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Peer-to-peer fundraising is a rapidly-evolving field. Nonprofits constantly face new challenges and new opportunities that define their fundraising success. To help you navigate these rough waters of change, each year DonorDrive compiles our State of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Report providing you with proven best practices and fresh thought leadership, all backed by statistics from hundreds of thousands of participants and donors, as well as millions raised through organizations successfully fundraising with DonorDrive. In this report, we share the trends we’re seeing that are helping these organizations succeed.

Here’s what we're seeing most successful nonprofits doing:

   •     Actively pursuing a DIY or fundraise-your-way program

   •     Attracting more supporters by giving them more fundraising options 

   •     Motivating their participants to be better fundraisers 

   •     Turning their sponsorships into corporate partnerships

   •     Tapping into generations of fundraisers, especially Millennials

   •     Making best use of mobile technology that makes fundraising and donating easier 

Pursuing a DIY or fundraise-your-way program  

When DIY first started trending, organizations thought it was a magic bullet for fundraising: you give supporters the software and they fundraise scads of money. But what nonprofits learned about DIY is that there are exponential gains for every bit of energy a nonprofit puts into a DIY program. In every successful program, we’ve seen two more traits: 

• Staff got complete buy-in from the organization 

• They promoted the program so their supporters knew it was available

Overall, those organizations succeeding at DIY have done so because they created well- thought-out, well-promoted programs. 

Attracting supporters by giving them more fundraising options 

Beyond basic DIY, we have clients who created third-party fundraising programs that reach where their traditional events aren’t feasible. These programs touch audiences in nearby cities as they expand from local to regional. They also touch audiences anywhere in the country, while operating from a national office. DonorDrive client, the Epilepsy Foundation, has created an amazing variety of fundraising options to better engage their supporters that are also growing their organization.

Motivating participants to be better fundraisers
As participation in big signature events across the country has grown flat, it’s become obvious that organizations must depend on their participants to give a little more: to recruit a few more friends, to ask a few more times, to fundraise a few more dollars. In the report, we’ll share the techniques that DonorDrive clients are using to teach their participants to be better fundraisers. 

Turning sponsorships into corporate partnerships 

Relying on sponsorships as part of your event dollars can be a crapshoot, complete with jitters each year as you ask for the money. Partnerships with corporations prove to be so much more lucrative for organizations, since they provide better, stable support. DonorDrive client MADD has a well-aligned partnership with Uber that helps the organization succeed with their mission, while helping the company succeed with their business goals.

Tapping into Millennials and other generational fundraisers 

Are Millennials really that hard to understand? According to DonorDrive’s Ed Lord, not really. When you know how to play to their strengths, organizations are turning Millennials into powerful fundraisers. 

Making best use of technology to make fundraising and donating easier 

While our clients have been guiding their supporters in better fundraising, we at DonorDrive continue to hone the online donation process to remove the friction from giving. We were honored to be selected by Apple to introduce “Donate by Apple Pay,” a technology that makes giving a matter of tapping a button. 

Get the report and learn how organizations are increasing their revenue year after year.

Download the Free State of Peer-to-peer fundraising report today.

As Content Czar for DonorDrive, Kevin Wolfe brings 35 years of writing experience to DonorDrive’s extensive content creation. He serves as DonorDriven Blog editor and writer of the ever-expanding DonorDrive eBook Library with the goal of bringing the most usable content to nonprofits.