The Step-by-Step Guide to Using Donorbox Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Peer-to-peer fundraising lets supporters raise money online for a cause. Whether you’re a nonprofit or individual, Donorbox’s peer-to-peer fundraising is easy to activate, simple to use, and great for your outreach efforts. In this article, we’ve provided a few videos and step-by-step directions to create a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign on Donorbox.

7 minutes read
The Step-by-Step Guide to Using Donorbox Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

Donorbox’s peer-to-peer fundraising feature called Donorbox Peer-to-Peer is helping hundreds of nonprofit organizations boost their donations and increase outreach through the power of their supporters’ networks. For example, Maya’s Hope has raised nearly $1M in donations for their Ukraine Emergency Campaign with the help of 40+ supporters.

Donorbox Peer-to-Peer follows the standard P2P fundraising process and will help you encourage your best supporters to fundraise for you.

Our peer-to-peer fundraising is easy to activate (only toggle a switch!), simple to use (for nonprofits and fundraisers), and great for your nonprofit outreach efforts.

In this article, we’ll explain the steps to creating a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign on Donorbox, also answer some FAQs regarding the same.

  1. How does the Donorbox Peer-to-Peer fundraising feature work?
  2. 5 steps to creating a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign on Donorbox
  3. Frequently asked questions [FAQs]

How Does the Donorbox Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Feature Work?

Donorbox Peer-to-Peer starts with creating a new fundraising campaign and toggling a switch to allow this campaign to turn into a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

It’s that simple!

Once you’ve toggled the switch, you’ll be given an option to decide whether it will be an invite-only P2P campaign or also open to all your campaign visitors. Then, you’ll invite your supporters to fundraise for your campaign. And if you’re also keeping it open for visitors to choose to fundraise, you’ll have the option to decide if you’d like to automatically approve all requests or not.

Once your fundraisers sign up for Donorbox, they can easily customize their individual campaign pages and start fundraising for your organization!

Last but not least, all donations from your fundraisers’ campaigns will go to your original campaign account.

That’s it – as your supporters fundraise for your cause, your nonprofit will receive all the donations being collected and a boost in new donors as your fundraisers promote your campaign in their networks!

Watch our webinar for a detailed visual demonstration of Donorbox Peer-to-Peer – how it works, some creative peer-to-peer fundraising ideas, and much more to help you get started!

Start Peer-to-Peer Fundraising - Sign Up!


5 Steps to Creating a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaign on Donorbox

Creating a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign on Donorbox is a simple 5-step process –

  1. Create a Campaign
  2. Toggle the Switch
  3. Invite Fundraisers
  4. Your Fundraiser will Customize their Fundraising Page
  5. You and Your Fundraiser are all Set to Receive Donations

Think you can learn quicker with a tutorial video instead? Give this a watch – our Nonprofit Advocate, Jena Lynch, shows you the steps to create a campaign, enable peer-to-peer, customize the fundraisers’ pages, and also gives you better insights into this Donorbox feature.

Learn More About Donorbox Peer-to-Peer


Step 1 – Create a Campaign

If you’re new to Donorbox, signup here. It will take only a few minutes.

Now, create a campaign by clicking “New Campaign” on the Donorbox dashboard.

peer to peer fundraising software

You can choose how you’d want to create a campaign on the next page that loads – through a donation form (a page gets created automatically that you can customize later on) or a fundraising page (including a donation form).

donorbox create campaign

Note – Follow the steps in this blog to create a donation form and a fundraising page.

Once you set up a donation form or fundraising page, you can proceed to activate peer-to-peer fundraising.


Step 2 – Toggle the Switch

Once your campaign is created, select it on the Donorbox dashboard and click the “Edit” icon at the top right corner of the campaign.

edit campaign on Donorbox

Next, toggle the peer-to-peer fundraising switch, as shown below.

enable Donorbox Peer-to-Peer

Now, click the “View options and invite fundraisers” link just below the switch.

Donorbox Peer-to-Peer options

You’ll see that the “Only allow invited fundraisers” option will be checked by default. If you want otherwise, you can uncheck it.

Unchecking this option will add the button “I want to fundraise for this” option to the top of your fundraising page. See how it works in the note below.

You will also have other options like “Automatically approve P2P fundraisers – this helps when you have the first option unchecked and are allowing campaign visitors to opt to fundraise.

The “Show top fundraisers” option will highlight the fundraisers who have raised the most donations with their fundraising pages for you on the original campaign page.

Finally, the last checkbox “Allow fundraiser to edit donation receipts” will enable you to let your fundraisers edit the donation receipt that goes out for donations to their campaigns.

Donorbox P2P options

Click the “Update” button at the bottom of the page to save the changes.


Step 3 – Invite Fundraisers

Now it is time to invite your best supporters to fundraise for your campaign.

