Peer-to-Peer Campaigns

Often times Nonprofits underestimate the power of peer to peer campaigns. That is a mistake. We want to be clear- we are not suggesting that your main source of marketing should be peer-to-peer. We are however suggesting you heavily use this tactic to reinforce your internal marketing. Nonprofits who lean on peer-to-peer campaigns to support their internal marketing see increased awareness, attendance at events and more donations coming in. In fact, according to Causevox, they typically see organizations raise twice as much with peer-to-peer fundraising than they do with traditional or crowdfunding techniques.

There are many reasons why Nonprofits see such success. Most people want to be involved with a Nonprofit organization, they just don't always know how to get started, or they want to show support for their friend who is passionate about an organization. We have picked some of our favorite peer-to-peer campaigns, our clients have told us about and why they work.

A family cleaned out every closet in their house. They had clothes, shoes and toiletries. You name it, and they had it. No one in their house had any use for the belongings anymore, but they didn't want to simply throw everything away. They wanted to donate the items, but they didn't know of any places. Like many people do in our time, they went on Facebook and asked for recommendations of places to drop off their belongings.  They received so many recommendations directly on their status, messages in messenger and texts about their inquiry. Without even knowing it, all of the people who commented, sent messages and texted were launching their own peer-to-peer campaigns.

Why did this work? According to Facebook, 1 in 3 people are using the platform for recommendations out of their 2.41 billion monthly users. Those who are involved with an organization are passionate and want to tell their friends, especially when it comes to helping their favorite organization. People are involved with an organization that can take these items, jumped to try ensure their organization got those items.  They created awareness for their organization.

We've also seen a lot of religious nonprofit organizations offer an incentive for current members. They use the structure we often see for retail “buy one, get one…” Specially, we see this a lot with Early Childhood programs that offer monthly music, crafting and storytime for children. The incentive we've seen a lot  is “bring a friend and get $xx  off your membership.” Whether that number is 10% or 50% families jumped on this.

Why? The incentive. Not only will the member of your organization be getting a monetary discount, but they are getting friends involved too. You, the organization, are getting new members and exposure. When the current member is inviting their friends, we can guarantee they are going around telling their friends how great your programming is and why they should tag along.

Our last example we like to highlight is benefit walks, runs and activities alike. When someone signs up let's say for a benefit walk, they typically have to raise a certain amount of money for the cause to participate. They register and then receive a link to their personal fundraiser for the larger fundraiser.  What do they do with the link? They put it all over. They share on their social media pages, they email to friends and relatives, text it, you name it and they are doing that to raise money. When somebody is helping to raise money for a great cause, they love for their peers to hear about it.

This works because peers want to support peers, and if they are able to give, they usually do. The organization is getting donations from people who they usually don't get donations from. In turn, these people are hearing about all the great things your organization does.

Although all the above examples happened organically, don't be afraid to lean on the volunteers, members, donors. Great organizations, have great volunteers, members and supporters who are ready to help. Here are some ideas to get you started on how to utilize peer-to-peer campaigns:

• • Ask supporters who you know have a big social media following to share your organization's post.
  • Ask supporters to invite other supporters to events, and participate in fundraisers.
  • Ask supporters to chair an event. It can be your big fundraiser, or it could be a smaller event.
  • Ask supporters to circulate your organization's email about an upcoming event.

There are so many ways to use peer-to-peer campaigns, our list could go on. If you're one of our clients let's talk about how you're using peer-to-peer campaigns. If you're not our client, we still want to hear from you and see how you're using peer-to-peer campaigns, and how we can best serve you.