Peer-to-peer fundraising

From your setup to a completed donation, peer-to-peer fundraising follows these stages:

1. You create a P2P campaign in the Dashboard. The campaign sets the rules every page inherits — the occasions available, where donations are designated, the page defaults, and the checkout supporters see when they give.
2. You create a P2P Element — a button or a link tied to that campaign — and add it to your website or share the link by email and social.
3. A supporter clicks it and registers. Fundraise Up then creates their page, and they become a fundraiser. They pick how to fundraise during sign-up — raise money on their own, start a team, or join an existing team. A team has a shared goal and its own page. A member can have a page of their own as well, or raise money on the team page without one.
4. The fundraiser shares their page with friends, family, and their wider network.
5. People give on the page. A donation counts toward that page, a team member's donations also count toward the team's shared goal, and every donation counts toward the campaign total.

Your organization can also create fundraiser pages directly from the Dashboard, rather than waiting for supporters to sign up. See Manage P2P fundraisers →

A fundraiser page, where visitors can read the story, follow progress toward the goal, and donate

You handle setup and oversight from two sections of the Dashboard: P2P campaigns, where you create and configure campaigns, and P2P fundraisers, where you track, review, pause, and block the pages supporters create.

If a marketing agency or one person on your team runs peer-to-peer for you, you can give them Dashboard access that reaches peer-to-peer and nothing else. The role that grants it, P2P Specialist, covers P2P campaigns, P2P fundraisers, and the donations, recurring plans, and supporters that come from those campaigns. See User roles.

A supporter starts sign-up when they click a P2P Fundraisers Button or P2P Fundraisers Link on your website. The sign-up opens in a pop-up layered over your website, where the supporter:

• Chooses how to fundraise — an individual page, a new team, or joining an existing team.
• Picks an occasion from the options you set up, such as In honor or In memory. This step does not appear when you offer only one occasion, or when the Element the supporter came through has an occasion set on it.
• Adds a short story about their fundraiser, written themselves or drafted by AI.
• Names the page and adds a cover. The title is written from their story, and they can edit it or ask AI for another.
• Sets a goal and a target date. A supporter who starts a team sets two amounts on one screen — one for the team, one for their own fundraising — and a single date that covers both.
• Chooses a designation, if your campaign lets fundraisers pick one. Otherwise the campaign's designation applies automatically.
• Signs in to publish, with Google, Apple, or email. Email sign-in uses a one-time code, so there is no password. Sign in with Apple appears only if your organization has connected an Apple developer account.

The page goes live as soon as they sign in and can take donations right away.

From then on, the fundraiser manages everything from their own page. There they track progress, edit the page, share it through social channels or a QR code, post updates, thank the supporters who give, and donate to their own page. A fundraiser with more than one page reaches them all from Fundraiser Portal.

Fundraisers sign in at the end of registration to publish their page, and again every time they edit it, post an update, or thank a donor. The same sign-in screen serves your Donor Portal, and one setting in your Fundraise Up Dashboard controls both.

What a fundraiser sees depends on that setting:

• Email is always available. A fundraiser enters their address and receives a one-time code.
• Google appears on the sign-in screen.
• Apple appears only if your organization has connected an Apple developer account.

Until you connect your own Google account, the Google screen that asks fundraisers to share their name and email address shows the Fundraise Up name instead of your organization's. Fundraisers recruit friends and family who have never heard of Fundraise Up, so connect your own accounts before you promote a campaign.

Connecting an Apple account also covers fundraiser emails. Fundraisers who sign in with Apple can choose Hide My Email, and Apple then delivers page confirmations, donation notifications, and milestone emails only if your sending domain is registered with Apple. Registering it is part of connecting an Apple developer account.

A team has its own page and a shared goal. Everyone on the team — the supporter who created it and everyone who joins — chooses whether to have an individual page alongside the team page. The choice comes once the team page exists:

• Team page only — the supporter raises money on the team page. What they raise counts toward the team total and appears next to their name in the list of members on that page.
• Team and individual pages — the supporter gets a page of their own, with a title, story, and cover. Donations to it count toward the team total as well.

Someone who chose the team page only can add an individual page at any point afterward. Their name in the list of members then links to the new page, and the donations already credited to them appear on it.

Every member also sets a personal goal — an amount and a date of their own, separate from the team goal. Both fields are optional, and a member sets them whether or not they have an individual page.

When a supporter gives on a team page, they choose under Count this donation toward who the donation is credited to: the team, or one person on it. Anyone on the team can be chosen, with or without an individual page.

Fundraiser Portal lists every fundraising page a supporter has — a page of their own, a team page they started, and any pages from the earlier Fundraisers product. A fundraiser opens a peer-to-peer page from the list to edit it, share it, or post an update. For a Fundraisers page, View details opens that page in Donor Portal, where the fundraiser edits it and invites team members.

Supporters open Fundraiser Portal from My fundraisers in the left-side menu of Donor Portal. This item appears only for supporters who have at least one page.

Donor Portal and Fundraiser Portal use one sign-in, so a fundraiser can move between them without signing in again.

When someone opens a fundraiser's page, they see:

• The fundraiser's name, photo, and story.
• The amount raised so far, with a Donate button.
• An activity feed of donations as they arrive, with the comments supporters leave.
• Any updates the fundraiser has posted.
• Buttons to share the page.

When they click Donate, the Fundraise Up checkout opens, configured from the checkout settings on your P2P campaign.

Your organization can take an update or a comment off a fundraiser page. Visitors then see nothing in its place, and the donation behind a hidden comment stays in the activity feed. The fundraiser who runs the page is the only person who can see that something was hidden.

