For the past few years, the Fiver Children’s Foundation has used CauseVox to grow their fundraising efforts. In particular, they have a track record of running incredible #GivingTuesday campaigns, exceeding their goal year after year. 

To provide some background, #GivingTuesday is a global giving movement that builds off of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the overall spirit of generosity during the holiday season.

Started in 2012, this movement inspires millions of individuals to donate to their favorite causes annually. To put this in perspective, in 2018, 3.6 million gifts were given to charities participating in #GivingTuesday with $400 million raised online. 

In 2023, #GivingTuesday falls on Tuesday, November 28th. Whether you have a #GivingTuesday strategy in the works or you’re starting fresh, check out some #GivingTuesday insights gleaned from The Fiver’s Children Foundation. 

About The Fiver Children’s Foundation

The Fiver Children’s Foundation is a holistic youth development organization that makes a 10-year commitment to children, aged 8 to 18, from underserved communities in New York. Serving around 500 children and their families annually, Fiver provides out-of-school time programming and a two-week summer camp experience. Fiver’s goal is to empower children to make positive life choices, to become engaged citizens, and to succeed in school and beyond. 

Why CauseVox?

CauseVox Declutters Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising For #GivingTuesday 

To create a culture of giving (and inspire others to give), Fiver understands that fundraising starts from the inside out. Fiver encourage their community create their own peer-to-peer fundraising page on CauseVox and to make a personal donation. 

With CauseVox, peer-to-peer fundraising pages are easy to set up and easier to share. 

Fiver engages their young professionals’ committee, mid-career advocates, program alumni, and board members to fundraise for them on #GivingTuesday, helping Fiver expand the reach of their campaign and acquire new donors.

CauseVox Helps You Raise More On Mobile

“CauseVox makes it so easy to donate on your phone.”

CauseVox campaigns and donation forms are all mobile optimized, empowering your donors to give on any device. With the new Apple and Google Payment options, it’s now quicker and easier than ever to make a mobile payment.

“You want to make it easy for your donors, especially because so many people are likely going to donate on their phones. You don’t want to deal with a page that doesn’t load right on mobile, and have to deal with those problems.”

With CauseVox, Melissa is able to text and email donors the link to their #GivingTuesday campaign with confidence, knowing that no matter where their donors are, they’ll be able to donate with ease.

CauseVox’s Reliability Helps You Raise More With Less Stress

After using other p2p platforms, Melissa Benjamin, Fiver’s Director of Development, recommends CauseVox because it’s “a service that works properly and serves [them] better.” She has confidence in the platform, and loves the ease of use it offers, particularly for a campaign like #GivingTuesday: “[Causevox] is easy to use, easy to share across social media platforms, and it’s easy to make quick updates,” she said.

For many organizations, #GivingTuesday is one of the largest giving day of the year, which is why it’s crucial to have the right technology in place. If your campaign page crashes or if there’s a long lag, it creates a negative donor experience that can potentially put future dollars at risk.

Unlike other platforms, CauseVox reliably handles the large volume of traffic on #GivingTuesday so you can focus on your campaign instead of any potential technological hiccups. 

CauseVox’s Easy Reporting Helps You Spend Less Time On Admin Tasks

“We have an accounting team of one, and CauseVox helps us easily access the data we need in one downloadable file.”

CauseVox automatically keeps track of all your donor data for you, so you can access the information you need, no sweat.

Plus, customizable automatic receipting enables Fiver to make their receipts up to tax-deductible standards, helping them save paper and time. 

CauseVox Helps You Raise More With Less Fees

Melissa also loves how CauseVox also gives donors the option to cover the processing fee, which in her experience, isn’t always offered by other platforms. With the number of donations processed on #GivingTuesday, these fees can definitely add up. 

“With such a high volume of smaller amounts, it’s really helpful to have those fees covered.”

Fundraising During COVID-19

“Don’t reinvent the wheel,” says Melissa, noting that she always makes sure her #GivingTuesday campaign is in alignment with the branding, look, and feel of Fiver’s year-end appeal. 

As Fiver pivoted to offer digital services in the wake of COVID-19, the fundraising team took the opportunity to craft a narrative around how donated funds directly impacted things like Camp WiFiver, a live-streamed camp experience. 

Melissa pointed out that they talked about “how we came together as a community and harnessed our creativity to come up with virtual offerings for our programming.” Fiver used their story of Camp WiFiver to inform their 2021 #GivingTuesday campaign.

Insights From Fiver

Based on our conversation with Melissa, we’ve also distilled some key insights to think about when building your #GivingTuesday campaign strategy:

1. Set A Goal

Having a dollar amount goal is important when measuring success. Fiver budgets a whopping $80,000 to raise each year. For many organizations, this is not a realistic target. $80K is fairly lofty so set a goal that sounds reasonable to you and your organization. As you meet (and crush) your goals, you can always build up to something bigger. 

2. Get Your Donations Matched

You can’t go wrong with including a match into your campaign. In fact, when there’s a match in place, donors tend to give about 50% more. For Fiver, $40,000 is raised online while the other half is matched by major donors such as current and former board members. In their experience, they found that while younger donors generally give smaller gifts (i.e. $25, $50, etc.), a match can double (or even triple) their donation.

“It’s an opportunity to encourage [younger donors] to bump it up to $25 instead of $15, knowing that it’s going to be matched,” said Melissa.

3. Engage A Wide Audience/Create A Culture Of Giving

For your #GivingTuesday campaign, don’t put all your eggs in one basket by relying solely on a select group of people. Instead, spread the word by engaging a diverse audience. For example, Fiver casts a wide net with a “mix of their Fiver community” consisting of their young professionals’ committee, mid-career advocates, program alumni, and board members. 

4. Develop A Toolkit

We get it. The fundraisers you recruit probably have a lot on their plate. That’s why a toolkit of templated social media and email language is crucial.

Prepare content well in advance and make it easy to customize. Some fundraisers might use the tools you provide as-is and some might go the extra mile to add their two cents.

Either way, this keeps your messaging consistent and gives your fundraiser a great jumping-off point. 

Tip: If you have a match, remember to always include language about the match in all templated communications. 

5. Craft A Strong Appeal

Craft a strong appeal by sourcing your content early. For Fiver, this means pulling client testimonials from thank you letters written by program participants or through phone interviews with families.

The neat thing about Fiver is that there is time is built in for program staff to collect and story bank client testimonials, which means they’re not scrambling at the end. A good story is an incredible tool and whatever quote or story you decide to use, make sure it’s relatable and clear. 

Along with including a story, conveying your impact upfront and providing a strong call to action are two other enduring best practices when it comes to writing a persuasive appeal. 

6. Ask In-Person

While blanket email blasts are always an option, never underestimate the power of direct outreach or an in-person ask. To do that, you need to cultivate a relationship with your donor beforehand.

This means doing your research, genuinely getting to know them, and consistently engaging them throughout the year.  When it comes time to make your ask, remember to practice your pitch and specific. 

7. Promote Often And Promote Early

Start promoting your #GivingTuesday campaign early – ideally at least a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. Since it’s peer-to-peer, there’s no hard start.

You have the flexibility to engage donors early on, which, in turn gives them more opportunities to donate and share your campaign with others. With CauseVox’s social share options, spreading the word across different platforms has never been easier. 

8. Don’t Immediately Close Your Campaign After #GivingTuesday

Leave the campaign open even after #GivingTuesday is over to capture any additional donations. You never know if someone simply missed the boat or just wants to give later. 

Learn more from Melissa about how Fiver successfully incorporated their 2021 #GivingTuesday campaign with their year-end appeal!

Raise More For #GivingTuesday + Beyond

CauseVox can help you knock your fundraising campaigns out of the park and raise more with less effort. 

Whether you’re raising funds for #GivingTuesday or you’re looking for a long-term solution to help grow your fundraising, CauseVox can help you raise more donations with less uncertainty.

Maximize your long-term fundraising growth with CauseVox! Get started today with a free demo.

This was the scenario for Mentor New York, a nonprofit that works with companies, schools and organizations to provide mentoring for organizations that serve more than 80,000 young people in New York. The 2021 Mentor of the Year Awards event–typically an in-person awards program with dinner–went virtual due to COVID and set a fundraising goal of $10,000.

Instead, their event raised more than $124,000, thanks to the CauseVox digital fundraising platform and some creative ticketing and peer-to-peer strategies.

Pivoting To A Virtual Awards Ceremony

Like most nonprofits, Mentor New York had to pivot during the pandemic to virtual events and engagement for its supporters. The small nonprofit had just signed up for CauseVox’s digital fundraising platform in late 2019 for its end-of-year donor appeal and saw an immediate return, said Subira Taylor-Louineus, Director of Operations and Finance. Then, when the pandemic hit a few months later, it was time to get creative for fundraising.

