We’re back with the next installment of our Tips for the Time-Crunched series and this week we’re looking at you, P2P fundraisers! With over 20+ years of peer-to-peer fundraising experience here at Event 360, our team has some useful tools in our toolkit. Whether you manage a walk, ride or run, here are four tips to help you prioritize what’s important when all other aspects of your event start creeping in.
1. Get Strategic on Social
In our previous blog, A Balancing Act: Social Media Hacks for the Time-Crunched Event Professional we talked about five tips to help you stay on top of your social game, including the importance of utilizing your participants to act as online ambassadors for your organization’s event. Creating digital spaces where your participants can organically come together as a community to ask questions, find information, and share successes can take a lot of the work off your plate. Arm your online ambassadors with a set of FAQ and answers and engagement goals so they can spearhead the community on their own. Your experienced and loyal participants can be the best advice-givers and cheerleaders for newbies. Don’t let you or your online ambassadors get discouraged if you’re not seeing immediate results! Online communities like Facebook groups take time to blossom and grow. Just know that the result will be worth it!
Extra tip: Make your teams feel extra special and encourage them to engage with you online by shouting them out on social media when they register for your event.
2. Follow your Data
Automated fundraising and registration reports, we love you. As fundraisers, we know you want to talk to everyone. But we also know that trying to talk to 100+ team captains and participants each week is unrealistic, especially if you’re also in charge of logistics and recruitment for your event. Keep in mind that it’s okay not to treat every participant the same (we promise). If your event does not require a fundraising minimum, this article from Classy shares the importance of using your data to focus on the group of donors that will result in the most donations. In P2P this is often your mid to high-level teams. We will celebrate the day when there are no $0 fundraising teams, but until then we recommend being strategic! Your weekly data reports tell the story of what’s happening with your fundraisers. Listen to them and use them to make your plan.
3. The Power of Video
Video content has blown up on social media platforms in the last year and continues to reign supreme. Knowing video is king, we recently used a new platform called StoryPrompt for a project and it could not have been easier to collect videos. Using video collection platforms can help you easily gather testimonials from your rockstar fundraisers, volunteers and even colleagues within your own organization to share fundraising tips, mission-driven stories and organizational updates with your participants. With so many uses for short-form video content, let others record and tell their own story so information is easily shared, and you can focus on fundraising!
4. Resist the Urge to Recreate the Wheel
With so many awesome non-profits out there, save time in your day-to-day schedule by taking a beat to friendly stalk and do some research! Whether it’s collecting ideas for social media, fundraising rewards, or tips on building your digital marketing plan, your peers can be one of your best resources. A quick search on Facebook can also find you tons of fundraising, development and non-profit groups to join. Remember you’re not on an island! And, as you connect with other development professionals, you’ll quickly learn that most fundraisers feel the same way.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments! And, if you’d like to talk with Event 360 to customize your fundraising strategy, let us know!
