3 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Peer-to-Peer Event

Are you setting up your upcoming social fundraiser for success or for failure? Even if other areas are carefully planned and flawlessly executed, peer-to-peer events won’t be successful without a few key pieces. Here are three ways you might be sabotaging your event:

1. You’re not keeping your participants engaged

Successfully reaching your fundraising goal will depend heavily on keeping your participants engaged in the fundraising process for the duration of the event. If you don’t have a plan for keeping your participants involved, you could lose out on important donations!

What can your organization do to keep your fundraisers enthusiastic about raising money? At Qgiv, we love making social fundraising a game by awarding badges to participants who reach significant milestones. How can you make fundraising seem like a game for your participants? What can you do to make it exciting instead of like a chore? Whether it’s something as big as giving prizes or as small as a simple “thank you!” on social media, keep your participants engaged by giving them goals to work towards and recognizing their achievements.

2. You’re not equipping your participants for success

Even the most enthusiastic fundraisers will lose momentum if they aren’t given the tools they need to successfully raise money. Remember, these participants aren’t professional fundraisers — they need guidance! If you’re not giving them those tools, you’re setting them (and yourself!) up for discouragement and failure.

Help them succeed by giving them a tool kit they can use to kickstart their fundraising efforts. Simple measures, like an email containing fundraising best practices and ideas, can have a huge effect on your event’s bottom line. You can even provide your participants with templates for social media posts and emails. The easier it is to raise money, the more likely they are to try.

3. You’re focusing too much on yourself

People might be raising money for your organization, but this event shouldn’t be about you! Your participants have unique perspectives of the work that you do, and your event gives them a platform to share their stories about why they support you. That’s exciting! Prospective donors want to hear stories from your donors, supporters, and people you help. Singing your own praises won’t get donations. Letting others sing your praises will.

Instead of talking about yourself in your appeals and posts, focus on the amazing people who are putting time, effort, and money into supporting you. Not only will it keep participants excited (people love getting shout-outs for their work!) and inspire people to donate, it will also show off to the world that you’re an organization that people love and want to help. That’s a pretty big feather in your cap.

Are you interested in exploring social fundraising but worry about it being a trend? Check out last week’s article on why we think peer-to-peer events are here to stay.