Part 2 of a 2-part series. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, start there for a breakdown of what P2P fundraising is, how it differs from crowdfunding and traditional fundraising, and a simple checklist to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your organization.
So you’ve decided P2P is worth exploring. Good.
Now the single most important thing to say before anything else: you almost certainly don’t need to plan an event.
That’s where most organizations get stuck. They picture a 5K, a walk, a bike ride, a weekend of logistics, volunteers, and porta-potties. They think about registration systems, t-shirt sizes, and what happens if it rains. And then they decide they don’t have the bandwidth and put P2P on the someday list.
That’s a real shame, because the version of P2P that works best for most small to mid-sized nonprofits has nothing to do with any of that.
Event-free P2P isn’t a compromise. In many ways, it’s better.
The walk/run/ride model was built for large national organizations with dedicated event staff and years of infrastructure. For most nonprofits, that model is expensive, time-consuming, and a significant lift for a team that’s already stretched thin.
Event-free P2P is lower cost, easier to sustain year-round, more flexible for your supporters, and often more personal. You’re not asking people to show up at a specific location on a specific Saturday. You’re giving them a simple way to fundraise on their own terms, on their own timeline. That’s a much easier yes to get.
Six campaign types that work without an event
Remember the scenario from Part 1 where a supporter called to say she wants to run a fundraiser for you? That call is the perfect entry point for the most accessible type of P2P campaign.
DIY or supporter-driven fundraising is the evergreen foundation. Supporters create their own personal fundraising page and raise money any way they choose: in honor of a birthday, an anniversary, a graduation, a personal challenge, or just because they feel like it. When you have this set up, that call takes you two minutes to handle. You send her a link, the platform walks her through creating a page, and she’s off. No custom donation pages, no hand-holding, no three hours of staff time.
A Champions Campaign is a year-round, always-on option where supporters sign up to become ongoing advocates for your cause. It’s open-ended by design, which makes it a great fit for organizations that want a continuous fundraising presence without a fixed campaign timeline.
Board fundraising is one of the most underused P2P applications and one of the most effective. Set up individual fundraising pages for each board member, make everyone’s progress visible to the group, and watch what a little friendly competition does. One arts organization I’ve worked with raised ten times more than expected this way and reached 80 new donors.
Personal events are probably the closest thing to the traditional walk/run/ride model, with one important difference: you’re not organizing anything. A supporter is already signed up for a local marathon, cycling across the state, or some other personal challenge. They want to raise money for your cause as part of that effort. All you do is give them a personal fundraising page so their friends and family can donate in support. The event logistics are someone else’s problem. You just made it easy for someone who already wanted to help.
Memorial and tribute giving is often already happening informally at your organization. Someone passes away, and their family asks for donations in their memory. Someone celebrates a milestone and wants to give back. Giving this a proper home on your site with a simple fundraising page makes the process easier for everyone and keeps the donation in your system rather than a card sent to the office.
Micro-campaigns are focused, time-limited efforts around a specific need: a piece of equipment, a program goal, a particular initiative. They’re closer to crowdfunding in structure but with P2P mechanics, meaning you can recruit supporters to help spread the ask rather than doing all the promoting yourself.
Most organizations should pick one type and start there. The right choice depends on your audience, your capacity, and what you’re trying to accomplish. For most nonprofits just getting started, DIY is the lowest barrier and the highest leverage.
Tools you’ll need
You need a platform that gives fundraisers a personal page they can customize and share. At minimum that means a sign-up process, the ability to add a photo and personal story, a donation button, and a progress tracker. More advanced features like teams, leaderboards, gamification, and automated coaching emails are useful once you have traction, but don’t let the absence of those features stop you from starting.
Check what you already have first. Many CRM and donation platforms have P2P built in. If your organization uses GiveMN, you already have it. Free options like GiveLively and GiveButter are solid starting points for organizations that want to test the approach before committing to a paid tool. Paid platforms typically run $50 to $300 per month, and once you’ve validated that P2P works for your organization, that’s an easy investment to justify.
One thing to avoid using as your primary P2P tool: Facebook Fundraisers. They’re better than nothing, but not by much. You don’t own the donor data, following up is difficult, and average gift sizes are significantly lower than what you’d see on a dedicated platform. Facebook has a role in promoting your campaign. It shouldn’t be the infrastructure behind it.
The 90/10 rule and how to run a smart first campaign
Don’t try to launch a full program out of the gate. Start small and learn.
Find five people who already care about your organization and are willing to try something new. These are your seed fundraisers. Give them everything they need: a personal page, clear instructions, a deadline, and a reason to feel excited about what they’re doing. Then watch what happens.
Here’s what 20 years of P2P campaigns have taught me: roughly 90% of your results will come from 10% of your fundraisers. Most people who sign up will raise a little or nothing. A small number will surprise you. Your job in that first campaign is to find out who’s in that 10%. Once you know, you invest your energy there. You give them more support, more recognition, and a reason to come back next year.
A small first campaign isn’t a failure if the numbers are modest. It’s research. You’re learning who your best fundraisers are, what messaging resonates, and what your supporters need to be successful. That information is worth more than the dollars raised in round one.
The thing most organizations skip: the fundraising toolkit
This is where most P2P campaigns quietly fall apart, and it’s the easiest problem to fix.
Most people don’t know how to ask for money. That’s true even for people who care deeply about your mission. If you hand someone a fundraising page and wish them luck, most will stall out. They’ll mean to send that email. They’ll think about posting on social media. And then life gets busy.
The solution is to give them everything they need before they have to think about it. That means pre-written email templates they can copy and personalize, sample social posts ready to go, a short note coaching them on how to tell their own story, and a few key facts about your organization they can share with confidence.
I’ve built fundraising toolkits for organizations of all sizes, and the difference in results is consistent and significant. One toolkit I developed for a past client became the backbone of their entire P2P program. Fundraisers who had access to it raised substantially more than those who didn’t. The content wasn’t complicated. It was just ready when they needed it.
When your fundraisers have good tools, they raise more. When they don’t, they go quiet. Building a simple toolkit is one of the highest-ROI things you can do to support a P2P campaign, and it doesn’t require a big budget or a lot of time to put together.
Turning P2P donors into long-term supporters
Here’s another thing a lot of organizations miss: the donors your P2P fundraisers bring in gave because of their friend, not because of you. They may have no idea who your organization is beyond the name on the donation page.
If you drop them straight into your regular email list and start sending appeals, you’re going to lose most of them. They haven’t had a chance to understand what you do, why it matters, or why they should keep giving.
The fix is a simple donor welcome sequence. A short series of emails over a few weeks that introduces who you are, what your mission is, and what their gift actually made possible. Welcome emails consistently outperform standard fundraising emails on open rates and engagement. Get this right, and you turn a one-time P2P donation, made because someone’s friend asked nicely, into the beginning of a real donor relationship.
That’s the full picture of P2P fundraising. You’re not just raising money in the short term. You’re building an expanded community of supporters, some of whom will become your most loyal donors over time.
Where to go from here
P2P works. It’s not complicated. The main thing standing between most nonprofits and a functioning P2P program is just getting started.
Pick one campaign type. Find five people who care about your mission. Give them the tools they need. See what happens. You can build from there, and each campaign will teach you something that makes the next one better.
If you’d like help thinking through your first campaign or building out a fundraising toolkit for your supporters, we’d love to talk. Reach out here.
Rich Dietz is a consultant at NEXT in Nonprofits with 25+ years of experience in nonprofit management and technology. He has created and managed P2P campaigns, trained nonprofit fundraisers across the country, and spoken on the topic at national conferences.