With in-person events impossible, Mentor New York utilized CauseVox to set up its annual signature event as a virtual fundraising event that relied primarily on peer-to-peer fundraising and creative ticketing. 

Mentor NY Used Ticketing For Their Virtual Awards Ceremony To Drive Higher Gift Amounts

For ticketing, they were able to set up the ticket options to include optional donations on top of the ticket price, netting thousands more in “free” money from supporters who wanted to go beyond the ticket price and provide extra support during a tough time of fundraising. 

Donations also increased because with a low $25 ticket price, more people were able to attend the virtual event compared to the higher in-person prices, resulting in many more donations and brand awareness for those who logged in to the event for the one-hour program. Because the platform allows customization, Mentor New York was able to create separate ticket options that encouraged donors to add on a donation for a specific service it provides so they could see the true impact of their donation.

CauseVox’s ticketing platform made it very easy for the event team to export the list of event supporters into its email platform and the Zoom invitation, which allowed for ongoing event promotion and buzz up to the event itself.

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Drove Fundraising Success

“We found that the peer-to-peer fundraising option is a really fun way to get our young board engaged and they shared our page with their network, their family and friends, and it was an easy way for us to bring in (more funding),”  Taylor-Louineus said. 

The bulk of their success came from peer-to-peer strategies that utilized their longstanding supporters and board members — many of them from their young professionals board — to create their own fundraising pages, tell their stories and set goals for support that nearly all of them exceeded through friendly competition among themselves. 

Prior to CauseVox, the youth primarily helped secure silent auction items for the event but when the event went virtual, Mentor New York’s marketing team created a toolkit that allowed youth and supporters to create their own individual fundraising pages, set their goals, create Zoom backgrounds, and utilize suggested messages to do outreach.

By supplying their peer-to-peer fundraisers with a fundraising toolkit, Mentor New York equipped them to successfully share their pages with their friends and family. They included a lot of fundraising essentials, such as: 

• Fundraising templates
• Email outreach messages
• Social media messages
• Sponsor packages 
• Background on the event itself 
• Graphics

Mentor New York Had A High Return On Investment With Little Administrative Tasks

And the biggest positive from doing the virtual event was the 87% savings in expenses compared to an in-person event that required a venue, catering, decorations and other typical expenses for events that nonprofits know all too well. Nearly all the money raised was able to go directly to programs, something that donors love to see and helps with your charity rating.

While there are certainly advantages of an in-person fundraising event, there’s no denying that a virtual event allows for many more people to attend and support. 

Subira noted how the event was well-received by the Mentor New York community.

“Everyone loved it. We had a lot of positive feedback not just about the actual event but the process itself. Everything looked polished and professional. We’re only a team of eight or nine right now and we were able to put on a very seamless and polished event from beginning to end.”

Overall, with their transition from an in-person event to virtual, they were able to retain 99% of revenue. Along with an 87% decrease in event costs, this had a dramatic impact on their return on investment.

“It really has us thinking differently about fundraising. I love the fancy dinners, but this definitely has us thinking about how we do things,” Subira noted.

CauseVox Made It Easy For Mentor New York Save Time + Streamline Their Fundraising Event

Having the bulk of fundraising centralized in an easy-to-use platform was a dream for Taylor-Louineus, she said, because it saved time and money figuring out what was working and what needed to be adjusted. “I save so much more time because your platform is so intuitive and straightforward,” she said. “ I have exactly what I need to dig deeper into the numbers and analyze things to close them off and keep things moving within our company.” 

Mentor New York’s overall success utilizing CauseVox for its signature fundraising event now has her team evaluating how to organize new fundraising events and even program events going forward: in-person, virtual, or hybrid. 

“It’s helped us come into the 21st Century, which is why we originally reached out to CauseVox. I think CauseVox is a huge part of us living in this current world and environment that we’re in. Right now it’s only used for our fundraising but we’re looking to expand it to our programming events as well,” Taylor-Louineus said.

Save Time + Raise More Through Your Next Virtual, In-Person, Or Hybrid Event With CauseVox

Ready to save time + raise more online for your next fundraising event?

CauseVox makes it easy for you to create and run your fundraising events by empowering you to sell tickets, take donations, and run peer-to-peer fundraising all in one place.

It’s never been easier to raise more through your fundraising events. Get started today + maximize your fundraising:

Learn more about how you can run your fundraising event with CauseVox.

In years past their annual Duradash fundraiser raised about $5000 when through their event. In 2021, they used CauseVox to create their Duradash peer-to-peer campaign and came away with over $30,000 through their virtual activity challenge!

Let’s take a look at how they raised 6x more with their event:

Background On Spinal CSF Leak Foundation

Spinal CSF Leak Foundation is a non-profit organization that’s just 7 years old and already making huge strides. Their mission is to reduce the suffering of persons affected by intracranial hypotension or spinal cerebrospinal fluid leak through awareness, education, support, advocacy, and connection. As a relatively young organization, they entered the last two years of COVID without significant experience in online fundraising, and no prior experience running a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Historically, they’ve run a fundraiser that earned around $5000 each year through a race that people would run on their own. For 2021 they decided to shake things up and make it an activity challenge through the CauseVox platform instead.

After so many months of pandemic struggle, Andrea Buchanan, Executive Director of Spinal CSF Leak Foundation, shared that they were nervous to run a fundraiser. She says they were concerned that people were exhausted, unable to give, or just hunkering down to wait out the pandemic. 

But what she found when they started their fundraiser was that all it took was asking. She said, “Don’t be afraid to ask. We were really grateful and surprised to see that the support from our community didn’t diminish at all.”

What Made it Work

Spinal CSF Leak Foundation generally keeps their fundraising virtual. Andrea shares “Everything we do is virtual since many in our community are bed-bound. In the past, we’ve never had a peer-to-peer platform. Instead it’s been thrown together on social media.” They weren’t able to host the event last year, but after finding CauseVox they jumped into peer-to-peer fundraising with gusto.

They invited individuals to create a personal fundraising page (it took less than 60 seconds!) and share via email and social media. 40 amazing fundraisers signed on to help raise money, with one super-volunteer raising over $13,000 by herself.

Each year they hold an event called Duradash. The name comes from the “dura” matter in the brain, which is where spinal leaks happen. Historically they’ve made right about $5000 each year. This year they raised over $30,000. 

Andrea credits their success to a few important elements: the platform, the ease of administration, the updates, having a toolkit, and the training that CauseVox provides. Let’s take a look at each of these elements to see how they worked for the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation.

The Platform

Here’s what Andrea said about her experience, “Thanks to CauseVox, our duradash event was able to raise $30,000! I think the last time we did this event, in 2019, we maybe raised $5k? So this was a huge success, and we have been really pleased with CauseVox both on the back end and the user side.” Andrea also noted that the funds raised came from both online and offline sources, and it was easy for her to add offline donations on the admin side and her fundraisers and donors loved it.

Andrea also shared that the personal fundraiser enjoyed their experience in the middle of their campaign, “Our Duradash fundraisers are really loving the CauseVox platform! Everyone I’ve spoken with has found it easy to use, and even though the event doesn’t officially start until May 29, we’ve already raised over $10,000, which is just fantastic.” 

Having a great fundraising event platform that is easy for you and easy for your donors can make all the difference in a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Your supporters are already taking time to raise money on your behalf: you don’t want them to have to fight irritating technology.

CauseVox helped Andrea run their Duradash fundraiser with ease, and accessed our library of free webinars and resources to help plan her campaign and generate fundraising ideas. A platform goes beyond the features: it’s also the support you get.

Learn more about how you can use CauseVox for your fundraising event and get similar results!

The Toolkit

You may be a fundraising professional, but in all likelihood your supporters aren’t. That’s why it’s essential to provide them with resources and tools so that they can fundraise effectively. Andrea shares “We created a toolkit for participants to use, which has also been met with rave reviews—people very much appreciate that resource.”

Just like the right platform, a toolkit makes it easier for your fundraisers to go out and do what they need to do: connect with friends and family and ask for donations. It empowers fundraisers to feel confident and supported throughout the fundraiser.

The Durables

Of course no peer-to-peer fundraiser would be successful without the supporters. Andrea recruited a group of super volunteers that she called “Durables” to amp up excitement on social media. Not only did she identify her most powerful supporters, she also made sure to incorporate all the fundraisers throughout the campaign. 

“We began highlighting some of the creative and passionate ways in which people are planning to participate in a ‘duradash spotlight’ feature that just launched.” This spotlight idea makes fundraisers feel recognized and thanked, plus it shows off the successes they’re having in order to inspire others.

