The holidays are an important time of year for the nonprofit community. Organizations both large and small rely heavily upon income generated during this brief window to sustain their programs throughout the year.

Knowing this fact well, many organizations are on the lookout for innovative ways they can increase holiday fundraising results each year. At StayClassy, they’ve found that peer-to-peer fundraising spikes dramatically in December. Check out the great graphic they’ve produced that details some of the unique benefits of using peer-to-peer fundraising during the holidays.

But what if you’ve already got an end of the year appeal scheduled? Or an email campaign that’s going to launch? Won’t your donors be fatigued if you try to launch a p2p campaign too?

Honestly, they might be.

The truth is there’s no one size-fits-all solution when it comes to making the most of the Holiday period. If you’ve already got a bunch of fundraising activities lined up for your existing donors, then launching a p2p campaign on top of everything else might be overkill.

That being said, there’s still a simple way that any organization can use peer-to-peer to improve its holiday fundraising results…without fatiguing donors.

Leveraging Your Core Supporters

The best way to reap the benefits of p2p fundraising this Holiday Season while avoiding donor fatigue is to limit the pool of fundraisers you recruit to just your core supporters.

Your core supporters are people like board or staff members and your most passionate volunteers. When you ask your core supporters to fundraise, you focus on the people most likely to say yes and you spare the rest of your list the feelings of fatigue that come with excessive asks.

Keep in mind that you don’t need to have an army of fundraisers to benefit from peer-to-peer fundraising. We’ve found that the average active fundraiser (one that raises at least one dollar) brings in about $568 dollars. That eclipses the average online donation, which is anywhere from $60 to $90. Each active fundraiser also brings in seven donors and over half of those donors will be new to the organization. That makes p2p more than an effective fundraising method; it makes it a great tool for donor acquisition too.

The bottom line is that getting your core supporters fundraising during December can help your organization raise more money and acquire more new donors this Holiday Season.

How to Organize a Mini-P2P Campaign

The simplest campaign theme you can pitch to your supporters is to “give up some gifts” this Holiday Season. Charity:water has famously used this model to get its supporters to donate their birthdays to the cause. Supporters are asked to create fundraising pages for their birthdays; then they share those pages with friends and family, and ask for donations to charity:water instead of presents.

The same theme can easily be adapted for the Holidays. It’s as simple as setting up a campaign, adding in some default text, and then reaching out to your core supporters to get involved. One thing to keep in mind, even though the fundraising will take place online, your outreach doesn’t have to. If you want to get as many of your core supporters involved as possible, you should ask them personally.

Make a list of the people you want to get involved ahead of time and give them a call. Let people know they are being asked because of their special status in the organization. Even better, define the goal that this group of the organization’s closest supporters is looking to achieve collectively this Holiday season. It could be raising enough money to launch a new pilot program, open a new school, or any other worthwhile goal. By framing the ask as exclusive and important (both true things) you’ll send the right signals to prospective fundraisers and get more people involved.

Even if you only have a handful of people in your mini-campaign, don’t lose heart. We’ve seen some power fundraisers raise over $10,000 all on their own. By relying on your closest supporters for your Holiday campaign, you may get less people involved, but the ones you do will be more passionate. That means they’ll be more likely to go above and beyond!

To learn more about using social fundraising to boost Holiday results check out the infographic and join StayClassy for their upcoming webinar on last minute holiday fundraising.