Tribute Giving is Perfect for Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

If you’re curious how many donors are giving in honor of someone else, the results are in – the 2020 Global Trends in Giving Report revealed that 33% of people give as a way to honor someone else. If you’re running a nonprofit or charity, this is an incredible insight to consider.

The fact that a third of all donations in 2020 were in honor of a loved one should inform your giving strategy, including your peer-to-peer campaigns. By combining tribute giving with peer-to-peer, donors can come together and raise funds on behalf of the person they want to honor. Donors may feel more inspired to give or join the peer-to-peer action as fundraisers if they know a loved one will be recognized for it.

First, let’s explore tribute giving and consider its features for your next campaign. Then we’ll dive in to how to use peer-to-peer to pay tribute to a loved one.

Why Tribute Giving?

In general, tribute giving helps an organization raise awareness, increase funding, bolster trust, and honor individual stories either in memoriam or celebration.

By offering donors the choice to give in tribute, they may be more likely to donate as they bring someone to mind, wanting to give back in a meaningful way.

Typically, tributes come in as one-time donations, but they don’t have to be. Share with donors how their tribute gift will actively support your mission. Update them about the programs and efforts that are supported because of this donation. Create a section on your website that acknowledges tribute gifts.

And most of all, make sure a tribute section is a standard element on your donation form, which you can easily do with the GiveWP tributes add-on.

Setting up a Tribute

Want to see how it works? Here’s a quick rundown of the Tributes add-on features:

• Display tribute options with radio buttons, a select dropdown, or buttons
• Customize contents of the Tributes field-set within donation forms
• Ability to customize how you describe the honoree
• Enable or disable eCards and Mail a Card features
• Customize eCards, send test emails, and resend cards
• Customize mailer cards, send email notification of delivery
• Export a tributes donor list and/or addresses for donors who opted to mail a card
• Generate fundraising reports as well as an exportable list of people added as a tribute

If you’d like all your forms to have a tribute option, including your peer-to-peer campaigns, enable and configure the option at Donations > Settings > Tributes. You can customize many settings in this section, like enabling the eCard and Mail a Card feature.

The eCards option allows donors to notify their tribute of the honorary donation. When you click the “eCards” settings, you can customize the length, logo, text, and more. All of these features are excellent for capturing and honoring tribute donations.

For some organizations, where tribute donations come naturally, these features are a normal part of operations. Think military organizations, cancer nonprofits, women and children’s shelters, or animal shelters.

However, for organizations looking to increase or begin recognizing tribute giving, starting with the Tribute add-on is a good first step. From there, you can get creative in how you incorporate tributes. You can start by asking your donors to challenge their friends within a tribute donation. To turn a Tribute donation into a gentle ask, you can turn on the option to force notifications by eCard. Then, your custom eCard can include information on how the chosen tribute can also give to the cause.

Here are more ways to use the eCards feature for your next campaign.

Combining Tributes with Peer-to-Peer

With Tributes turned on your base donation form, that feature carries over to peer-to-peer campaigns and can drive the purpose behind your content.

GiveWP’s peer-to-peer add-on allows you to open up your donation forms for your supporters to take control. Now, your community can raise money in a traditional peer-to-peer style or through team fundraising.

There are two ways you can honor a tribute with peer-to-peer fundraisers. The first is to simply ensure that the “Tributes” feature is turned on within your chosen donation form. This can allow any individual donor to give to the campaign and honor their chosen, personal tribute.

Peer-to-peer campaigns should use a new donation form instead of an existing one to keep campaigns separate. The benefit of this is that with a force eCard notification for Tribute giving, the eCard can include information about the peer-to-peer campaign and include a gentle invite to join a team or create their own. It will also make it easier on the administrative side to keep campaigns separate for reporting purposes.