The Flexibility

One thing that was incredibly important to Andrea from the beginning was making this fundraiser accessible to people with a wide variety of abilities. “Our activity metric is set to “minutes” so that people can track/log the minutes they spend doing whatever activity, rather than tracking miles. There are participants who are healthy enough to plan to walk on a treadmill, or participate in group exercise, or bike ride; and there are participants who are unable to be physically active who will be dedicating their 150-minutes goal to raising awareness and sharing information about SIH/spinal CSF leak, or to hitting a target word count in their writing, or to meditating and working on themselves emotionally.” 

CauseVox’s activity metric supported this flexibility perfectly: participants could track minutes related to any activity and share more information on their fundraiser page.

The ROI

One of the most powerful elements of online fundraising is the incredibly low cost to run your event. There were no costs for Spinal CSF Leak Foundation except for CauseVox’s Standard plan, which features 0% in platform fees.

They were able to cut costs by choosing not to create and mail out medals, and instead created personalized digital medals for each participant (with incredibly sweet awards like “most cats petted on a walk”).

Moving medals digital kept the costs at almost nothing and still gave a thank you to fundraisers that they loved. With such low costs, the ROI was astronomical: significantly more than it would be if they had paid for a location, food, print, and more. 

Hear more from Andrea Buchanan, Executive Director @ Spinal CSF Leak Foundation Executive Director about her tips for pulling off a successful fundraiser, presented at our Digital Fundraising Summit:

Moving Forward

Andrea says that Spinal CSF Leak Foundation is hooked on virtual fundraising. The most important question for them is where their community is, and it’s clear that most of the community is at home on their phones and computers. The strongest fundraising strategy will meet those donors where they are.

As for next year, Andrea says “This experience with CauseVox has made me very confident about moving forward with this.” They’re planning on running a similar event next year after the wild success they found this year. 

Raise More Money With Less Effort on CauseVox

Need a solution to help you implement these ideas for peer-to-peer fundraising?

CauseVox is a digital fundraising platform for nonprofits that helps you raise more with less effort through our fundraising software.

Typical fundraising software is clunky, complex, and contract-bound, but CauseVox actually tidies up your digital fundraising. Run donation pages, crowdfunding, and peer to peer fundraising in less time, without hassle. You’ll see huge payoff with less effort.

Learn more about how you can set up your own peer-to-peer fundraiser + activity challenge with CauseVox.

Woven Health Clinic began their year planning an in-person fundraising luncheon, but quickly realized that in-person needed to become virtual. 

Despite having a board that wasn’t comfortable with social media or virtual fundraising, they turned to CauseVox and created a virtual awards ceremony event that knocked their fundraising goals out of the park.

About Woven Health Clinic

Woven Health Clinic is a 501(c)(3) community healthcare clinic that helps uninsured and under-insured adults build healthier, happier, and more productive lives. Through an innovative patient-centric model of healthcare, Woven Health provides high-quality integrated care–focused on wellness and disease prevention–that’s accessible, affordable and comprehensive.

Woven Health Clinic not only provides amazing care, they also do it at an astoundingly low cost: $500 covers one patient’s care for a full year. They have served over 25,000 patients with just 9 full-time paid staff. They truly know how to take dollars and make them stretch.

In previous years, Woven Health Clinic held a luncheon that recognized amazing folks from their community. Board members would sell tickets and fill tables to help make the fundraiser a success. When they realized the event needed to be virtual, Lisa Rigby (Executive Director), knew she needed to find a platform that was easy, accessible, and great for peer-to-peer fundraising. Not only that, but with COVID making its way across the country, providing quality health care was more important than ever. Enter CauseVox.

Raising More With Less Effort With Peer-to-Peer Fundraising On CauseVox

When Lisa found CauseVox, she knew it was the right fit because it was simply so easy. She knew her board members would need to be able to set up their own virtual “tables” and reach out to family and friends to ask for donations and support. Many of her board members were unfamiliar with social media and digital fundraising overall, so it was incredibly important that all of the processes were simple and straightforward. CauseVox fit the bill.

She set up her page and began with a goal of $70,000.

What quickly became obvious was that the ease of use that came with CauseVox was going to take them much further than $70,000. Historically, board participation was uneven in the event. Some of her board members went above and beyond in their fundraising, but others were hesitant to participate. But digital fundraising changed things for Woven Health Clinic. All of the board members were suddenly excited to get involved. They found it was much easier to simply ask for a donation than to sell tickets to an in-person event.

They doubled their original goal and brought in over $140,000 during the campaign.

Lisa says it was the peer-to-peer fundraising that did it.

“What we learned is that when people come to an actual event, that’s a lot more work. When you do a virtual event, we realized you can multiply it. The peer-to-peer element allows you to multiply it.” 

Woven Health Clinic didn’t start with a big database of potential donors or fundraisers. This was truly a grassroots campaign. It started with the board. Each member used CauseVox to send emails to their networks and share on social media. Because the event was virtual, they weren’t limited to those who could attend the in-person luncheon, and their efforts spread far and wide. 

In addition to board members, they also announced award-winners who would receive recognition at the virtual event. These were respected names in the community, and brought in even more donors.

Not only was it easy for board members to set up their pages and ask for donations, it was also easy for Lisa to manage on her end. She found that it was incredibly simple to add any donations that came in via pledge, cash, or check to the CauseVox site and export all the information for her accounting team when the campaign was over.

Providing Support And Making Space

One of Lisa’s favorite elements of using CauseVox was that she could provide all of the information her fundraisers might want in the form of templates and copy. Paired with this, her fundraisers could still personalize all of their copy, photos, and information. She credits that freedom with bringing in donors.

Because of the templates, her fundraisers felt supported: they didn’t have to start from scratch and could use some of the copy explaining Woven Health Clinic’s work. But the personalization is what truly appealed to donors. When Lisa set up her fundraising page, she wrote from her perspective as the Executive Director. But other fundraisers spoke about their own experiences and love for the organization. It was their passion that inspired their family and friends to donate.

Using Virtual Space To Bring In Donors

One of the major differences between an in-person event and the virtual event that Woven Health Clinic ran was how easy it was for participants to watch. It was important to Lisa that they include some kind of event in the campaign to bring people together and showcase the clinic’s work.

“It’s so much more powerful to show people what you do than tell them what you do,” she said of their program. What she didn’t expect was that viewers would prefer the digital format. Where her board members used to struggle to sell tickets, this year supporters were happy to make a donation from their own home, and tune in without having to get dressed up, go out, and deal with all the hooplah of spending their day at a fancy event. It was easier and more accessible to run a livestream event.

Lessons Learned

Because this was Woven Health Clinic’s first year running a virtual campaign, they learned a lot. Here were their major lessons.

1. Start With Your Supporters

Woven Health Clinic started their campaign without large lists or huge groups of possible supporters. What they did have was a dedicated group of board members who wanted to make the event succeed. They learned that focusing on the asset they had, their current supporters, was far more important than trying to find ways to bring in new fundraisers. 

Starting with the folks who already loved their organization was what allowed Woven Health Clinic to succeed. Empowering those board members as peer-to-peer fundraisers then expanded their reach exponentially.

2. Give Them Resources

If your fundraisers are using their time to create a fundraising strategy, or are too nervous to ask for donations, they’re not really fundraising. Lisa gave her fundraisers plenty of support by creating a toolkit to help them set up their page, write their asks, and share their stories. With these tools in hand, even her most tech-phobic board members felt comfortable setting up their CauseVox page and sharing via email and social media.

3. Make It Personal

Lisa found that the combination of resources and personalization was the most important formula for her success. Not only did she give her fundraisers resources and sample language, she also encouraged them to make it their own.

Each board member used Causevox to send email and share on social media to reach their networks. What worked incredibly well for them was that each fundraiser could customize their own story in those emails and posts, sharing why they were fundraising. These personal stories created an emotional pull on potential donors, and were all the more powerful because they came from someone donors knew.

4. Use Your Donation Form Fully

The donation form is an easily overlooked element of storytelling and communication in virtual fundraising. Woven Health Clinic learned that spending a bit of time creating a solid donation form makes a big difference in the long run.

They focused first on their donation tiers. Lisa said they wanted to give people an idea of “if you give a certain amount here’s what that can provide.” It was very effective: people responded to knowing what their donation could actually do. But they took it one step further.

Woven Health Clinic had never offered the option of monthly donations in the past, but because it was so easy to add to the donation form they added it on. While they only received a few monthly donations, it helped them see that they could run a monthly campaign, and they’re planning to focus efforts there in the future.

To hear Lisa’s full story, make sure you check out our Nonprofit Leader Panel Webinar.

In today’s uncertainty, it can be hard to make the call for in-person vs. virtual events.

But Woven Health has decided to go virtual again, and reach for the stars. They just launched their new virtual awards ceremony fundraiser with CauseVox, setting their goal at $150,000 – more than double their goal from last year!

