How your fundraisers' friends become your donors

Behind every fundraising page is someone asking friends, family and colleagues to support your organisation. That trust brings in people you would never have reached yourself. With the right follow-up in the first three months, their gift for a friend grows into a bond with your organisation.

The fundraising weekend is over. The counter on the campaign page reads €12,400. Thirty-eight people ran, cycled or baked cakes for your organisation, and your inbox is filling up with thank-you notes and photos.

Behind that amount are a few hundred givers. Most of them had never heard of your organisation a week ago. They gave because a colleague or a neighbour asked them to.

Peer-to-peer reaches people you can't reach on your own

In peer-to-peer fundraising, your supporters create their own fundraising page and ask their network to give. A marathon, a birthday or a quiz night in the parish hall: the format matters little. What counts is that the request comes from someone the giver knows and trusts.

That brings in new names. GoFundMe Pro and GivingTuesday analysed the donations on their American platform between 2022 and 2025. In peer-to-peer campaigns, 77 percent of donors were new to the organisation. For other campaigns, that figure was 56 percent. Around four in ten first gifts came in through a peer-to-peer campaign.

Smaller organisations benefit too. A school raising money for a new classroom often collects modest amounts from parents and grandparents. Along the way, it gets to know a circle of people it would never have reached with a traditional mailing.

You have 90 days for a second gift

The same study also shows the other side. Peer-to-peer donors are most likely to give a second time within the first 90 days. After that, their chance of giving again drops below that of donors from other channels. Only 0.4 percent of them start a recurring gift.

That makes sense. Someone who gives for a friend's marathon is first and foremost supporting that friend. The bond with your organisation still has to grow, and that only happens if you take the initiative.

If you do nothing, you have paid for the campaign without the long-term return. Your team spent weeks preparing, you paid for the fundraising platform and your fundraisers asked all their friends to give. A few months later, most of the new donors have stopped giving.

Where follow-up gets stuck

In many organisations, the data stays in the fundraising platform after the campaign. Someone makes an export, puts it in Excel, checks which givers are already known and adds the rest to the CRM by hand. By the time the list is ready, five or six weeks have gone by.

The delay happens between systems. The fundraising platform already knows about the gift, your CRM does not yet, and a user has to bring the two together by hand. That work gets pushed to the next busy week, and meanwhile the weeks go by.

How Fundflow and Koalect work together

Fundflow is a fundraising CRM with a direct connection to Koalect, the platform for online giving and peer-to-peer campaigns that has been part of RaiseNow since 2023. Koalect handles the campaign pages and online payments. Fundflow takes over the follow-up.

A gift made through Koalect lands in Fundflow automatically, linked to the donor's profile and to the right campaign. If that person was already known, you immediately see their previous gifts. Fundflow also automatically marks the donor as a peer-to-peer donor. Nobody has to keep track of that by hand.

This lets you select all donors from that campaign shortly after it ends. You can split them into first-time givers and people who supported you before, or pull out those who also volunteer. Each group gets its own message.

A follow-up plan for the first three months

Once the data is in the right place, follow-up becomes a matter of planning. In the first week, send a thank-you email from your organisation that mentions the fundraiser by name. That way, the donor understands why they are hearing from you.

After a month, show what the campaign achieved, such as the classroom that will be built or the research that can start. A concrete story works better here than a general newsletter.

Within 90 days, make a second ask with a low threshold. According to the GoFundMe Pro and GivingTuesday study, a lower suggested monthly amount can increase revenue from peer-to-peer donors by more than 30 percent. Five euros a month by SEPA direct debit is a smaller step for many people than a second gift of fifty euros.

Don't forget your fundraisers either. They brought in the new donors and may well be at the starting line again next year. A personal thank-you and an early invitation to the next edition make that more likely.

Preparing your next campaign

In a short Teams call, we look together at how your fundraising platform and your donor data work together today, and at what you need to follow up with the donors from your next campaign within 90 days.

Book a free call

Sources
GoFundMe Pro and GivingTuesday, Trends, Insights, and Opportunities: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising (2026)
RaiseNow, Koalect and RaiseNow join forces (2023)