Imagine your nonprofit successfully stewards a gift from a donor. Your team reaches out to solicit the gift, receives a donation, and thanks the supporter. Then, you repeat this process for nine other prospects, effectively reaching 10 donors.
Now, imagine that each donor has five close friends who share a similar passion for your cause. When these donors encourage their friends to get involved, your nonprofit receives support from 50 donors instead of just 10, multiplying your revenue exponentially!
This is the power of peer-to-peer fundraising, but you need more than a passionate supporter base to maximize your reach—you need strong technology. This guide walks you through the essential tools that can help your peer-to-peer campaign thrive.
1. Email Marketing Solution
According to Getting Attention’s marketing statistics, email marketing generates approximately 28% of all online nonprofit revenue and is the channel that most inspires 30% of donors to give, making it one of the most important forms of outreach in a peer-to-peer campaign.
Modern email marketing tools make it easy to rally supporters, motivate fundraisers, and keep donors engaged at every stage through the following capabilities:
- Segmentation: Group your constituents (donors, volunteers, other supporters) by interests, demographics, giving history, or engagement level so you can send the right message to each group.
- Automation: Schedule welcome emails, reminders, updates, and donation receipts to be sent automatically, saving your team time and ensuring timely communications.
- Personalization: Add a personal touch to each message to make each donor feel individually recognized. Nothing boosts engagement like calling a donor by name or referencing giving history or milestones.
- Performance tracking: Monitor open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and other essential metrics so you can tweak your messaging until it’s working well.
When shopping for nonprofit fundraising software, check to see if email marketing tools are included. A fundraising platform with marketing capabilities may be more powerful (and cost-effective) than several disparate systems.
2. Analytics and Reporting Platform
Data is the backbone of an effective peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. With robust campaign data, nonprofits can evaluate their performance, identify trends, and pinpoint areas for improvement.
Analytics and reporting platforms enable you to closely monitor essential metrics, such as:
- Total funds raised: The total amount you’ve brought in during a given time period
- Number of active donors: How many people are currently giving money
- Donor retention rate: The percentage of overall donors who are repeat donors
- Top fundraisers: Your most ardent supporters in terms of amount or frequency
This data also allows nonprofits to share their peer-to-peer campaign’s success with external stakeholders, like funders or the organization’s board. For example, data can supplement your nonprofit’s impact reports when applying for grants to demonstrate your careful stewardship of fundraising dollars. Or, use it to build a quarterly board report that details how your organization performed in the campaign and any strategic insights that will guide your next quarter.
3. Payment Processing Software
Peer-to-peer campaigns aren’t just about the ask. When donors commit to giving, nonprofits need a reliable and secure system to process donations. A secure and seamless donation experience builds trust and keeps sensitive financial information private, which is critically important in a peer-to-peer campaign.
Why? In those campaigns, your supporters become advocates and ambassadors, reaching out to their networks and putting their reputations on the line to raise money for your cause. Questionable system security undermines the fundraiser and your nonprofit’s reputation.
Investing in a secure donation platform shows your donors you take their trust seriously and that you have the right systems in place to handle their contributions responsibly.
Payment processing is complex—funds moving from a donor to your nonprofit’s account take quite a journey! According to CharityEngine’s payment processing guide, this involves the following steps:
- The donor’s payment goes through a payment gateway that encrypts and authorizes the payment.
- The payment is sent to a payment processor or aggregator.
- The payment processor will set up different merchant accounts for each of its customers. Your nonprofit will have a designated account, and this donation will go to that account.
- Or, the aggregator uses one general merchant account, not separate ones for each client. This offers ease of use (think PayPal) but not much speed, customization, or flexibility.
- Finally, the donation is transferred to your nonprofit’s bank account.
A good payment processing tool should make giving easy, fast, and secure. It should also make managing those donations on the back end a breeze. Look for features like PCI compliance, fraud protection, and encrypted transactions. It’s also wise to find a system that supports multiple payment options, including digital wallets and ACH, so donors can give how they prefer.
4. Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) System
A Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) system is crucial to modern fundraising. At its core, a good CRM helps you organize, track, and manage all your donor data in one secure place.
But the best CRMs go well beyond recordkeeping. They bring together all the essential tools (like those listed in this article) that you need to run a successful campaign. Here are some key CRM features that can make a big difference in peer-to-peer campaigns:
- Contact management: Detailed donor profiles help you deepen relationships by giving you the information you need to connect in meaningful ways. In the end, you’ll do more than secure peer-to-peer campaign participants—you’ll cultivate major donors, long-time volunteers, and loyal supporters.
- Secure payment processing: Collect donations with confidence that they’re secure. A CRM with built-in payment processing will usually also offer built-in compliance and fraud protection, removing that responsibility from your shoulders and winning trust.
- Advanced reporting and analytics: Once you have all the data, rely on CRM tools and features to pull it into reports and dashboards. Track donations, volunteer engagement, and campaign progress with ease.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising features: If your CRM is equipped, your supporters can create microsites to be shared with their networks, expanding your reach far beyond your core donor list.
A good CRM ties all these elements together, giving you one reliable spot to see everything you need. As your peer-to-peer program grows, your CRM can scale with you, making it easier to organize a large amount of data, spot trends, and build on success.
While software trends are ever-changing, there are a few tried-and-true tools that will always benefit your peer-to-peer campaigns. You’ll maximize your fundraising success when all of these tools are unified and your data is under one roof.
Investing in the right tools today sets your nonprofit up for a much bigger impact tomorrow.