Do-it-yourself peer-to-peer fundraising is growing fast, but its very nature — people doing their own thing on their own schedule — can confound peer-to-peer fundraising pros.
Because DIY is relatively new, the playbook for recruiting and retaining independent fundraisers is still being written.
However, some best practices are starting to emerge.
The P2P Professional Forum recently chatted with Mike Kirkpatrick, director of marketing at the Canadian Cancer Society’s Ontario Division, to learn about the success of its Cancer Fighters platform.
Cancer Fighters, which raises about $3 million annually for the Ontario division alone, gives participants the opportunity to create their own peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns and raise money for the organization online.
The campaign is built around activities that are most popular among its supporters — namely taking part in organized runs and pledging to shave their own heads. But Cancer Fighters gives participants the opportunity to do almost anything they choose on behalf of the organization.
Some choose to run golf outings and host yard sales. Others take part in extreme challenges.
Kirkpatrick, who will speak at an upcoming P2P Forum Webinar on do-it-yourself fundraising, discussed some of the keys to the campaign’s success.
P2P Forum: What are some of the common traits of successful DIY programs?
Kirkpatrick: Keep it simple. It’s important to avoid getting too complicated with the amount of information. Ultimately, you’re trying to tap in to the basic mechanics of getting involved.
You’re saying to participants, ‘Tell us the ideas you have and we’ll provide you with what you need to start fundraising.’ You want to get the focus on people’s ideas because that is where the passion comes from.
Then, you’re guiding them gently through the process. Some people need more inspiration than others. You can tackle that in a number of different ways, whether that’s giving them examples of other people who have done it, whether its showing them how easy it is through a step-by-step process. or whether it’s showing them the impact of the money raised will do.
How engaged are you with participants once they’ve signed up?
We try to reach out to them all and make them aware of the resources we have available. You want to make sure you make them aware of the rules of engagement and how to leverage your brand and what tools are available to help them. Sometimes, visiting the website doesn’t always achieve that. You want to have that live connection with them if you can.
One of the biggest challenges many DIY programs face is attracting participants. How have you been successful in making people aware that Cancer Fighters exists?
You want to have a good base level of awareness in your community that you are the charity that people should think of first when a particular cause comes to mind. For us, when someone is thinking of making an impact on cancer, we try to make sure that our branding organizationally is strong so we’re top of mind when that life event happens to them.
We also make sure we’re easy to find. We make sure we have strong search engine optimization. We make sure we utilize our Google ad grants so that we’re easy to find when they are Googling and doing searches. We rely on other campaigns that are targeted to interests because that increases our chances of intersecting at that moment.
A lot of our efforts are digital, focused on things that give us the most ability to tie back to an actual conversion on the website. We’re not going to go out with a blanket advertisement on TV or in newspapers. It really needs to be as targeted as possible to interest categories when people are looking for things.
What else should organizations keep in mind if they’re starting a do-it-yourself program?
The challenge with these events is that they are large and small and you can never predict because they are third party whether they will come back from year to year.
So you might have a significant six figure event that’s been on your books for years and all of the sudden they can decide that’s the end of it. You have less control over that than you would with your own event. So we see ebbs and flows. The trajectory can be unpredictable.
Register now for our upcoming free webinar to learn more about DIY fundraising.