Inside the peer-to-peer fundraising box, you’ll see a button to “Invite Fundraisers”. Click it to invite your first fundraiser.

invite fundraisers - peer-to-peer fundraising

You’ll be taken to the below page, scroll down and you’ll see the “Invite Fundraiser” button just over the Fundraisers list. Click on it.

invite fundraiser - p2p page 2

Fill out the below form to send an invite to your donor, volunteer, friend, board member, or anyone you deem fit for this role.

inviting supporter to p2p fundraising

This creates an initial fundraising page for your invitee with a donation form. You can click the “Link” icon (as shown below) to check this out. This helps your fundraisers get started more easily. In case customizing the page seems too much for them.

fundraiser page p2p


Step 4 – Your Invitee will Customize their Fundraising Page

Your invitee receives an email invitation like the one below with a link to create an account or login to their existing account on Donorbox to get started.

p2p invitation mail

Note – your donors will already have an account on Donorbox and in that case, they can simply log in and accept your invitation to start fundraising.

As soon as they sign up or log in, they will be taken to the Campaigns page on the Donorbox Dashboard. Here they can see the campaigns for which they have been invited to fundraise.

p2p fundraisers

They can preview the basic fundraising page created for them. And then, proceed to customize it by clicking the “Edit” button.

Your fundraiser will have the option to upload their own photo and add a background image to their page. (see the image below)

Scrolling down, your fundraiser will see a field where they can add their personal story to the campaign.

The fundraiser can add their individual goal (overall fundraising goal or for a month) to the campaign. They can also edit the donation receipt to their own liking (only if you checked the respective checkbox in Step 2).

customizing p2p campaign

Once they’re done customizing their fundraising page, they should click on “Update”. They’ll be redirected to the Campaigns page where they can preview their page.

Note – If you’re also allowing campaign visitors to choose to fundraise for your campaign by clicking the button “I want to fundraise for this” in step 2, step 3 will be skipped automatically. They’ll simply input their name and email address (shown below). Subsequently, they’ll receive an email from Donorbox to sign up or log in to Donorbox i.e. they’ll be on step 4 directly.

fundraisers opting to fundraise on Donorbox Peer-to-Peer


Step 5 – You and Your Fundraiser are all Set to Receive Donations

First, let’s have a look at a sample fundraising page –

peer-to-peer fundraising

Get Started With Donorbox Peer-to-Peer!

Now that your fundraiser has a fundraising page, ask them to spread the word about their fundraising campaign and share the link within their network.

Now they’re all set to receive donations. And so are you.

All donations from each of your fundraisers’ accounts will go to your original fundraising account. There’s no hassle of transferring funds and delay in getting the work started!


Over to You

Peer-to-peer fundraising is the most effective way to engage your supporters, throw the spotlight on your cause, and boost your donor acquisition efforts. This type of campaign is highly shareable and offers a free marketing method.

So don’t waste more time – start boosting donations and outreach with Donorbox Peer-to-Peer and make the most of your supporters’ network!

In case you’d want to know more about peer-to-peer fundraising, here’s a detailed blog we’ve written for you.

Donorbox is an all-in-one fundraising solution that doubles as a donor management tool, as well as offers a number of powerful features and integrations to help you fundraise effectively. Please check out our website to know more.

Check out our collection of insightful peer-to-peer fundraising blogs at the Nonprofit Blog. We also have a number of other nonprofit-related articles including free templates and checklists over there. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a curated list of these resources in your inbox every month!


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Donorbox Peer-to-Peer

We’ll answer some common questions that you may have about Donorbox peer-to-peer fundraising feature.


1. Is Donorbox peer-to-peer fundraising feature free?

You can sign up on Donorbox and create a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for free. However, a minimal platform fee applies to your parent and child campaigns. For your main campaign, it remains at 1.75%, our standard fee. For child/fundraiser campaigns the platform fee applies at 2.95%.

Learn more about our pricing plans. You also have the option to upgrade to our Pro and Premium plans to reduce the platform fee for all campaigns to a flat fee of 1.5%.


2. Can I use Donorbox peer-to-peer fundraising feature for my live campaigns on Donorbox or is it for testing only?

The Donorbox peer-to-peer fundraising feature is very much ready and will work on live campaigns. All nonprofits having a live campaign on Donorbox can start using this feature. They can also create a new campaign and enable peer-to-peer fundraising on it.


3. Will I have to manually invite a fundraiser to my Donorbox campaign?

It is not a manual process. To invite a fundraiser, all you need are their first and last name, and email address. As soon as you input the details on Donorbox, they will receive an email and be guided to log in and customize their campaign on the platform.


4. I am new to Donorbox. Will I have to pay an amount to start using the peer-to-peer fundraising feature?

Donorbox requires no setup fee. You can sign up for free with basic details (no documentation required) and create your first fundraising campaign with us. We’ll just deduct a nominal platform fee of 2.95% from donations on your fundraisers’ campaigns and a 1.75% standard platform fee from donations on your main campaign. You can learn more about our pricing structure here.


5. What are some of the top peer-to-peer fundraising ideas to make the campaign work?

There are plenty of ideas for peer-to-peer campaigns such as a-thons, pub-crawl, game nights, honoring people on occasions, birthday fundraisers, and so much more. Watch this video here and get all set to fire up your peer-to-peer campaigns.

Avatar photo

Charles Z is the Founder and CEO of Donorbox. He has been starting companies and numerous web applications since college. Nowadays he is immersed and wildly excited about the future of the social impact sector.

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