Best Practices for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Participant Portals
When it comes to peer-to-peer fundraising, recruiting participants for your peer-to-peer event/campaign is an important first step. But the real key to success is to get participants actively fundraising.
It’s important to help participants by providing fundraising tools, tips, and encouragement throughout the campaign or event. One of the best ways to do this is by optimizing your peer-to-peer fundraising participant portal.
What is a peer-to-peer fundraising participant portal?
A peer-to-peer fundraising participant portal is a web page in which participants in an organization’s peer-to-peer fundraising campaign or event can manage their fundraising and find resources to help them support the organization’s event or campaign. From the portal, they can do things like:
- Send messages to recruit team members. This may be via email or social media posts.
- Ask for funds from family and friends. Again, by sending email messages and doing social media posts.
- Track progress toward their fundraising goal.
- Access tools that help them fundraise. This is typically a resource library created by the organization that is specific to the organization’s mission and campaign/event.
Most peer-to-peer fundraising software has some form of participant portal functionality. For example, In TeamRaiser, it’s called the Participant Center. In Donor Drive, it’s called the Dashboard, and in Engaging Networks, it is called Fundraiser Dashboard.
Each product has different capabilities. However, no matter what tool you use, there are some highly effective things you can do to optimize your participant portal.
Five ways to optimize your peer-to-peer fundraising participant portal
Here are five effective approaches for optimizing your peer-to-peer fundraising participant portal:
- Avoid using heavy text. Make it easier for participants to find what they’re looking for by using icons with clickable hover-over text with links versus using lots of text.
- Offer a tips page. This is a way for participants to quickly find suggestions for improving their peer-to-peer experience and raising more dollars. For example, include tips and lessons learned from some of your top participants/fundraisers.
- Provide an FAQ. A list of Frequently Asked Questions helps participants to find answers and feel more confident in fundraising on their own.
- Offer suggested messages. Give participants suggested wording for messages to send to friends and family as well as suggestions on how often to reach out to their networks.
- Take advantage of your software’s participant portal functionality. For example: If your software offers a news alert section, use it to provide fresh, ongoing updates and encouragement to participants.
Learn more
Here at Cathexis Partners, we help our nonprofit clients implement and optimize peer-to-peer fundraising platforms to help them raise more dollars. Here are some resources to help you move forward no matter where you are in your organization’s peer-to-peer fundraising journey:
- If you’re considering a new peer-to-peer fundraising platform – Check out The Nonprofit Toolkit for Selecting Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Software. It includes a how-to guide and interactive online tool to help you find the right software for your nonprofit.
- If you’re looking for more best practices for peer-to-peer fundraising – Read The Nonprofit’s Guide to Peer-to-Peer Fundraising.
- If you want to improve your peer-to-peer email communications – Read Building Powerful Email Communications for Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns and Events.
- If you’d like help with improving your peer-to-peer fundraising – Contact Cathexis Partners. We’re ready to help!
