something like this,
you can really urge people to participate in
fundraising with prizes.
I've seen people do some shocking things for a free T shirt.
It's been a it's it's pretty funny.
So gamification elements are a great way to keep people involved,
but making sure that you're coaching people is also really effective.
The human connection between you or your staff,
whoever is is working with people,
and your fundraisers is really compelling.
So connecting with people individually is always a great idea.
If you don't have the ability to do so,
you can use
automated emails and thank you messages and little
milestone updates
to keep people involved.
Now that is a lot of work,
and I hope that you're using a tool that allows you to
automate some of these things.
Just know that any moment that you are intentionally,
whether it's through a thoughtful email that goes out
with a certain trigger or you are actually calling someone
and encouraging them, that makes a huge impression on people.
And those little personal touches are a great way to get
your participants active, but then also stay active with you
even after the event ends.
I wanna touch on just a couple other we're short on time,
but I wanna touch on this.
Just a couple little other ways you can offer mentorship and
support that are hopefully low lift for you.
They don't take up a lot of time,
but they have an outsized impact.
Honestly, one of the most beautiful things that,
the organization I raised money for did when I signed up to be
a participating fundraiser is they just let me know who to
contact when I had questions.
Her name was Sonia.. She was an angel.
She I was running that event at the bar.
I got really stressed out because I encountered a
situation where someone wanted to donate a certain way.
Didn't know if I could do that. I could text Sonia.
She immediately walked me through the problem,
and we ended up everything went off without a hitch.
Even if someone never has to talk to you,
simply knowing that it's an option if they need to can
be very reassuring.
It's that personal connection that kind of encourages it
makes them feel seen.
It makes them feel supported,
and it will encourage them to get involved.
This doesn't always have to be you or a staff member, for example.
If you have a a returning fundraiser who's done that before,
see if they would be willing to be a contact for people,
which brings me to my last point.
Peer to peer support is a huge deal.
If you are running an event that happens regularly,
and I see that a lot of you are running multiple events that I
assume are happening on a regular cadence,
you probably have people who have participated more than one year.
Making them a peer leader helps you really accomplish a couple
different things.
One, it makes your life a little easier because you're
not fielding every question from every participant that needs help.
Two, your participants may be more
willing to reach out for help if they're reaching out to a
peer and not someone at your organization.
That may be intimidating.
I'm sure all of you are extremely intimidating people.
But then just kind of as a bonus,
it also deepens your relationship with the returning
fundraiser who you have now elevated to a leader in your event.
So everyone feels supported.
Everyone feels appreciated, and people are more willing to
participate because they know that they're going to have
support if they get stuck.
So okay.
That was a lot of information in a short period of time,
and I know we're at time.
So I'm gonna take a couple questions.
So
Joe asked how many templates are good to provide?
I don't wanna overwhelm them.
Start with one email template maybe,
and then a couple ideas for social media posts.
The big I think the biggest thing is helping
people understand what to talk about, what's their impact,
why should other people give, and then,
images are huge.
So a few templates are great,
especially if you can tell them, like,
just use these as ways to get started.
You don't have to stick with it precisely.
If this is a new event,
do you have any different suggestions on how to cultivate
this kind of community support framework?
I think if this is a new event,
just giving people a forum in which to connect not only with
you, but with each other can be really helpful.
That having, like, a. Zoom kickoff is an easy
idea that doesn't involve people actually in your space.
It gives people an opportunity to learn about what they're
raising money for.
You can show them the tools that you're giving them.
You can encourage them to talk to you,
and it's an opportunity for them to connect, with yourself.
Andre, love this question.
What are strategies you use to encourage people who have hit
their fundraising goal to keep going?
The most effective there are lots of different tactics for
this, so this is by no means an exhaustive list.
The most effective tactic. I've seen, honestly,
was in that last event that I participated in.
There was an email that it was automated.
An email was triggered and shot off to
any fundraiser who hit their fundraising goal,
and it was really celebratory.
You're amazing. Like, look what you've accomplished.
This is the result of your hard work.
It made people feel really good about their work.
And then it gave them additional ideas.
Like,
here's how you can keep going.
It gave some pointers that let people know how to
increase their goal.
So, like, GoFundMe does this.
If you hit your five thousand dollar goal,
you can increase your goal,
the next way or the for the next round.
It just really it thanked them. It got them excited.
It encouraged them to keep going.
That was extremely compelling.
I'm gonna do one more.
Let's see.
Oh my gosh. The chat is moving.
Okay.
Do you have any ideas on how to get local businesses involved
in something like this?
We do a supply drive twice a year,
and people already reach out about running a drive at their business.
I would love to make this even bigger.
Leah, there are all kinds of different options that you can do.
One, I would obviously probably it sounds like you're not looking for,
you're not struggling to get support.
So ask those businesses to talk to other businesses that they work with.
See if you can go to chamber of commerce
events and and see so in my town,
there are chamber of commerce events,
and we can have people speak.
Maybe speak at a chamber of commerce event and get people interested.
That way,
if you have an email list of people that you know work for
local businesses,
try reaching out to existing supporters who you know are at
businesses that may be a good fit for you.
But I would really lean on the the community and network of
people that you have and ask them to just introduce you to other people,
which is what a beautiful what a beautiful thing to need to solve for.
And what a perfect way to end.
I thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for talking to me.
Peer to peer is such a complex and fascinating discipline.
I loved seeing the ideas that you all have.
I think I saw someone, like, sharing links with each other.
Thank you for being here, and thank you for talking to me.
I'm gonna email you tomorrow. It yes.
You're gonna get the recording.
The slides will also be on the same page,
so you can download the slides.
And I'll make sure, speaking of who is it?
Joe.
There is going to be a link to a toolkit that you can use that
has templates in it.
So you just have templates that you can give people without
stressing yourself out.
Alright, everyone.. Thank you so much.
I will talk to you all tomorrow. Have a beautiful day.