Run Your Virtual Event On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you jump start your virtual fundraising efforts, whether it’s your first campaign or your fiftieth. Easy for you to set up and easy for your fundraisers to navigate, the whole process is a delight for donors and nonprofits.

Whether your next fundraiser is in-person, virtual, or hybrid, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.

Colleen McGrath, Development Manager at Mojave Desert Land Trust told us that she joined the MDLT team after the event was in place, but it was her work responding to COVID and bringing in the personal touch that helped their Miles for MDLT event reach success in 2020, and come back for more in 2021. 

Here’s how they pulled off their virtual hike-a-thon:

About Mojave Desert Land Trust

The mission of Mojave Desert Land Trust is to protect the Mojave Desert ecosystem and its scenic and cultural resource values. They’ve conserved more than 80,000 acres of prime desert habitat, forever weaving together National Parks, wilderness areas, and wildlife linkage corridors. The organization works closely with a broad range of desert community members and visitors, as well as with local, state, and federal agencies. MDLT offers hands-on learning and volunteer opportunities to residents and visitors of the desert.

Historically, MDLT hadn’t run many in-person peer-to-peer fundraisers, so when they decided to host their Miles for MDLT fundraiser it was all new to them. As they worked to understand this new fundraiser, COVID hit and forced them to adapt to a fully virtual event. But with some careful outreach and the resource of a beautiful national park, they nearly doubled their fundraising goal.

Since this was a new event, MDLT didn’t have past fundraisers to rely on. They turned to personal connections and individual outreach to bring fundraisers on board. Their Executive Director made calls to high donors, they presented the fundraiser to board and staff, and they asked staff to share with friends and family. 

To inspire fundraisers to get involved, they took advantage of their biggest resource: the park itself. Fundraisers were asked to create a fundraising page, then have friends and family donate in honor of them hiking trails in the park. Many fundraisers took pictures and shared updates as they went so that their supporters could see the beautiful desert they were helping to preserve.

Within the first day, they had reached the original $10,000 goal and increased their goal to $20,000.

CauseVox’s Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Tools Powered-up MDLT’s Virtual Hikeathon

One of the biggest factors in helping MDLT be successful as a new fundraising event was the customer support and ease of use of the CauseVox site. Colleen was new to setting up a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, and had been working with offline donations for a long time. She said that “Jenna [CauseVox Customer Success] took time to help set up the website, but once I got in there it was super easy to use.”

Having someone with her every step of the way helped Colleen to feel confident as she took her first steps into the digital fundraising world. But what was even better was that CauseVox was so straightforward and easy to use. Colleen’s fundraisers caught on quickly and needed minimal support in setting up their pages. 

The site’s functionality even helped to show fundraisers what they could do to be more successful in getting donations. CauseVox peer-to-peer fundraisers see a pre-built template when they create their page. Colleen was able to create a boilerplate fundraising appeal for personal pages that lived in that template, and put in an image that fundraisers could use right out of the gate.

But it also prompted fundraisers to add personalization to their pages, and that’s where the MDLT fundraisers really went above and beyond. Many fundraisers shared information about the hikes they were planning, posted pictures of the desert, and made their pages unique. 

From there, the updates feature of CauseVox took them a step further. Fundraisers shared how their hikes were going and pictures they had taken along the way. The updates feature encouraged fundraisers to stay in touch with their donors throughout the process. Not only that, it gave fundraisers more opportunities to share their personal stories in an organic way that drew in donors and illustrated the progress each fundraiser was making.

Colleen also made sure that her fundraisers had plenty of support from MDLT. She created a toolkit with information and templates, plus shared a timeline for how they could fundraise. 

By the end of the campaign, they had raised nearly $20,000.

CauseVox’s Activity Metric Helps Hike-A-Thon Participants Meet Their Goals

After the success of the 2020 event, MDLT chose to run a similar event in 2021. Colleen noted that CauseVox had gone even further in making the page easy and functional for fundraisers. 

Early in 2021 CauseVox introduced the Activity Metric function, which lets you and your participants set goals and track progress on your page. MDLT used the feature to track the miles that their fundraisers had hiked and it was a huge success.

Colleen said “Having the feature of letting people track their miles gives people a sense of accomplishment.” It was a great incentive for fundraisers to keep pushing themselves and reaching their goals, but it also helped to connect fundraisers and donors. Colleen explained that “ Some people took that as a challenge and are hiking 100 miles.” Their fundraisers truly wanted to go above and beyond now that they could track their progress.

The tracker let donors see how they were doing and get invested in their progress. It’s pretty inspiring to see the mile tracker move up mile by mile and a great motivation to donors. In combination with the updates tool, donors can feel like they’re right there with the fundraiser.

The second year around MDLT also expanded their reach to potential fundraisers with social media pushes, an email campaign, and a press release to incentivize new fundraisers. This was more effective than they expected. Colleen shared “We’re getting all new people. Even the participants…a handful of them are staff, but I would say it’s 85-90% new people.” Some of these fundraisers aren’t even local to the desert and are hiking local paths instead.

Lessons Learned

1. Updates Are Key

One of the most important elements of MDLT’s success was that their fundraisers stayed engaged on their page throughout the campaign. Not only did fundraisers share text updates about reaching their goals, they also shared pictures as they went. This continuous communication from fundraisers to donors created a strong connection that helped donors feel they were a part of something. They could support a friend who was completing an impressive challenge (like hiking 75 miles) or watch a family member share photos as they explored the park.

2. Keep It On Theme

MDLT made sure that they kept their focus throughout the campaign, and that meant bringing all of their work back to the park and exploring nature. One of the best ways they kept on theme was to find the perfect prize sponsor. In 2020 that was Patagonia, a brand that makes outdoor gear. In 2021 they partnered with Teva, a favorite for hiking sandals. Choosing prizes that connected back to the activity made the prizes more interesting and appealing to fundraisers.

3. Peer-to-Peer Means New Acquisitions

One of the things Colleen was most excited about with this new campaign was seeing all the new donors roll in. When you ask your supporters to fundraise for you, they expand your reach far beyond your current database. “It’s a great introduction to Mojave Desert Land Trust,” she said. She also shared that a high percentage of the donors were first time donors, and was careful to note that they needed their own stewardship. “I’ve been sending thank you postcards to people who make a donation and then we’re also following up with an email about what we do.” Using a peer-to-peer campaign is a great way to reduce some of the effort of finding first time donors.

4. Personalization Goes A Long Way

When they were starting in 2020, MDLT knew they had an uphill climb with finding fundraisers because this was a new event. In order to counteract that, they relied on one of the most powerful elements of fundraising: personal connections. Instead of sending out general emails or press releases, they made one on one phone calls to top donors and supporters. That individual touch was what made success possible in their first year.

Run Your Walkathon Fundraiser On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you jump-start your virtual fundraising efforts, whether it’s your first campaign or your fiftieth. With less clunk and more power, you can start a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign in minutes. Your fundraisers and your donors will love it.

If you’re ready to raise more through your events, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.

Or, get a 1-1 demo to learn more about how CauseVox can work for you.

When they realized their traditional holiday gift-giving program wouldn’t be possible during COVID, they made a fast decision to go completely digital and swept past their goals with their virtual toy drive. Here’s how they did it.

About SOS Children’s Villages

SOS Children’s Villages of Illinois is an organization that is committed to providing safe, stable, loving homes for foster children. What makes them unique is that they keep brothers and sisters together in the care of full-time, professional Foster Parents. Foster Parents live in villages, which are clusters of individual homes with shared recreational facilities and administrative offices. This creates a real community that truly supports children as they grow.

In a typical year, one of SOS Children’s Villages’ major campaigns is their Holiday Giving Campaign: they ask supporters to purchase gifts for children so that each family can have an exciting holiday season. In light of COVID, they didn’t want community members in and out of offices making donations or heading out to stores to buy gifts, and they pivoted to an all virtual campaign.

Amy Kaczmarek, Director of Development said “It had to be dollars instead of items,” when they made the move to virtual. They set up their CauseVox site, set their goal to $25,000 and started sharing. Their final total? Over $55,000. Here’s how they did it.

Raising More With Less Effort On CauseVox

To launch their campaign, Amy started with the people who had been there in the past. She reached out to those who had donated gifts during holiday giving in the past and made personal asks of each one. That individual touch went a long way: somewhere between 70 and 80% of those donors came back and donated dollars in 2020. 

They also received another boost by ensuring that their website was search engine optimized. During the holidays, tons of people are searching for organizations that support children, and Amy made sure that they were one of the first results to pop up. It went a long way.

But what really made the difference was centering the mission. Amy focused on one concept above all: “This is about mission, it is about keeping this going, it is about please pivot with us.” 

