Team fundraising is one of the best ways to maximize the impact of your online fundraising efforts. But it can also have some unique challenges! We swear by preparation at Mightycause. And this is because we’ve seen thousands of team fundraisers on Mightycause, and the most successful teams all have one thing in common: preparation. Preparing these three things for your fundraising team will help you stay organized, manage your team effectively, and reach your team fundraising goals.
What is Team Fundraising?
Team fundraising is an organized peer-to-peer campaign that empowers a team of your supporters to fundraise for a cause. But let’s back up a bit!
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a fundraising method that allows your nonprofit to leverage your existing supporters to bring in new supporters. In a peer-to-peer campaign, an individual creates a fundraiser on Mightycause connected to your nonprofit. Then, they ask their friends, family, coworkers and other social connections to donate. This helps your nonprofit bring in new donors, build grassroots support and increase your reach. Team fundraising has a whole team of individuals running their own peer-to-peer fundraisers. So, it has all the benefits of peer-to-peer fundraising, multiplied by the number of people you have on your team.
On Mightycause, team fundraising also involves a little friendly competition. Team members compete on a leaderboard for the position of #1 fundraiser.
Why Preparation Matters in Team Fundraising
Unlike a campaign that your nonprofit runs on your own, team fundraising puts trust in your supporters to spread the word, market their fundraisers and do most of the legwork. And that’s a beautiful thing! But your team members are all volunteers. And like any endeavor that involves corralling volunteers, preparation is key. Preparing will help you keep your team on-message, ensure that your team members feel confident and prepared, and make your job as team organizer easier.
The good news about team fundraising is that most of the work is done in the beginning. Once your team is signed up, has their pages published, they can go forth and fundraise! The prep work you do determines how much hand-holding you’ll have to do once your team is off to the races.
Here are the three things you should make sure to prepare for your team!
1. Welcome Packet
When someone signs up for your fundraising team, a welcome packet will do two important things. It will give them the tools they need to get started, and open the lines of communication between you and your team members. On Mightycause, you can easily export a list of your team members and their email addresses from the Members area of your dashboard. (You can message you team members there too!) We recommend keeping a close eye on this list, and emailing new team members as soon as you can.
Contents of the Welcome Packet
So, first and foremost, you want to thank your team members for signing up! They’re volunteers, and they’re doing an awesome thing. But you’ll also want to include enough information to help your new team members get up and running on Mightycause. The sooner they get their pages together, the sooner they can start raising money! Here are some pieces of info your welcome packet should include:
- Important dates for you team (such as the date of an event, training, and the start and end dates of your team fundraising campaign)
- Contact information (including contacts at your nonprofit and support@mightycause.com for technical help)
- Links to Mightycause’s Support library and any articles you think would be helpful
- An explanation of how team fundraising works, and what your team members are expected to do
- Important information and talking points about your campaign
- Logos and image assets to help team members create their pages
Formatting Your Welcome Packet
We’ve seen Welcome Packets done all sorts of ways at Mightycause! Some team organizers send a one-pager with the essential info, some just include it all in one email, some organize the information into a PDF, and some send an email with access to a Dropbox or other file-share with everything they will need to know.
Main Benefits
Most importantly, a Welcome Packet will help your team members feel prepared. It’s a better experience for your team if they feel confident and know they have the information they need to succeed. It’s important for them to have a good experience, because if it’s fun for them, they’ll likely come back to fundraise for you again. It lets them know that you’ve got their back and sets them up for fundraising success.
Team members may have lots of questions and feel a little lost at first, particularly if this is their first attempt at team fundraising. A Welcome Packet lets them know everything they need to know up front. And in addition to making your team members feel more confident by knowing they can find the answers they need in the Welcome Packet, it’ll save your inbox from lots of questions, too.
2. A Template
This is super easy, because it’s built into the team fundraising platform on Mightycause!
As team organizer, you can create a template for your team members’ pages. This means you can pre-fill certain fields of their page to help them get published more easily. When you’re setting up your team page, all you need to do is go to the Template section of your dashboard and fill out the fields. Using the template is totally optional, and they can change their page any time they’d like so it’s customized and personal. Some team members may want to build their page to make it personal, while others will just use the template you’ve provided for them.
3. Tips for Getting the Word Out
“Okay,” says your team member. “I’ve got my page created, it’s published … now what?!”
Share Fundraising Tips
Fundraising isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. It’s a skill that’s learned through practice. So, you’ll need to coach your team on how fundraising works and how they can start getting the word out to their social network about their fundraiser.
This is a great use of the Custom Tabs feature on your team page. But, you can also create a series of emails that help guide your team through everything they should be doing to get the word out during the campaign. This is an awesome way to keep team members engaged, and push them along in the fundraising process.
Sharing best practices and tips for a solid “ask” can be a huge help to your team members. Don’t leave them in the dark; guide the way with tips! We also have plenty of resources freely available in our Support library and our blog that could help your your fundraising team get started.
Share Templates
There are two types of team members, basically. One of them is social media-savvy and will have no problem finding creative ways to ask people to donate to their fundraiser. The other is less comfortable asking and will want you to tell them what to say. So, it’s a good idea to have a handful of templates at the ready. Even if your team members don’t want to copy-and-paste them, they can provide inspiration as people are putting together social media posts and emails about their campaigns.
Download the Team Fundraising Guide for More!
Need more tips for organizing, managing and running your team fundraising campaign? Download our free team fundraising ebook! In it, Mightycause’s fundraising experts share strategies that will make your team fundraising campaign a success.
