It’s no secret that the past couple of years have been tough for Canadian charities that raise money through peer-to-peer fundraising.
In 2015, fundraising revenue for Canada’s 30 largest peer-to-peer programs dropped by 8.6 percent, according to Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Canada’s annual Top 30 Benchmarking Survey. And that decline followed a 6-percent drop in 2014.
But while these numbers serve as a wake-up call for many of Canada’s biggest charities, we’ve been encouraged to see that many nonprofits aren’t stepping back from P2P. In fact, many organizations are seriously examining their initiatives, investing in new programs, and overhauling existing programs.
In this series of three articles we will look at some approaches Canadian nonprofits are taking to ensure that their peer-to-peer programs remain strong, even with the recent declines. Here is strategy number one:
Reframing Existing Events
Like many organizations that manage long-running peer-to-peer programs, JDRF Canada faced a dilemma with its 27-year-old spinning event, JDRF Ride for Diabetes Research.
The campaign, which drew 15,000 participants in 2015, raises significant money for the organization — an estimated $4.6 million last year. But that number has been dropping by between 15-20 percent annually in recent years, as many former participants have opted to take part in charity campaigns that offered more variety.
For Colin Jenkins, JDRF’s national director of peer-to-peer fundraising, the choices were simple: maintain the same approach to producing the event or give the Ride a reboot.
The program would likely continue to shrink each year if JDRF kept running it the same way.
Not surprisingly, he and his team chose the reboot — a rebranding and reformatting of the event that is designed to give participants more flexibility and give JDRF new opportunities to attract sponsors and new participants.
“We saw the trend and knew that if we did nothing, it would continue to fall another 20 to 30 percent each year,” Jenkins said. “But we also had a great event that raises a lot of money, so we weren’t going to just walk away and not do it anymore.”
The rebranded event is called JDRF Revolution Ride to Defeat Diabetes and is designed to appeal to a wider range of riders.
While the original JDRF Ride was built for corporate teams who took turns riding a stationery bike as a relay team, the rebranded event opens the door for individuals and for family teams to participate. It also includes a number of spinning formats in which teams can ride for varying lengths of time, can compete against teams from other cities, and can participate in virtual rides from any location.
With a new sponsor and increased early interest from new riders, Jenkins says he and his team are optimistic that they will breathe new life — and new revenue — into an event that needed something new.
“We’re cautiously optimistic, for sure,” Jenkins said. “We’re excited to see success and hopefully be able to share what we learn along the way.”
The takeaway from this and the approaches I will share this month is straightforward — you can’t expect to be successful with P2P fundraising unless you’re willing to adapt and change.
Even the most successful campaigns need to constantly evolve. Otherwise they will fall behind.
David Hessekiel is founder and president of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Canada, which hosts ongoing programming, produces research, and offers advice to peer-to-peer fundraising professionals throughout Canada.