Keeping the children at the center of all the messaging went a long way. 2020’s campaign actually allowed the organization to do more than they had in previous years. Not only did they deliver holiday gifts to their families, they were also able to provide delivered dinners to families in their villages, which went a long way when grocery shopping was complicated by COVID.

Through it all, what amazed Amy was that she could do it with less work. Historically, the organization had another employee who worked on this campaign, but due to COVID it was just Amy this year. The ease of the CauseVox site and the power of peer-to-peer fundraising meant that a smaller team could raise more.

CauseVox Supports Peer-to-Peer Fundraisers

When asked what one feature of CauseVox made it possible, Amy didn’t hesitate with her answer: “For us it was the peer-to-peer. Honestly I think throughout the whole campaign I was so nervous. I was like ‘how am I gonna get through this year?’ I think throughout the whole campaign I only got one question. I think it was so easy for everybody to use that it just flowed. I had all generations and levels of users. It was just that easy to use.” 

If you’ve ever run a peer-to-peer fundraiser before, you know that only getting a single question throughout the whole process is basically a miracle. But CauseVox made it simple for fundraisers to get their pages set up with no hassle. 

Amy could create copy that pre-populated for fundraisers and gave them a place to start when writing the text on their page. Getting set up took less than 2 minutes, and let the fundraisers focus on what mattered: providing for the kids.

It was also incredibly easy for Amy to use and set up. Not only was the platform great, but she found herself pleasantly surprised at what it was like to run a digital event. All her traditional expenses were gone. ”I kind of laughed at how easy it is to put together a budget for something like this…that was really nice.” 

CauseVox Makes Donor Acquisition Easy

But what truly made this campaign stand out to Amy was something she hadn’t expected: setting up the peer-to-peer page helped her get new donors. Acquiring new donors is one of the most expensive projects when you’re a fundraiser. SOS Children’s Villages is still working on building their culture of individual giving, and this fundraiser helped to launch them into that project because of the peer-to-peer fundraising. 

Historically, many of their donations came from companies that would collect internally and make a single donation of gifts. This year, all those individuals gave through the peer-to-peer fundraising pages on CauseVox, and Amy suddenly had access to their name and contact information. Through the campaign they received donations from 419 new donors, which accounted for 75% of all their new donors in 2020.

“We don’t expect to convert them all, but what we do have in place for those particular donors is their own track,” shared Amy, “We are communicating with them independently of everyone else.” With a special email series tailored to onboarding these new donors, Amy is excited about converting even a portion of these new donors to become longterm supporters.

Lessons Learned

Over the course of the campaign, there were some great takeaways that Amy shared with us about how she more than doubled her original goal. Here’s what she used to create such a successful campaign.

1. Use Your Donation Tiers To Increase Gifts

In the past, SOS Children’s Village has had one big thing in their corner: donors get to go to the store and purchase actual gifts. They can see where their dollars are going and imagine the child who will receive the gift. To help their donors make that same connection, they created donation tiers that showed how much each gift would cost and show exactly where the dollars were going.

2. Don’t Be Afraid To Go Virtual

When Amy first realized that her fundraiser would have to move to a virtual space she was intimidated. They had never done it before and no one was familiar with the software. Plus, how could they move a holiday gift program to virtual?

But after just a bit of time coming up with a creative alternative, they realized that they were able to provide more by holding the event virtually. It was so easy for their donors to give, and they could use any extra dollars to provide meals for families. Amy was quick to encourage other organizations to take the chance, even if they’re intimidated.

3. Have The Personal Touch

When recruiting fundraisers, Amy and her staff made individual calls to each of the donors who had supported them in the past. Those personalized calls went a long way towards getting past donors on board for the new format.

4. Peer-to-Peer Drives Donor Acquisition

Scroll back up to the section about donor acquisition and look at those numbers again. This one peer-to-peer fundraiser accounted for 75% of all new donors in 2020. That’s a huge number. If you’re considering a virtual fundraiser and one of your goals is new donor acquisition, peer-to-peer fundraising should be your focus.

5. Corporate Partners Can Play Too

When we think of peer-to-peer fundraising, we often imagine individuals creating pages and reaching out to friends and family. But some of Amy’s most successful fundraisers were actually corporate teams that fundraised in the office. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your corporate partners and ask them to raise funds among employees. These can be some of your biggest supporters.

Run Your Virtual Event On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you knock your fundraising campaigns out of the park and raise more with less effort. 

If you’re ready to move your fundraising events to virtual, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.

It was my first time on the customer side of the experience, and I have to say: it’s as easy as we keep telling you it is. My coworkers at the Autism Society of Minnesota and I decided to kick off 2021 with a creative new peer-to-peer fundraiser on CauseVox. Here’s how we made it work.

About The Autism Society of Minnesota (AuSM)

Founded in 1971, the Autism Society of Minnesota enhances the lives of individuals and families affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder. AuSM serves Minnesotans, throughout their lives, with a fundamental commitment to advocacy, education, support, collaboration, and community building.

Historically, AuSM has run a gala in the spring, but thanks to over a year of COVID, it was cancelled in 2020 and we didn’t anticipate running one in 2021. We were left with a gap in our fundraising plans, and we knew we needed to do something innovative to pull in donors.

Enter A Toast to AuSM.

To celebrate our 50th year of service to the Minnesota autism community we invited our community to join us for a livestream event full of cooking demonstrations, personal stories, and drawings. Participants could cook along with us and have brunch at home.

We asked some of our top supporters and board members to take on the role of “AuSM Champions” and create peer-to-peer fundraising pages. Many of our fundraisers also hosted Zoom watching parties of the livestream program. 

Despite the fact that this was a new fundraiser, with new technology, and our first go at a completely virtual fundraising event, AuSM met and exceeded our goal of $25,000. CauseVox made it easy.

Raising More With Less Effort With Peer-to-Peer Fundraising On CauseVox

AuSM has been through a lot of peer-to-peer fundraising sites. A lot. As the person who has to manage all of these sites, train in our staff, and provide support to our fundraisers, it’s been stressful bouncing from site to site trying to find one that met our needs.

That’s why I breathed a sigh of relief when we moved to CauseVox. In a typical year, I get a dozen calls as fundraisers try to set up their pages, as donors try to find the right fundraiser, and as participants try to register for our events. Inevitably people get confused and need someone to hold their hand through the process.

I received 0 calls asking about how to navigate CauseVox for A Toast to AuSM. It was so intuitive and easy for every person, from my events team to the end donors.

What made this new event possible was the ease of use that we got with CauseVox. From setting up our page, to supporting our fundraisers, to receiving donations, every step was simple. We spent less time troubleshooting and more time connecting directly with our supporters.

Personal Outreach And Finding Fundraisers

Speaking of connecting directly, one of the most powerful resources we had for A Toast to AuSM was our supporters. Because this was a new event, we didn’t have a list of prior supporters and fundraisers to tap. Instead, we focused on working with our board to create a soft launch, then making personal asks to our biggest supporters.

We began by working closely with our board for a soft launch. Before we opened the program to the general public, we shared information with our board, asked them to create fundraising pages, and walked them through the process. This helped us to test out all our materials and make sure everything was as easy as possible for fundraisers. Plus it meant that when we sent our first email we already had donors and fundraisers, making the site look more legitimate and giving social credibility to the campaign.

From there, we used our database to identify some of our top supporters. This included high donors, donors who gave year after year, participants who attended our events and programs, and super volunteers. The key for us was personalization: instead of sending out bulk emails or generic requests, we personalized our email requests for those supporters to become fundraisers and followed them up with individual phone calls.

These personalized connections helped us to bring on more fundraisers, and opened communication if they ran into any problems.

Creating An Engaging Program

Once we found our fundraisers our next step was to create a livestream program that would get our donors excited. It’s easy to tune out when it comes to online content, and Zoom fatigue is real. We kept a few concepts at the core of our program: short, dynamic, and emotional.

Keeping the program quick was very important to us. We pre-recorded demonstrations from chefs and a mixologist and played them during the livestream. The pre-recording allowed us to edit them down and remove any unnecessary sections. Those demonstrations made up the majority of our program, but we also included short sections sharing information about AuSM, a quick story from one of our community members, and drawings for prizes (all donors and fundraisers were entered).

That’s where we came to dynamic: it was very important to us to have a program that wasn’t just someone talking for an hour. We included content that was recorded and content that was live.

We had interviews and demonstrations. We had drawings. We had stories. Our focus was on making sure that the type of content changed every few minutes to keep drawing in our audience and ensuring that they stayed focused with us throughout the whole program.

Finally, we wanted to make sure that every element had some connection or pull with our audience. Rather than just having a baker demonstrate our brunch dessert, we highlight a young man from our community who had turned his passion for baking into a career. We wanted to illustrate how supporting AuSM would connect you with the success of those in our autism community.

