Engaging with Your Supporters: Can Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Software Do These 6 Things?
As we move into the new year, it’s a great time to take a look at the software that supports your peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns and consider if it’s meeting your nonprofit’s needs. One important aspect to consider is how your peer-to-peer software supports your organization’s ability to engage with your supporters.
For example, email marketing is a critical aspect of any nonprofit’s multi-channel communication strategy, but it can be time-consuming to manage. Using software that supports and simplifies this type of communication frees your team to focus on other aspects of an event or campaign. At the same time, social media is becoming a more important piece of an overall multi-channel communication strategy, and your peer-to-peer software should support your social media activities.
Here are six key capabilities to think about as you evaluate peer-to-peer fundraising software platforms for your nonprofit:
- Participant emails — Can participants upload their contact lists and send emails from the platform? (Social media is becoming a main point of contact between friends and family, but it is still good to give your participants options on how they want to spread the word.)
- Sample emails — Does the platform support providing sample fundraising emails for your participants to send? (You’re asking your participants to fundraise on your organization’s behalf, and the more you can help your participants by providing them with tools like sample emails that they can then customize and send to their friends and family, the more likely they are to raise funds.)
- Organizational emails — Does the platform allow you to upload email addresses for event invitations, plus allow you to send registered participants fundraising tips, tools, mission information, event logistics, and post-event follow up?
- Third-party email tools — What email tools does the platform integrate with?
- Social media sign-up — Does the platform allow participants to sign up using their social media credentials to make it more convenient for them to register? (This feature streamlines the registration process by a one-click registration process or by auto-filling biographical information.)
- Team functionality — Does the platform support team creation? (This is particularly important because members of teams typically raise more than individual participants.)
You can learn more about these and other essential software capabilities in The Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Technology Landscape 2018 Edition.
The Cathexis Partners team wrote this free guide to help you better understand the platforms available to you and to narrow the list of tools so you can find the one that best supports your team, your participants, your donors and, most importantly, your mission. Check it out, and discover the capabilities of 39 peer-to-peer fundraising software platforms on the market today. I think you’ll find it valuable!
Need more help? Check out our affordable service to help you find the right peer-to-peer fundraising tech platform for your nonprofit.
