Soapbox Engage Blog

When it comes to school fundraising, creativity is vital. You need ideas that will raise sufficient funds to support after school programs, improve classrooms, and provide better course materials — all of which are vital for creating a more enriching learning environment for students. You also want ideas that keep your students interested and ready to participate.

Peer-to-peer fundraising strikes the perfect balance for raising money and keeping your community interested! It empowers schools to connect with wider audiences and give students hands-on responsibility. They’ll see firsthand how their hard work pays off.

Chances are, you’ve come across one of these campaigns in the past. Essentially, you gather volunteers (in this case, students) to create and customize their personal fundraising pages. Then, they encourage their families and friends to donate. You can either target it toward a specific cause (such as buying new instruments for your school’s band) or make it a school-wide campaign that will benefit everyone (such as buying new classroom supplies or adding a new wing to the building).

However you go about it, there are a few best practices that will take your peer-to-peer campaign to the next level and get students excited about participating. If a peer-to-peer campaign sounds right for your school, here are some tried-and-true strategies to help make your campaign stand out:

• Connect it to an event.
• Teach your students how to fundraise.
• Sell merchandise alongside the campaign.

Put thought into your strategies before announcing your campaign, and it will certainly pay off as students start to sign up to participate. In no time, you’ll have a new annual fundraiser that everyone looks forward to each year.

Sell t-shirts alongside your campaign.

It’s no secret that people love a comfy t-shirt that represents a cause they care about. It’s a great way to spark school spirit and increase your school’s presence in the community. On top of that, the value of t-shirts with your school’s branding will outlast any campaign you run, because students will continue thinking about your school and increasing brand recognition in the community each time they wear them.

Bring t-shirts into your peer-to-peer campaign to multiply the impact of your fundraiser! Bonfire’s peer-to-peer fundraising guide explains that people will be much more likely to donate if they receive something tangible in exchange for their contributions.

T-shirts and similar apparel tend to work best for these types of campaigns. They’re easy to brand to your school and can help create a sense of unity among students and staff. Try out these strategies if you want to bring custom t-shirts, hoodies, or similar products into your campaign:

• Hold a design contest. Encourage students to submit their designs and compete with their classmates to come out on top. Then, let other students vote for their favorite design. The winner’s design will then be featured and sold across everyone’s campaigns.
• Use the design in marketing collateral. Make your t-shirts the face of your peer-to-peer campaign! Share screenshots of your design to encourage people to donate, and encourage students to do the same. Even better, if you order a few t-shirts ahead of time, have some students wear them and post pictures to their social media pages. Hearing about how comfy they are and seeing how great they look will help convince donors to give.
• Make sure your apparel is branded to your school. Remember, one of the primary benefits of apparel is that it builds brand recognition. Use your school’s colors, logos, and any other recognizable elements. If you’re holding a design contest, make branding part of the rules that students have to follow!

How you carry out your t-shirt campaign depends on your fundraising tools. For example, some platforms allow you to create a profile for your organization, so people can easily launch their own campaigns on behalf of your cause at any point. On top of that, Boardable advises fundraising organizers to leverage platforms that don't charge upfront costs. This will make your t-shirt sale risk-free, guaranteeing a return on investment. So take your time finding a solution that limits fees and helps you raise the most money possible for your school.

Teach your students how to fundraise.

As someone who regularly runs school fundraising campaigns, you know what goes into an effective appeal and inspires people to give. However, your students don’t, and they’re the ones reaching out to people to donate. Your campaign is a prime opportunity for them to learn!

As they get started, students will naturally feel a bit uncomfortable. Fundraising can be intimidating — especially for anyone who’s never done it before. Most people will need some training. A little direction and encouragement can go a long way in helping them succeed.

This fundraising guide dives into a few different strategies to help set your rookie fundraisers up for success, such as:

• Teach them how to personalize their pages. Your peer-to-peer technology should enable volunteer fundraisers to add their own photos and images as well as customize the text on their campaign pages. Teach them how to set up their page and offer pointers about how they can make it their own.
• Share templates they can use. Templates make it incredibly easy for students to copy and paste your campaign messages. Then, they can add their personal touch, such as an anecdote about why your school or the program they’re raising the money for means so much to them. You might want to include different templates that can be adapted for different platforms. Consider which ones you think students might use, such as social media, email, and text messaging.
• Designate a point of contact for questions. Fundraising can be challenging! Make sure you assign someone to answer any questions your students (or their parents for that matter) may have. Whether they need help setting up their campaign page or just need some fundraising advice, they’ll appreciate having someone to turn to.