Lessons Learned

Throughout the process, we learned a few lessons. This was our first all-virtual fundraising event, and at times it felt like we were making it up as we went along. But to help you, I’m going to share the lessons that we took away from A Toast to AuSM.

1. Make It Engaging

I know I already spent a paragraph talking about this, but there’s a reason that I am repeating myself. If you go to the trouble of putting together a livestream event, you want to make sure that your supporters are watching and paying attention. If you don’t keep them engaged through features like chat, question and answer, prize drawings, or interactive elements, they’ll just tune out. We found that having a variety of elements happening throughout our program kept people excited.

2. You Can Do It Yourself

When we first decided we wanted to do a livestream that included some recorded elements, we were a bit nervous about running it ourselves. On the other hand, paying someone to manage our stream for us was out of our budget. What we found was that with a little bit of determination, it was surprisingly easy to run the livestream for ourselves.

We found a service called Restream that allowed us to livestream to Facebook Live and Youtube Live at the same time. We could have multiple presenters on video, and share pre-recorded video from the desktop. While it can be intimidating to look at new software, being open to trying new things can go a long way. The best part of this was that we were able to post our livestream directly on our CauseVox page. Our attendees could watch and donate easily, which was the goal when we started.

3. Easy=Effective

It’s one thing to know that having functional technology will make your life easier. It’s another thing to know that better technology will make your fundraiser more effective. CauseVox actually allowed us to bring in more donations because it was easy for our fundraisers to sign up, easy for our donors to make a gift, and easy for us to manage the administrative end. That gave us more time to connect directly with our fundraisers and more time for our fundraisers to reach out to donors.

Learn more about peer-to-peer fundraising with CauseVox.

4. Virtual Events Improve Your ROI

One of the fears that we had when we began the event was that we wouldn’t bring in as much money through a virtual event as we would have through an in-person event. What we found was that the more important number is actually the return on investment: how much you make compared with what you put in. What was amazing about our virtual event was that our costs to run our event with CauseVox were almost nothing. We didn’t have to pay for a venue, food, supplies, decor, or any of the other typical expenses. What that translated to was an incredibly high ROI for this event.

Learn more about how you can easily sell tickets and run your event with CauseVox.

After the success of the Toast to AuSM event, we immediately jumped in to another event with CauseVox (we truly can’t get enough). Our spring walk is a peer-to-peer fundraiser, and we’ve already seen over 50 fundraisers sign up through CauseVox.

We can’t recommend CauseVox enough for other Autism Society affiliates. The power of autism communities is strong: all we need is the right tool to harness it. We know our families are busy and overwhelmed: we don’t want fundraising to be another challenge. With CauseVox, it’s not. The process is simple and fast, so that your families and supporters can get back to doing what’s most important: supporting people with autism.

To hear more about how we made our event successful, watch the free Virtual Fundraising Roundtable Discussion:

Run Your Virtual Event On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you jump-start your virtual fundraising efforts, whether it’s your first campaign or your fiftieth.

Easy for you to set up and easy for your fundraisers to navigate, the whole process is a delight for donors and nonprofits.

If you’re ready to raise more through your events, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.

Or, get a 1-1 demo to learn more about how CauseVox can work for you.

Even pre-COVID, organizations like the Fiver Children’s Foundation, were already taking advantage of digital fundraising.

We sat down with Melissa Benjamin from Fiver Children’s Foundation to chat about her experience growing digital fundraising for their #GivingTuesday and year-end fundraising campaigns in recent years to find out key insights for running an effective digital year-end fundraising strategy during Covid.

About Fiver

The Fiver Children’s Foundation is a nonprofit focused on youth development by making a 10-year commitment to children from underserved communities in New York. Through year-round out-of-school time programs and a summer camp, Fiver empowers youth to make ethical and healthy decisions, to become engaged citizens, and to succeed in school and beyond.

Last year, Fiver raised over $33K online with CauseVox and #GivingTuesday.

If you’re interested in learning about how they pulled off a widely successful campaign, check out our conversation with Melissa Benjamin from our Nonprofit Leader Panel during our Digital Fundraising Summit:

Lessons Learned From Last Year’s #GivingTuesday Campaign

1. It’s Okay To Pivot

Like many organizations, you’ve likely scrapped your original fundraising plans and pivoted. And that’s okay…and in times like these, it’s necessary. 

According to Melissa Benjamin, Fiver’s Director of Development, not being able to pivot to digital fundraising equates to “a lot of money being left on the table”. This rings especially true now that more and more people are forced to get comfortable with technology, given the current circumstances. 

Key Takeaway: If you’ve been hesitant to go digital, you may be blown away by the results of an online campaign. Check out our tips on creating a successful fundraising page. 

2. Recruit Potential Fundraisers (And Start Early)

With every successful campaign, the first step is to identify and recruit potential fundraisers. For Melissa, the recruitment phase starts relatively early. Last year, initial conversations began in October, which allowed interested participants to create individual CauseVox pages in advance. 

By tapping into their existing networks, Melissa recruited peer-to-peer fundraisers from their board, young professionals committee, advocates committee, volunteers, alumni, and organization staff. In total, these groups accounted for about 60-70 key supporters. 

While not all 60-70 participated, rounding up a list of potential fundraisers gave Melissa a head start on recruitment and allowed for enough lead time to follow-up with anyone who didn’t respond.

Key takeaway: Approach people with a long history of engagement with your org even if they don’t necessarily have money or influence. Passionate constituents (which can be few and far between) are the true lifeblood of an organization. Learn more tips about planning a successful #GivingTuesday Campaign here.

3. Ensure Your Fundraisers Are Fully Equipped

During the time leading up to the launch of their #GivingTuesday campaign, Fiver created a fundraising packet replete with info about Giving Tuesday, a week-by-week breakdown of what fundraisers should be doing during that time, sample email and text templates, and social media posts.

No matter what each fundraiser’s individual goal is, “try to provide as much information and as many tools and resources as possible so that fundraisers feel confident to hit their target.” 

Key Takeaway: Don’t be afraid of over-communicating! Regularly check-in and be sure to provide a plethora of information and a fundraiser toolkit so your fundraisers feel confident. 

4. Encourage Early Donations

Rather than competing for donations on #GivingTuesday, Fiver encourages their donors to donate in the days leading up to #GivingTuesday.

Compiling feedback from previous fundraisers, Fiver found that making noise and promoting only on #GivingTuesday is generally not effective because other organizations across the globe are doing the same. 

As a result, Fiver encourages their donors to give early, which makes the whole campaign less of a lift later on, thus alleviating the pressure of meeting a $40K goal in under 24 hours.

5. Don’t Make #GivingTuesday A Deadline

For Fiver, the end of the day on #GivingTuesday doesn’t mark the end of the campaign. In fact, Fiver extends their #GivingTuesday to the end of the year. Viewing it as the “digital arm of end of the year fundraising efforts”, Fiver’s #GivingTuesday campaign is included in the messaging for their end-of-year mailouts. 

Key Takeaway: #GivingTuesday shouldn’t be a hard stop to your fundraising efforts. Instead, view it as a springboard that builds momentum for year end giving. 

How CauseVox Supported Fiver On #GivingTuesday 

With intuitive features, CauseVox has helped Fiver raise more with less effort. Did you know that:

Easy, Mobile-Optimized Donation Process Helped Fiver Raise More.

With conversion + mobile-optimized donation pages, donors were able to easily give to Fiver on any device. From a desktop monitor to a smartphone, CauseVox’s mobile-optimized pages provide a great donor experience with a < 15-second donation process.

The easier the process is for donors, the more donations you’ll receive.

Donors Covering Processing Fees = More Funds To Take Home.

It might only be 30 cents, but processing fees can add up quickly. By allowing donors to choose to cover their own credit card fees, Fiver receives more of the donation which is especially valuable when it comes to lower denomination gifts.

Monthly Giving Options Drive Long-term Gifts During Giving Days.

While one-time donors are more common during #GivingTuesday campaign, by enabling an option to specify giving frequency, Fiver saw an unexpected increase in the number of monthly recurring donors. 

Easy Personal Fundraising Page Setup = More People Fundraising

Setting up personal fundraising pages was an easy process. Fundraisers could create pages in under 60 seconds with a clunk-free setup process. 

With an easy personal fundraising page creation process, you’ll get more fundraisers set up and equipped to fundraise for your organization.

Quick And Easy #GivingTuesday Campaign Creation 

Fiver could easily clone, brand, and tailor a previous campaign to their needs and have it ready to go within minutes. 

