Peer-to-Peer Fundraising: How Rare Disease Communities Can Drive Impact

Rare disease communities are uniquely positioned for peer-to-peer fundraising (P2P). Families, patients, and advocates are already sharing your mission through personal stories and they have deep levels of trust with their networks.

P2P builds upon the strengths of your community and gives them a clear path to act. It turns informal support into organized campaigns, expanding your reach to expand your network of donors. For small teams, this is a game changer: your community multiplies your impact.

What Is Peer-to-Peer Fundraising?

Peer-to-peer fundraising is a community-driven campaign that invites your supporters to actively fundraise on behalf of your mission. Your "Captains" create personal fundraising pages, lead their own teams, share their stories, and invite their networks to donate to your mission. 

As supporters tell their stories and reach out to their own networks, your impact grows far beyond your immediate audience. You’re not just raising funds, you’re building a community of people who care deeply about your cause and are motivated to take action.

The Two Main Campaign Types

Rare Impact designs two types of custom peer-to-peer campaigns:

1. Digital Campaigns – Time-bound campaigns where supporters create personal fundraising pages and share them with their networks. Momentum grows through personal stories and shared social media posts that reach people’s networks and invite them to your cause. Often these are run for awareness days, giving challenges, Rare Disease Day, and more.

2. Event-Based Campaigns – Community-driven events like 5Ks, walk/run/rolls, or golf or pickleball tournaments. Supporters step into leadership roles as team Captains, rallying their networks to participate in the event, and donate. Events occur on the same day/weekend in neighborhoods around the globe, multiplying their impact.

Both approaches channel your community’s energy into meaningful action and new funds raised.

Rare Impact Peer to Peer Fundraising Support

We know that when you give your community all of the easy-to-use tools and templates, peer-to-peer fundraising becomes more effective and more joyful.

Our team is here to make P2P as easy as possible by designing custom campaigns for our clients. In our packages, we provide:

• campaign strategy and concrete guidelines
• theme + unique campaign design
• email templates for you and your Captains
• toolkits for you and your Captains
• customizable social media graphic templates, and 
• tons of resources for how to transform first-time donors into long-time supporters. 

Are you ready to ignite your community and invite new members into your cause?

Join Us: A Free P2P Training for Rare Disease Foundations

We are sharing our P2P strategy in a free, live webinar designed specifically for rare disease foundations.

Turn Community Passion into Fundraising Power: The P2P Playbook for Rare Disease Foundations

In this 60-minute session, we will walk through:

• What a peer-to-peer campaign looks like from start to finish
• How to find and support strong campaign captains
• How matching gifts create momentum and urgency
• How to keep your community engaged before, during, and after your campaign
• How to turn new donors into long-term supporters

This is a practical, step-by-step look at how these campaigns actually work.

We will also save time for your questions at the end.

Save your spot here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/F9ynhdceRFWJMgMLCsgalA 

Can’t make the live session? Register and we will send you the recording.