Where does peer-to-peer fundraising belong on my charity website?

Figuring out where P2P fundraising belongs on your charity website isn’t necessarily straightforward. Here we will give two different approaches. Hopefully this will help you figure out how to best present and communicate p2p fundraising on your charity website.

The basic solution: Feature P2P fundraising as one way to support your organisation

This is the simplest way, one that will get you up and running fast. Simply create a new page for your website and have it linked to as one of the options of how others can support your organisation. The guidelines outlined in this blog post on how to communicate p2p fundraising will help you write this page. 

The benefit of this is that it most likely follows your site’s existing structure, and it is fairly simple to set up. You also don’t have to edit existing content that other stakeholders might have strong opinions on.

The downside is that your supporters fundraise for many different reasons. And a simple menu point like “how to fundraise for us” doesn’t nearly begin to capture the richness of your supporters’ motivations. 

A person who might end up creating a fundraiser in memory of a family member might never look for this as an option, but may prefer to just give a one-off in-memory donation. The person who will run a marathon and fundraise for you might not look for that option. A runner will probably look under events and news.

Our recommendation: Divide P2P fundraising by occasion and place where relevant

So instead of that, we recommend that you break down your various P2P fundraising initiates into occasions and campaigns. Here is how this could look:

• Under in-memorial donations, you can have the option of creating a tribute fund. 
• Under events, you can encourage the creation of sports fundraisers, even if you don’t have any sports events to offer. 
• Under volunteering, you can list fundraising as another way to volunteer time. 
• Under corporate partnerships, you can mention how a company can set up a corporate fundraising page. 
• Under donations made on behalf of someone else, feature the option to donate your birthday and create a fundraiser.
• And – do still have a general ‘create a fundraiser’ page. 

A great example: WaterAid Sweden

A great example of someone who is doing this exactly is WaterAid Sweden. On their homepage there are no less than four subsites that give info on option to fundraise.

1. The main ‘start your own fundraiser’ page. Essential and important.
2. Information on how supporters can participate in ‘Göteborgsvarvet’ and fundraise for WaterAid
3. Through an ambassador program, the super engaged supporters of WaterAid is strongly encouraged to not only spread the word about WaterAid but also fundraise for them. 
4. Winnovators are a corporate partnership program, where companies among many other things are given the opportunity to fundraise for WaterAid.

(Screenshots from wateraid.se the 13.february 2020)

Especially important when P2P fundraising is a novelty

This setup is especially beneficial in regions where peer-to-peer fundraising is still a fairly recent novelty. Here peer-to-peer isn’t generally recognised or remembered as an option. People don’t look for something that they don’t know exists. 

Therefore you will lose out on potential fundraisers if you just have one page on your website communicating your peer-to-peer fundraising options.  

The downside is of course that this is more time intensive, and will need coordination across several teams, but we definitely believe it is worth the effort.