Each month we’ll highlight a free or low-cost online tool to further a nonprofit’s fundraising and communications strategies. BC/DC Ideas is not paid to endorse these tools, we’ve just done the research and love them a whole lot!

Peer-to-Peer, or social, fundraising is the latest in online giving strategies. This allows your current supporters to have an online giving page to ask friends, family and colleagues for donations on your behalf. What Peer-to-Peer does for a nonprofits is that it puts your message in the hands of your most avid and vocal fans. Let them do all the leg work to get the donations. All you need to do is put together a solid communications plan and add a dynamic online tool.

In this type of online fundraising game there are a few things to keep in mind:

• It’s a bit more expensive than other online fundraising tools – The industry standard on transaction and service fees is 7.5%. That is high, no doubt. We speculate that as this fundraising technique becomes more widespread that fee will drop, but for now it’s a cost of doing business.
• It’s people intensive -The key to a good Peer-to-Peer campaign is a dedicated community manager that can cheerlead the teams to victory. This person will help people set-up fundraising pages, give the team leads tips on fundraising techniques and rally the masses when donations hit a doldrums.
• Needs a Creative Wrapper – Think beyond the typical walks and bike-a-thons of standard peer-to-peer campaigns. Think about a unique aspect of your nonprofit and capitalize on it. It could be asking people to fund a construction project, purchase much needed items or celebrate a birthday. You do not need an event or a specific fund, having an annual page for birthday wishes and special occasions is a powerful way to raise funds for your organization.

In looking at the Peer-to-Peer tool landscape there are some major players from Blackbaud and Razoo, but we landed on CauseVox as our favorite. The tool is highly customizable, beautiful back-end analytics, and is really simple to use. It offers a free trial that allows organizations to raise up to $3,000 before kicking in the $39 monthly fee. Organizations can run as many concurrent programs as they want, with completely unique looks, all within the monthly fee. We also really liked their responsive customer service and start-up attitude of adding new features.

Adding a Peer-to-Peer fundraising campaign to your year-end fundraising plan is effective way to boost your donation totals and add a new way to engage your donors. The team at BC/DC Ideas can help you create a winning plan and cheerlead your followers to the finish line – contact us!