For how to review and hide this content, see Manage P2P fundraisers →

What a supporter sees when they donate on a fundraiser page

A P2P campaign can be available in more than one language. You choose the campaign languages when you set the campaign up, and you translate your own text there too. See Set up a P2P campaign →

What gets translated depends on who wrote the text:

• Buttons, labels, and messages that come from Fundraise Up are translated for you.
• Text that your organization writes, such as occasions and legal details, is translated by you. Anything that you leave untranslated appears in the campaign default language.
• Text that a fundraiser writes, such as their page title and story, always appears exactly as they typed it.

The sign-up form opens in the language that Fundraise Up detects for the visitor. If that language is not one that the campaign allows for pages, the form opens in the campaign default language.

When a supporter signs up, Fundraise Up sets the page language from the story that they wrote, as long as the campaign allows that language. The page then appears in that language to everyone who opens it, unlike the sign-up form, which follows each visitor's own language. If they skip the story, the page uses the campaign default language. If a fundraiser uses AI to write their story, AI writes in the language that they typed in.

When you create a page from the Dashboard, you choose the language yourself in the Interface language field. You can also change it later, which fundraisers cannot do. See Manage P2P fundraisers →

If you remove a language from the campaign, pages that already use it appear in the campaign default language instead.

Fundraisers separately choose the language that they see when they manage their page. That choice does not change the language of the public page.

Throughout a campaign, Fundraise Up sends emails automatically — to fundraisers, to the supporters who donate to their pages, and to your organization.

Fundraisers receive:

• A confirmation when their page is created, with a link to open it.
• A notification for each donation to their page.
• Goal milestone emails as their page passes 25%, 50%, and 75% of its goal, and a separate email when the page reaches its goal.
• A short series of tips and encouragement after they create their page.
• A welcome when they join a team as a member, and a notification to the team admin when a new member joins.
• A team invitation when a fundraiser admin invites them by email.
• Sign-in codes and links to get back into their page settings.
• A notification when your organization edits their page, with a list of what changed.
• A message from your organization when it pauses their page, if your organization chooses to send it.
• A notification when their page is live again after a pause.
• A message from your organization when it hides one of their updates, if your organization chooses to send it.
• A notification when a hidden update is back on their page.

Supporters who donate receive:

• A thank-you email from the fundraiser.
• A reply, when the fundraiser responds to their donation.
• Page updates, when the fundraiser posts one.
• Progress updates as the page passes its goal milestones, and a note when it reaches its goal.

Supporters also receive the standard donation emails your organization already sends.

Your organization receives:

• A notification when a supporter creates a new page.
• A notification when a fundraiser updates their page.
• A notification when a page reaches its goal.
• A message from a fundraiser who contacts you from a paused page.
• A notification when a comment on a fundraiser page needs urgent attention.

The notifications about a new page, an edited page, and a new update are sent once the automatic check of that content finishes, so each one arrives with the result of the check in it.

You can edit most of these emails and switch off the ones you would rather not send. Go to Settings > Emails: the emails to fundraisers are in P2P fundraisers, and the emails to the supporters who donate are in P2P supporters. The notifications to your organization are set elsewhere — each Dashboard user picks the ones they want under Settings > Notifications.

Peer-to-peer data has its own export type, P2P Fundraisers. The export includes the standard page details, plus columns for telling pages apart and reporting on teams:

• Is Team — whether the page is a team page.
• Team Fundraiser ID — for a team member's page, the team page it belongs to.
• Team Name and Member Count — for team pages.
• Donations Count — the number of donations to the page.
• Honoree Name — for memorial and tribute pages.
• Fundraiser Goal Date — the page's target date.
• Template Type — the occasion template: In honor, Memorial, or General. General covers the custom occasions your organization creates and names itself.
• Occasion Public Name — the name of the occasion the fundraiser chose at sign-up. Custom occasions all report as General under Template Type, so this column is what tells them apart — for example, Charity Run or Bike Ride.

Read the team columns together to see what each row is:

• A solo page has Is Team set to no and no Team Fundraiser ID.
• A team page has Is Team set to yes and no Team Fundraiser ID.
• A team member's page has Is Team set to no and a Team Fundraiser ID that points to its team page.

If you use built-in Fundraise Up integrations with CRMs, donations made through peer-to-peer pages sync to them along with the rest of your donations. Each one carries the fundraiser it was made to, so you can tell peer-to-peer donations apart and group them by fundraiser on the CRM side.

If your organization runs subaccounts, peer-to-peer fundraising follows the same rules as your regular campaigns. A P2P campaign belongs to the account you create it in, and so does every fundraiser page created under it, along with the donations made to those pages. To set up a campaign in a subaccount, switch to that subaccount first.

Nothing carries over from a parent account to a subaccount apart from payment settings, so each account sets up its own campaigns and page defaults. Designations and questions are the exception: a subaccount can use its own and the ones that belong to its parent account, and it can pick those but not change them.

A parent account can create a P2P Element that points at a subaccount campaign. Supporters who sign up through it get a page under that campaign, and both the page and its donations count for the subaccount. A subaccount can create Elements only for its own campaigns.

Amounts raised stay inside the account that owns the campaign.

For a combined figure, a parent account can include subaccount data in a P2P Fundraisers export.

Peer-to-peer fundraising is the current way to run supporter-driven fundraising in Fundraise Up. The earlier Fundraisers product stays available to organizations already using it. For new campaigns, use P2P campaigns.