1. How Peer to Peer fundraising can
improve the performance of your
events by up to 40%
Steve Thomas, Purple Vision
Margaret Hollings, Nightingale House Hospice

2. Agenda
1. Introductions
2. Background
– Online and event fundraising
– What is Peer to Peer?
3. Blackbaud study
4. Case study and discussion
5. What next?

3. Question 1: What is online fundraising?
• Website?
• Email?
• Donate here?
• Just Giving?
• Social media?

4. Question 2: What is Peer to Peer?

5. How is Peer to Peer helpful?
• Community engagement
• Recruitment
• Campaigning
• Membership
• Service support
• Fundraising
– Supporter acquisition
– Appeals
– Events

6. How are your events performing?
“With over one million people taking part in Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Miles
and active fundraising up and down the country, Sport Relief 2012 was a
massive success.
We’d like to say an even more massive ‘thank you’ to every single person
who helped raise the staggering total of £62,519,216 so far. It’ll make an
incredible difference to people across the UK and the world’s poorest
countries.”

7. The online effect
• Peer to Peer Event Fundraising Benchmark Study 2011
• 48 different organizations and 1,845 events in the United States and Canada

8. Understanding Fundraiser and Peer Donor Motivations to
Grow your Peer to Peer event fundraising
Insights from a study of the City2Surf Fun Run – the worlds largest timed community run

9. City2Surf overview
• The worlds largest timed event – 80,000 participants
• 41 years old
• Peer to Peer fundraising introduced in 2008
• Fundraising not compulsory
• over 600 charities to choose from
• Growing at 30 – 40% year on year

10. Study overview
• Online survey
• 2 months post City2Surf
• 207 runners
• 240 donors
• All of whom who had raised money
for or donated to eleven different
charities of differing sizes and
categories.

11. Study overview - why did we do it?
• $100 million raised through Blackbaud’s
Peer2Peer fundraising technology (Everyday
Hero and Heroix) since 2007.
• In just 4 years events City2Surf and other major
community events have become a significant
fundraising opportunities thanks to the power of
this technology.
• Yet for all their success we don’t really
understand why people fundraise and their
motivations.
• Therefore we don’t really understand how
charities can optimise this giving channel
• Or how to really optimise the giving experience

12. The emotional connection

13. And so the key issue is….
Understanding these supporters are out there
fundraising, recruiting and organising on your behalf
• If there is a central idea behind this presentation it’s that we
are letting some of the basic principles of fundraising fall
away with our Peer to Peer fundraisers.
– How would you arm a Peer to Peer fundraiser if they were a
new employee or working for a third party organisation on your
behalf?
– How would you reward, acknowledge and cultivate a major
donor?
• Everything we know about fundraising applies in Peer to
Peer. It’s just that we are influencers not the implementers

14. Study findings

15. INSIGHT: Fundraising is secondary
• Generally the challenge or fun of the event is
more important than the fundraising.
• People participate first fundraise second
• Nearly half will take part in another event for
the same charity
Increase your success by congratulating and acknowledging your fundraisers for
TIP taking on the challenge. Transition from a trigger of not necessarily fundraising to
being inspired by your cause.

16. INSIGHT: Fundraisers who e-mail more, raise more.
• While Social Media is an important channel to use
fundraisers who e-mail more will raise more – it’s about the
direct ask versus the broadcast.
• Significant censorship of who to ask. Fundraisers don’t want
to obligate everyone to giving
• US research shows that Social Media users tend to e-mail
more as well. These people are your most sophisticated
fundraisers
TIP Increase your success by encouraging your fundraisers to make more direct asks.

17. INSIGHT: No prompting of ask amounts.
Donors ‘guess’ how much to donate.
• Fundraisers do not give donors any guidance ie
$50 buys a shovel
• Charities don’t tell fundraisers what to ask for and
why.
• Donors tell us their giving amounts are influenced
by previous gifts.
• Only half of all fundraisers donate to themselves
Increase your success with strategies to set ‘social giving norms’ by
TIP
improving the first gift

18. INSIGHT: Limited story telling or elaboration.
• Those people who included information about why they support the charity were are
more likely to raise more money, yet around 60% only use the standard template
provided by the charity.
• An analysis of the EDH database shows people who updated blogs and photos raised
on average $2000/page compared to the overall average of $500-$600 per page
TIP Review Fundraising pages and directly ask Fundraisers to add personal content

19. INSIGHT: Target setting is done in isolation and based on guesswork.
๏ Fundraisers tell us they are really guessing as
to what they can raise.
๏ The average amount raised is influenced by
the default target
๏ 60% met or exceeded their target
TIP Increase success by giving your fundraisers guidance on a target amount to raise.