Easily Manage Gifts With A Hassle-Free Database

For everyone who isn’t a “website maven”, the overall customization of their campaign site was “simple and straightforward”. With CauseVox, Melissa was able to seamlessly manage and track donations in real-time. Better yet, she could also view donor data all in one place.

Gearing Up For #GivingTuesday? CauseVox Can Power-Up Your Fundriasing

We know you’re busy, especially during a time of the year when there’s a high volume of donations being processed. With #GivingTuesday just around the corner (Dec 1, 2020), we’re here to make your life easier. So, if you’re spinning your wheels on what to do for #GivingTuesday, take a page from Fiver’s book. 

With CauseVox, we’ll help you raise more with less clunk in today’s progressively digital world.

Get Started on Your #GivingTuesday Campaign with CauseVox.

But with some flexibility and a focus on impact, their CauseVox campaign brought in double the original goal. Here’s how they did it.

About AFFCF

AFFCF is an organization based in Arizona that funds a variety of activities for children in foster care, to help them experience a normal childhood while they’re going through difficult times. One of their unique programs is Keys to Success. 

While a childhood in foster care is difficult at any time, ages 16-24 can be particularly challenging. This is when most youth age out of the system and lose the resources and supports that exist. To meet that need, AFFCF created Keys to Success, which supports those young adults in the system with career development, finishing education, and finding sustainable employment. These services pick up when young adults need them most and are essential for setting up vulnerable youth for a successful life.

What makes the program even more unique is that it includes a Youth Advisory Board of people who have completed the program and those who are still in it. That gives the most important stakeholders a big voice in the program.

In 2019, the Youth Advisory Board decided they wanted to build a fresh fundraiser for Keys to Success. “They were really adamant about it coming from their voice,” says Kimberly. The impetus for the campaign came from the board, and the direction it took came from them as well.

Just like the Keys to Success program, the campaign was unique from the start. After looking at in person races, the group decided that they wanted to create a virtual race fundraiser. Setting up the in person race would have taken much longer, and been a significantly bigger challenge for the group.

This decision set the tone for the rest of the campaign: it would be easy for anyone to get involved, it would center the needs of the Youth Advisory Board, and it would be built on youth sensibilities. They chose May as it’s Foster Care Awareness month, and started building their strategy.

When COVID hit midway through the campaign the team breathed a sigh of relief: their event was already virtual.

Raising More With Less Effort With Peer-to-Peer Fundraising On CauseVox

You might think that a fundraising campaign driven by a group of young adults without fundraising experience could be an uphill battle. That’s where CauseVox entered the picture. The simplicity of the technology, plus its powerful customization freed up the Youth Advisory Board to tell their stories and connect with their community.

They began with a goal of $10,000.

In less than three weeks, they had blown that goal out of the water. They doubled their goal, and the community came through to reach that goal too. Their final total was $20,355.

Kimberly credits the ease of using CauseVox. Her own 11 year old son created his own fundraiser and participated in the event. “If an 11 year old can set it up, anyone can set it up,” she jokes. One of her points of pride was that they had very few calls asking for tech support: it was simply intuitive. 

Even better, CauseVox allowed Kimberly to create a customized template for her fundraisers. When they created their fundraiser, they just had to fill in their own information and upload photos. She made sure to call out a section where they could place their own impact statement so that each fundraiser was personalized. That individual touch took the campaign to the next level. 

The Heart of the Campaign: The Youth Advisory Board

From the first thing you see on the campaign, you know who is the heart of this campaign. Kimberly made sure that her content included the voices of the Youth Advisory Board. “The video [on the main page] is actually from the youth in the program describing what their life was like before it and after.”

Throughout the page she included photos of youth in the program at jobs, in the community, and connecting with others. It gave donors and fundraisers a clear picture of how their dollars affected real people, and what kind of success could come from the program.

Kimberly is understandably proud when she talks about the kids. “As you can see we have pictures of our Youth Advisory Board, which has grown since this campaign took off.”

To help bring the community together, AFFCF held one day during which community members could join them in event t-shirts and walk together. One of the best parts of the day was the inclusion of youth and staff from the program. 

Having those representatives on the day-of let community members connect. It showed what the program was all about, and showed that the youth had a stake in the program. This was their program, and they wanted to make it better.

Supporting Fundraisers

“We put a lot of effort upfront into making everything as easy as possible so that when someone decided to register to participate as a fundraiser, we wanted them to have everything they needed right off the bat.”

Because of the ease of CauseVox’s technology, Kimberly could focus her attention on making sure that her fundraisers knew exactly how to run a successful fundraiser. She started by ensuring that she had the right people in her corner.

They began with donors who had given specifically to Keys to Success, then expanded on to caregivers and invited them all to fundraise.

Each fundraiser was provided with a Google Drive full of resources. Everything from details on how to track your miles to information about building a donor list, plus sample emails and social media posts. 

It was Kimberly’s way of saying “You’ve signed up, here’s what you do next,” but it all came in the voices of the Youth Advisory Board. The group created contests for their fundraisers, including costumes, number of miles walked, and dollars raised.

One of the most exciting elements of the fundraiser was that competitive spirit. Kimberly recalled seeing the top two teams battling it out for first place in a good-natured contest to see who could raise the most. Some fundraisers shared updates on their pages to let donors know how they were doing. One family took photos of their desert runs and shared the beautiful cacti and flowers.

The sense of community was something that came from Kimberly and the Youth Advisory Board: everyone bought in to the cause, and wanted to stay connected with the fundraisers. They provided their supporters with everything they could need.

CauseVox Is Accessible to Anyone

“This is a fundraiser you can do as you want. You don’t have to follow any certain rules. You can decide if you want to run…you can hit the treadmill, or you know, just walking around in your backyard.”

AFFCF has a lot of personality. CauseVox let them express that personality in their own ways. No matter who wanted to get involved, CauseVox gave them a way.

Kimberly says that this customization and accessibility are a big part of why the campaign was successful. Online fundraising can be intimidating, but “even the most technology challenged person can do this event, can participate. What we liked was that it opened a lot of doors and gave us a lot of new contacts.”

Two main groups saw the benefit of this ease and customization.

The Youth Advisory Board is made up of young adults who are primarily in school and working. These are busy kids. They didn’t have time to go door to door, make calls, or use other traditional fundraising methods. Instead, CauseVox gave them access to the channels they were comfortable using, and let them share any time they wanted.

The organization’s general board members also found the site approachable. One board member didn’t want to fundraise himself, but made a point of donating to every fundraiser who was part of the program.

Two different groups with very different needs found that CauseVox worked for both of them.

But CauseVox also worked well for Kimberly and the staff. “What really was nice about CauseVox was that you have the tipping feature. It practically makes CauseVox free,” shared Kimberly. She estimated that about 90% of donors used the function, greatly reducing the costs to AFFCF.

She also loved the donation tiers, which “make it really tangible for people who are going to donate.” As a fundraiser, Kimberly used CauseVox’s features to their fullest, including updates and media that inspired her donors.

Plus it was all seamless to set up and maintain. No IT needed.

Lessons Learned

Over the course of 6 weeks this first time campaign reached its goal and then reached double its goal. What did AFFCF learn from this success? Here are the takeaways:

• Less complexity in your fundraising process 
  • Code-free integrations with popular software
  • Run one of all of your digital fundraising initiatives
  • One place to handle every stage of the fundraising process

1. Involve Your Clients

From the very beginning, participants in the Keys to Success program were involved in this fundraiser. They talked about what the program meant to them. They shared what it had done in their lives. Their voices were a front and center reminder of how important the work is.

Where you can, include the people who will be affected by your work. They should be your biggest supporters. Even when they can’t give money, they can give time, talent, and the stories they have.

2. Use A Toolkit

If your fundraisers are using their time to create a fundraising strategy, or are too nervous to ask for donations, they’re not really fundraising. You want to give them all the resources and support you can. The best way to do this is by creating a toolkit that answers their questions and provides them with templates, samples, and information.

Kimberly created a beautiful toolkit for her fundraisers that gave them all they could ask for before they had to ask. She even tailored social media posts to different platforms, created a basic fundraising plan, and provided sample social media content.

3. Make It Personal

One thing that donors can spot a mile away is basic boilerplate language. What draws them in are unique stories from real people. Kimberly created a campaign that was all about personal stories.

Whether it was in the pictures she shared, the video content from the Youth Advisory Board, or the personalized impact statement included in each fundraiser, Kimberly made sure that every time she told her donors about the program, she had a face and a story to go with it. 

4. Use Updates!

Of all the amazing features that CauseVox has, one that can seem less impressive is the ability to add updates to your campaign. But those updates are one of the best ways to maintain up to date communication with your donors and fundraisers.

Kimberly learned this early on, and used the update feature to share with her fundraisers when they had reached their $10,000 goal, as well as when they increased the goal to $20,000. Having a centralized way to share that information ensured that all the fundraisers kept pushing throughout the whole campaign.