You want your peer-to-peer campaign to be an enjoyable and enriching experience for your students. If they don’t know what they’re doing, they might grow frustrated. Share your knowledge of the fundraising basics and make sure to let them know that you’re with them every step of the way.

Gamify the experience.

Gamification involves incorporating game-like mechanics into a non-game activity. The idea behind this is to include similar elements that make board games, video games, sports, and other games enjoyable and engaging.

This works primarily because people are motivated to seek rewards and are satisfied when they receive them. For instance, when you level up or finish a time-intensive quest in a video game, you feel rewarded for all your hard work. The same principle can apply to school fundraising. Here are some elements that will help you bring game-like achievements to your peer-to-peer fundraising:

• Goal trackers. Split up the work by setting individual goals and creating goal tracking modules that fill in each time someone donates to a student’s page. Students can monitor their progress, make sure they’re doing their part, and visualize their ultimate goal. When they finally reach 100%, they’ll feel proud of themselves for sticking to it!
• Countdown clocks. You’ll likely have a deadline for your campaign. Use a countdown timer to remind people of that deadline and to keep donations rolling in until the final few moments.
• Leaderboards. Spark some friendly competition by showcasing your top volunteer fundraisers. Students will likely step up their efforts to claim the top spot and gain some popularity among their peers. If you want to place students into teams (such as by classrooms), be sure your leaderboard can track team progress.

No matter what game-like elements you bring into your campaign, gamification can be a powerful force when it comes to student-led fundraising. Remember, your students are still kids and want to spend their free time having fun. With these strategies, fundraising can be something they look forward to rather than a chore.

Connect it to an event.

Plan an event to give fundraising participants something to look forward to throughout the campaign. Students will want to earn the right to participate, so they’ll work harder to reach the goals they set for themselves.

Just make sure you choose an event that your students will enjoy, whether you’re just celebrating or using it as a way to reach your campaign goals. To spark some inspiration, here are some common peer-to-peer events that schools use:

• Read-a-thon. Promote literacy and bring an educational element into your fundraiser. For a read-a-thon, students will encourage their families and other community members to pledge a donation based on how much the student reads, whether that’s a certain number of pages, chapters, or books. For example, if someone pledges $5 for each chapter and the student reads 20 chapters by the deadline, they’ll owe $100.
• 5K race. Students will encourage their friends and families to “sponsor” them. Maybe they’ll need to raise a certain amount to participate, or maybe they’ll just work to see how much they can raise before they line up for the race. Be sure to create a great atmosphere for your students by choosing some great music and having refreshments for everyone to enjoy at the end of the race.
• Walk-a-thon. Get your community up and moving with a walkathon. Students will ask people to pledge a donation, similar to a read-a-thon. Then, they’ll earn that donation for each lap or mile they walk. The further they walk, the more money they raise.
• School party. Students love a good party where they can hang out with their friends and enjoy some music. This is a great route to go if you want to focus solely on celebrating the end of the campaign. If you had your classes compete to raise the most money for your campaign, maybe you’ll reward the winning class with a pizza or ice cream party, or you might make it a school-wide event where everyone who participated joins.

Events are a great way to bring participants together for one last hurrah. It ends your campaign on a positive note, even if you fell short of your goal. Then, everyone will be all geared up to go next time around with good memories of your last campaign fresh in their minds.

If a peer-to-peer fundraiser sounds right for your school, spend some time thinking about how you’ll keep students and the rest of your community engaged until the very end. That might mean anything from creating branded t-shirts to ending with an event. If all goes well, you might turn your peer-to-peer fundraiser into an annual campaign that students look forward to year after year. Happy fundraising!

____________________________________

Guest Post by Kevin Penney, CMO & Co-Founder of Bonfire

Kevin Penney has been working in digital media for over ten years. He’s the CMO and co-founder of Bonfire, an online platform that’s reinventing the way people create, sell and purchase custom apparel. He enjoys strategizing, working closely with his team, and hockey, exactly in that order.