The second option for combining Tributes with peer-to-peer is to create a tribute-specific campaign. Campaigns can be customized with specific colors, images, names, and goals – meaning, at every step of the way, you can customize your campaign with your tribute in mind. Here’s a look at how to customize with a tribute in mind at every step:

• Campaign: This is the collection of all teams and individual fundraisers raising money, connected back to an individual donation form on your site. Make sure the form chosen for your campaign has “tributes” turned on. This way, individuals who donate can communicate their chosen tribute on the form. The campaign can be for a larger goal and does not have to mention an individual tribute at this stage, unless it’s a prolific or important figure that would rally folks to give. The overall campaign goal would be put in more general terms, like “$100,000 raised for loved ones,” for example.
• Teams: Teams are the best way to honor a tribute with peer-to-peer. A team is an organized group of folks with a team captain. A captain creates a team and can customize the team bio and language to focus on the tribute in mind. The invite to join the team can be sent to loved ones or community members who personally know of or are moved by the Tribute’s story. The team captain crafts a personal team invite message, letting them know that this campaign is in honor of a person or specific group of people. The person can be someone most people know, or it can be just a known figure in a smaller community, whose story represents a larger struggle that will pull at heartstrings and compel people to give. New team members join and fundraise for the team.
• Fundraisers: These are individual people who raise funds for your campaign. When individuals donate towards a peer-to-peer campaign, they can indicate a chosen tribute, as long as the option is turned on for the donation form.

Take a peek at the screenshot below to see peer-to-peer campaign would look like when centered around tributes. You can also play around for yourself in our live demo: Betty White’s Love of Animals Peer-to-Peer Tribute demo campaign

Ideas for peer-to-peer tribute campaigns

If you’re looking for ways to naturally tie-in or encourage a tribute feature on your peer-to-peer campaign, here are a few ideas to get you started.

A run/walk

Runs and walks are fun, large in scale, and can bring together multiple groups (and their networks) to fundraise for your cause. Participants form teams or fundraise on their own, giving them options for how to be involved.

Runs and walks work well for tribute gifting as people often form teams around the memory of a loved one for events like breast cancer walks. A peer-to-peer campaign is simply a virtual version of that. People can form a team, or start an individual campaign, and make it about the person they want to make the tribute and pledge the miles they’ll walk/run.

When designing a run/walk around a tribute, think about whether it’s what the tribute would want. Is a fun walk more the person’s style, or would they love a competitive 5k challenge? Remember, those joining in a tribute peer-to-peer are doing it to honor loved ones, so make their desires the focus.

Awareness Campaigns

A virtual awareness campaign is a great way to spread the word and reach wide new audiences with peer-to-peer. Awareness campaigns are meant to educate individuals and boost public awareness about an organization’s cause or issue. Education is the primary goal here, supported well by examples of success stories or memories of loved ones.

A personal story is a great way to raise awareness as it makes the issue something concrete and real, and not an abstract number or figure. Those in your campaign can use teams to tell their stories, or stories of those they know and love, and invite others to give by writing a compelling narrative.

A Birthday or Anniversary

Celebrating a tribute’s birthday, or anniversary of successfully overcoming a setback, can be a powerful fundraising tool. If a birthday is upcoming, or “would have been” a milestone birthday, creating a peer campaign can be a great honor.

Even more inspiring would be an anniversary of a tribute overcoming a struggle, such as a one-year anniversary of being cancer free. A team can form around this anniversary and others can contribute to the live-saving research. This can be another great way to highlight someone’s success story – if they are comfortable with it, you can use their story and images within a campaign and honor them as the focal point of your team.

Your Supporters Want to Be Part of Something Bigger

Donors are looking for reasons to give beyond a generic ask for help. They want to be a part of something bigger, to feel like they’re giving to something personal. A donation in honor of a loved one goes a long way toward helping your donors feel more connected.

Providing an option to donate as a tribute adds a dimension of personal connection. On top of that, using the pull of a tribute can be a great way to try out peer-to-peer and see how it works for you and your organization’s goals!

Let your supporters know that they can not only start a campaign in honor of someone, but also let their donors give in honor of someone as well. Get started with Tributes and the Peer-to-Peer suite today with our Pro Plan. Or schedule a consultation to learn more about how these solutions can benefit your organization.