To hear her full story, make sure you check out our Nonprofit Leader Panel Webinar.

Run Your Virtual Walkathon or Race On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you knock your fundraising campaigns out of the park and raise more with less effort. Easy for you to set up and easy for your fundraisers to navigate, the whole process is a delight for donors and nonprofits.

CauseVox has dozens of integrations, including Strava to allow your virtual walkers and runners to record and share their progress.

If you’re ready to move your fundraising events to virtual, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.

Their annual Unleash Your Love luncheon was scheduled for early May. After shutdowns and quarantine orders, they made the tough decision to move the event to a virtual platform.

But their experience of flexibility and virtual know-how is a great example of the ways that virtual can be even better than in person.

In just over a month, Summit Assistance Dogs moved their event from in-person to virtual using CauseVox, and netted over $35,000 more than the previous year at their in-person event.

With just the tools of CauseVox’s professional fundraising platform and some dedicated fundraisers, they were able to take a COVID challenge and turn it into an amazing success.

About Summit Assistance Dogs

Summit Assistance Dogs is an organization that pairs highly-skilled mobility service dogs with people living with disabilities These dogs retrieve items, open and close doors, turn switches on and off, and engage in a wide variety of tasks that help their partners live with greater independence and confidence. Not only that, but the program diminishes depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

Donor Relations Associate Emma Kouguell shares that each year they host a spring luncheon as their largest fundraiser of the year. With 700 attendees, table captains, client stories, and more, it’s a major part of their fundraising and their community.

When they faced the decision of what to do without an in person event, the organization struggled: they needed this fundraiser to continue their work. But how could they make the event successful without their usual luncheon? The answer was virtual peer-to-peer fundraising with CauseVox.

Raising More With Less Effort With Peer-to-Peer Fundraising On CauseVox

When it became clear that an in-person event wasn’t a possibility for 2020, Emma started looking for virtual options. A peer-to-peer fundraising campaign stuck out.

“This was Summit’s first time doing something like this and we chose this option because we felt that our donor base would be on board for something like this and it was also an opportunity to see how a virtual event would go for the organization,” she shared. 

After just a short amount of time, it became clear that CauseVox was the right platform to support Summit Assistance Dogs: the ease of use, the robust customization options, and the strong customer support allowed Emma to build the ideal virtual event for her organization.

CauseVox Supports Peer-to-Peer Table Captains

One of the most important elements of the annual luncheon was the Table Captains. These are fundraisers who went above and beyond to help recruit and organize other donors. Emma knew that the most important place to start was by moving these captains online.

This was the first wave of communication and created a strong base of supporters to begin creating fundraising pages and reaching out to networks.

Two important benefits became clear right away: hosting the event virtually allowed Emma to reach out to supporters further away, giving them more table captains than usual. “It was really great to be able to expand that reach,” says Emma.

Even more important, CauseVox allowed Emma to build a default template for all of her fundraisers. 

“You can create a template on each page. It’s a default template where if someone joins your campaign to do peer to peer fundraising, it is customized to what you want…an example for what you want people to use. They didn’t have to do anything further if they didn’t want to. It made it very easy for people joining the campaign.”

Fundraisers could join easily with less frustration and less clunk. Just a few clicks and their pages were set up with all the content that Summit Assistance Dogs had created. 

This customized support was key to the success of the campaign. Not only did fundraisers feel confident when setting up their pages, Emma went above and beyond to create a fundraiser toolkit, a user guide for CauseVox, provide one-on-one support to her fundraisers, and give personalized attention.

All of this was possible because she wasn’t chasing after solutions to technical problems or dealing with clunky software. The seamless, simple nature of the fundraising pages let Emma and her peer-to-peer fundraisers focus on creating beautiful stories and compelling messages.

“I think when the fundraisers have something to work based off of it’s really useful for them to be able to be successful as a fundraiser,” she shared. “A lot of people were really appreciative of the organization and support we were able to provide.” 

CauseVox Builds Community As a Virtual Space

But CauseVox became something more than simply a fundraising platform: it became the community space that Summit Assistance Dogs usually found at their luncheon. 

Typically attendees at the luncheon get to meet and talk to clients to learn about the impact of the program.

To mirror this amazing connection, Emma used videos, pictures, and stories to highlight the voices and partnerships of clients and their dogs. Clients read letters they wrote to their dogs, or letters from those who participate in Summit’s prison program training dogs.

Emma took her program to the next level by using CauseVox as the hub of all the content. Her strategy was to “make it personal. Show the impact the program has on people’s lives, and the positive impact it has on our dogs. Making sure we kept that front and center for the day-of was really important.”

What truly allowed Emma to bring those stories to the front was CauseVox’s customization options. She used updates to keep people visiting the main page of the fundraiser, sharing photos and videos that drew people in (she did have the cheat card that her organization can post dozens of photos of puppies).

Not only that, but in the default template for fundraisers, Emma included links back to the main fundraiser page and information about watching the live program. At every turn, she sent her donors and supporters to the CauseVox page: through emails, social media, fundraiser pages, and more. 

With the CauseVox page set as the virtual program space, Summit Assistance Dogs aired a video of their luncheon program on the same day the luncheon was set to take place. They had over 100 people watching live, and over 300 views since. CauseVox allowed them to directly embed their YouTube video on the fundraising page, putting people in prime position to make donations while being a part of the event.

Converting Donors With Donation Forms

Emma found that one of the biggest benefits of using CauseVox was the way she could customize donation forms. She did so much work to bring supporters to her page, but CauseVox helped her to convert them into donors.

Her biggest takeaways?

• Being able to create customized donation tiers was incredibly helpful: it gave more chances to show the impact of donations.
• The donation forms were incredibly user friendly.
• The customization options allowed Summit Assistance Dogs to make the form simple, but still get the information they wanted

“Being able to have that flexibility with the donation form was really helpful.”

Lessons Learned

After a month long campaign and a live program, Summit Assistance Dogs raised $185,000. Not only did they reach their goal of $175,000, they also unlocked a $25,000 match. What did they learn from this success? Here are the takeaways:

1. Start Before You Start

One of the most powerful tools in the Summit Assistance Dogs arsenal was their Table Captains. These super-fundraisers were the first to create fundraising pages, then went on to champion the online campaign to their networks. Emma knew that an important element of the success of this campaign would be bringing those folks on board.

Before you launch your virtual campaign, have your core team ready to go: their pages set up, a toolkit in hand, and strategies in place.

2. Use A toolkit

Your fundraisers are your image in the community. You want to give them all the resources and support you can. The best way to do this is by creating a toolkit that answers their questions and provides them with templates, samples, and information.

Emma created a beautiful toolkit for her fundraiser that included all of that and photos, logos, and posts. She found that fundraisers jumped in with less fear when they had something to start from.

3. Make It Personal

Emma made sure to include photos and videos from Summit Assistance Dogs in the default template she created for fundraisers. She knew that this would help personalize all of the fundraising and draw in donors. 

She also included individual stories and voices in her marketing and updates. Allowing clients to share video stories, or share the impact of the program gave a face to the dollars. 

4. Communicate!

CauseVox has so many features that many fundraisers forget to utilize them all. One area that Emma truly took advantage of CauseVox’s abilities was in the use of updates. She shared videos, pictures, stories, and news on her CauseVox page to keep donors and supporters coming back over and over.

This communication not only strengthened the relationship between the donors and Summit Assistance Dogs, it also helped to draw in a large crowd for the live program.

5. Pay Attention To Expenses

This is a lesson that might blow you away. Many organizers shy away from online events, concerned that they won’t bring in as much money. But what you bring in isn’t the only factor in return on investment. Cost is also incredibly important. 

Take a look at the numbers from the Unleash Your Love events in 2019 and 2020.

In 2019, the event did bring in higher revenue. But here’s a number that should blow you away: because Summit Assistance Dogs used CauseVox, they spent $50,000 LESS in 2020. The cost of a virtual event was significantly lower. What did that mean for the final numbers?

They netted over $35,000 more in 2020 than they did in 2019. If you’re a numbers nerd, in 2019 the ROI for the event was 212%.

Their ROI in 2020?

1617%.

That’s ~8 times higher.

Not only that, but with no massive in-person event to plan, the process was simpler, more streamlined, and easier on the staff. 

Virtual events are less expensive and easier to run, putting more money back in your budget.

Download your Virtual Event Planning Guide and Calendar Template:

Run Your Virtual Event On CauseVox

CauseVox can help you knock your fundraising campaigns out of the park and raise more with less effort. 

If you’re ready to move your fundraising events to virtual, let CauseVox make the process more simple with less clunk.

Get Started with Peer-to-Peer Fundraising on CauseVox.