20. INSIGHT: Most fundraisers don’t follow up initial requests.
• Fundraisers can lose motivation early.
• Donation flow actually increases in the last few days/weeks leading up to an event closure.
• Many fundraisers feel that a lack of early response can be a symbol of failure.
TIP Check that your fundraisers are following up their initial asks

21. INSIGHT: Donors are more willing to give again than
fundraisers are willing to ask.
• 65% of donors said they would give again if asked
• 20% of fundraisers said they would ask the same people to donate
TIP Provide tools for your fundraisers to ask people again or ask them yourself

22. INSIGHT: The power of teams and team captains
• The psychology of teams is very
powerful
• The study showed an individual in a
team raised more than an individual
• One team leader is worth multiple
fundraisers
• Team value is growing greater than
individuals across many Blackbaud
supported events
TIP Increase your success and your revenue with a team strategy

23. Summary
• Peer2Peer fundraising uses the principles of good fundraising.
• Develop strategies and tactics to make your supporters great
fundraisers.
• Understand the real value of team captains.
• Teams = greater value, satisfaction, retention, engagement

24. Case Study

25. Midnight Walk 2011
www.ladiesmidnightwalk.co.uk
• Using Heroix for the first time, we directed all online traffic to the
page to register and converted 40% of our registrations to online.
• 50% of these registrants were completely new supporters to us.
• When the registrants got their confirmation email we added the
button ‘start fundraising now’ which guided them through to
creating their own Heroix fundraising page.
• The main difference this made was to get significant money in the
bank BEFORE the event had taken place. It increased from £300 in
2010 (with no online activity) to £13,000 in 2011.
• It also guided more traffic online, which is much easier to
administer.

26. Hospice Heroes
www.everydayhero.co.uk/event/hospicehero
• Nightingale House Hospice has seen an increase from £25,000 in
2010 to over £105,000 in 2011 – an increase of 402%.
• We did this by combining all of our hospice challengers into a
‘Hospice Heroes’ campaign – inviting all challengers, whether they
are walkers, runners, cyclists or climbers to set up a page using the
link above. Many still prefer to use Justgiving and Virgin money
giving but we give them the choice.
• To compliment the efforts of those who took part in the campaign
we also held a Hospice Heroes award ceremony in January and
invited each and every hero to come and collect a medal. Just by
doing this we have seen several ‘heroes’ come back to take on
another challenge on behalf of the hospice. They also told their
family and friends.

27. Other benefits
• Offline events gain on average a 39% gift aid rate. Using
Heroix gift aid stays at 79% consistently.
• Once set up, fundraising peer to peer is simple and you
know that your supporters are being looked after
because you have specified what emails are to be sent
to them, and their donors. You can even create a thank
you video that can be sent to everybody who donates
to a hospice page. Please see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3fdy52WTY0 for
an example of what Nightingale House Hospice sends to
donors. This gives confidence that each supporter, and
their own donors are all looked after and can refer to
the hospice website at any time to read more details
about the charity.

28. More examples
Corporate events
www.everydayhero.co.uk/event/lockuptheboss
Sporting events
www.flintshire10k.co.uk
Community Events
www.everydayhero.co.uk/halloweendogwalk2012
In memory giving
www.mytribute.co.uk

29. Online tools for peer to peer fundraising
• Consumer branded
– Just Giving
– Virgin Money Giving
– BT Donate
• Charity branded
– Heroix
– Artez
– Engaging Networks
– TeamRaiser

30. Performance Benchmarking
Overall Teams
Total funds raised Funds raised by teams
Average donation Team pages created
Pages created Single and multi-page teams
Active pages Active single and multi-page
Average funds raised per teams
active page Average funds raised per
Individual active team page
Funds raised individual
Active individual pages
Average funds raised per
active page

31. Where next - Summary
• Purple Vision Event Healthcheck
• Benchmarking UK hospices
– Pilot
– Rollout
• Development options
– Immediate benefits
– Test online tools
– Database integration
– Fundraiser Journey
– Data analysis

32. For more information please contact:
steve.thomas@purple-vision.com
margaret.hollings@nightingalehouse.co.uk
everydayhero.co.uk