Five Ways to Make Sure You Don’t Leave Money on the Table with Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns
by Mark Becker, Founding Partner, Cathexis Partners
When you’re running peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, you might tend to focus on planning, recruiting and coaching participants, and tracking results. But consider this: There are some simple yet highly effective ways to boost your funds raised that you might have overlooked.
Here are five things you can do today to make sure your peer-to-peer campaigns and events don’t leave money on the table:
- Ask donors to cover transaction fees.
When someone makes a donation to your organization through your peer-to-peer participants’ pages or your other donation forms, you’re typically charged a transaction fee by your payment processor. This effectively reduces each donation by some percentage (often around 3%). But, you don’t have to settle for that.By providing an option on your online donation form for donors to cover the cost of transaction fees, you can capture those lost dollars.
Here’s an example: Cathexis Partners helped Arizona Humane Society add an option to their Luminate Online–powered donation form for donors to cover the transaction fee on their donations. The result: In three months, the organization received a total of $2,000 that previously would have been lost to transaction fees. - Add a monthly giving pop-up.
When donors make an online donation to your organization, present them with the option to make it a recurring gift with the convenience of monthly payments charged automatically to their credit card. This approach encourages donors to remain donors and give more over time. In fact, research suggests that recurring donors who give on a monthly basis donate 440% more to charity over their lifetime than one-time donors.
- Review sustaining gift credit card expirations.
Once donors sign up as sustaining donors, they don’t always remember to send you an update when their credit cards are expiring. This leads to declined transactions, leaving it up to you to follow up with donors to update their information — possibly missing out on months of sustaining gift donations in the process.
Here are some approaches for proactively reviewing sustaining gift credit card expirations so you don’t miss out on those donations:- Set up a monthly recurring email campaign to automatically send sustaining donors a reminder that their credit cards will expire soon.
- Remind your sustaining donors via email as many as 60 to 90 days before their credit cards are set to expire to give them time to update their credit card information.
- Set up a portal so that sustaining donors can log in and view/update their sustaining gift information and details.
- Use a credit card updating service that automatically updates sustaining donors’ credit card renewal dates.
- Embed a matching gift tool in your donation form.
Adding a corporate matching tool to your peer-to-peer fundraising donation forms helps your peer-to-peer fundraising participants maximize their fundraising and their impact. This, in turn, means more dollars for your mission. Everyone wins.
Companies like Double the Donation make it simple to embed their matching gift tool on web pages and donation forms. 360MatchPro by Double the Donation is a matching gift software solution that can automate the entire matching gift process on your organization’s behalf. Working with a matching gift service like this makes it much easier for your donors to seek matching gifts and for your nonprofit to track expected gift matches. - Use Google Ad Grants.
Google Ad Grants offers eligible nonprofits $10,000 per month of in-kind Google Ads advertising to promote their missions on Google search result pages. This offers a tremendous opportunity for you to promote your nonprofit’s mission, programs, and fundraising campaigns.
Read The Nonprofit’s Introductory Guide to Google Ad Grants to get started. Also, consider getting expert help in setting up and optimizing your Google Ad Grants. Cathexis Partners offers affordable services to get you going, make sure you maintain eligibility, and optimize your use of the grant.
Many tools will support these techniques. If you have questions or would like help setting up these approaches for your organization, contact Cathexis Partners.
About Mark Becker and Cathexis Partners: Mark founded Cathexis Partners in 2008 to help nonprofit organizations get the most from their existing technology tools, implement new technology to address gaps, and find the best overall approach to using technology to support their missions. He previously served as director of IT consulting at a fundraising event production company focused on nonprofits. Cathexis Partners helps nonprofits use technology to raise funds and engage supporters more effectively.
