• “Thons” - whether it’s a walk-a-thon, bike-a-thon or read-a-thon, “thons” are the classic example of a P2P event. A great example and fun spin on this is The Birds Canada Birdathon® where participants invite family and friends to support birds and try birding.
• Scavenger hunt: these can take a little more time to plan but provide ample opportunity to tie things back to your organization’s mission. A scavenger hunt could involve several locations participant teams need to reach and a signup fee that goes towards fundraising.
• Awareness Campaigns: You could run a 24-hour writing or social media campaign where supporters help spread the message and raise awareness for your cause. A famous example of an awareness campaign is Movember, which sees participants grow a moustache in support of men’s health.
• Event - you could run a virtual or in-person event, be it a guided walking tour or a private party, where your top supporters or Board Members invite their peers and fundraise competitively. The Paralympic Foundation of Canada runs an annual ParaTough Cup challenge for teams to compete in Parasport to raise awareness and funds to support the Paralympic movement.

At the end of the day, P2P possibilities are endless. The main thing to keep in mind is an activity in which many donors can get involved, anything from knitting to basketball could work as a P2P event.

There are many pieces to running a P2P Event and other events tools may not be tailored to peer-to-peer fundraising so it’s important to choose the right platform. The CanadaHelps tool emphasizes:

• Simple signup and high-impact pages so you can easily create a seamless brand experience for your signup and campaign pages.
• Event Management features to help you keep your fundraisers engaged with reminders, tips and more
• Dynamic Content such as progress bars, supporter walls and team rosters so that supporters can share their fundraising efforts
• Charity-specific features: Automatic tax receipts and the ability for users to increase their donation amount

Getting Your P2P Event up on the platform takes just minutes

1. Login to your Charity Account and click on the “P2P” tab
2. Click on the ‘Create a New P2P Campaign’ button in the top right
3. You will find 6 tabs where all edits to your P2P campaign can be made

• Campaign Details - campaign name, dates, description, language settings, access settings and team options
• Participant Pages - set-up defaults for your participants such as goals, page images, description and shareable resources
• Media Gallery - add images or videos to appear on your page
• Page Visuals - choose a page header and colours to stay on brand
• Donation Presets - add suggested donation amounts and add an impact statement
• Custom Signup - add custom fields for participant signup or choose to simplify the signup process

4. Save your P2P Event and use the HTML to embed the form or add a button that links to your newly created P2P Event URL

You can edit, manage or view any of your P2P events at any time by clicking on these options from the P2P main page next to your campaign’s details. You will also be able to grab the code for embedding the P2P event directly to your website. 

Under “Manage,” you will see 4 tabs. All of the information shown will reflect the real-time progress of your campaign. We recommend checking in often to see your progress and see whether adjustments need to be made to reach your goals.

• Reports - See an overview of your fundraising goal, number of signups and teams. If you set up tags or had custom questions, you can download the reports here. Download .CSV reports of information about all your Teams, participants and donations made to the campaign
• Teams - Invite “Team Captains,” suspend or delete teams if needed
• Participants - Invite “Participants,” approve or deny participants, suspend or delete participants and move participants from team to team if they’ve joined the wrong team
• Donations - view all donations made through the P2P campaign and record any offline donations to keep your fundraising progress up-to-date

You can also send messages to Teams, Participants or Donors from the respective tabs. You can choose whether to send messages to Team Captains only, active participants or individual donors. You can also download contact information and plug it into your usual email platform. 

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