Top 10 U.S. peer‐to‐peer fundraising events 2019

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30754
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020

MAY 2020 NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR

3

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

DOI: 10.1002/nba

charities are increasingly looking for multiple events

engaging a variety of audiences and donor types. The

most notable example of this, as noted earlier, is the

American Cancer Society’s overhauling of its Relay

for Life program. In 2019, the organization reduced

the number of Relay for Life events by more than

300. It is still a large event by any measure—some

2,200 events were held in 2019—but the reduction

in resources devoted to Relay for Life has meant

greater attention and success with the ACS’s other

campaigns, such as Making Strides for Breast Cancer,

another top 30 campaign that posted revenue gains

in 2019.

Branching out by adding events and changing

event types is likely to continue to catch on among

the nation’s charities, especially as the COVID-19

pandemic wreaks havoc on fundraising event sched-

ules, Hessekiel said.

“The current crisis is another object lesson in the

importance of taking a portfolio approach to peer-

to-peer fundraising. By having a variety of types of

programs (traditional walks, virtual events, streaming

video P2P, birthday campaigns, etc.), when a problem

strikes one element hard, there are other areas that

may still function well.”

For more information, the Peer-to-Peer Fund-

raising Thirty can be found online at https://www.

peertopeerforum.com. ■

Top 10 U.S. peer-to-peer

fundraising events 2019

According to the Peer-to-Peer Professional

Forum, the top 10 American P2P fundraising

programs by total gross revenue in 2019 were:

1) Relay for Life—The American Cancer Society:

$161.4 million (–12.7%)

2) The Heart Walk—The American Heart As-

sociation: $132.4 million (+7.9%)

3) The Walk to End Alzheimer’s—The Alzheim-

er’s Association: $98.0 million (+1.2%)

4) Light the Night Walk—The Leukemia &

Lymphoma Society: $80.0 million (+4.0%)

5) American Heart Association Youth Pro-

grams—The American Heart Association:

$74.3 million (–11.9%)

6) The Pan-Mass Challenge: $70.0 million

(+18.1%)

7) Bike MS—The National MS Society: $65.5

million (+.01%)

8) Making Strides Against Breast Cancer—The

American Cancer Society: $64.6 million

(+1.7%)

9) The JDRF One Walk—The Juvenile Diabetes

Research Foundation: $62.2 million (–1.7%)

10) The March for Babies—The March of Dimes:

$48.9 million (–22.4%). ■

• Expand diversity, equity and inclusion policies

and programming initiatives to explicitly condemn

hate activity.

• Align donor agreements with existing hate-free and

antidiscrimination policies that govern other activities.

• Adopt policies and establish best practices to

guide peer institutions such as family foundations,

religious and faith-based charities and commercially

backed charities.

Other recommendations involve broader-based

actions encompassing a wider array of stakeholders.

For example:

• Learn from other sectors. Because the questions

facing philanthropy are not unique, the report said,

the sector should engage in shared-learning models

concerning hate-funding and screening from related

and parallel sectors, such as social media, banking,

the media and internet service providers.

• Support cross-sector collaboration. According to

the report, philanthropy leaders should support the

development of resources and tools such as university

research collaborations, software products and public

education materials to help foundations and their

stakeholders mitigate the problem of hate-funding.

• Establish variance power standards. Because pre-

venting and stopping hate-funding in philanthropy

will likely trigger questions about donor intent, the

report said, sector leaders should convene research

and public education initiatives to clarify the current

state of practice on variance powers and DAFs.

• Fund research in DAFs broadly. The sector

should support think tanks, scholars and inde-

pendent journalists that are exploring the impact

of DAFs on the philanthropic landscape.

For more information on these and other ways that

philanthropic groups can address the funding of hate

groups, the full report is available online at https://

bit.ly/3aoKfLZ. ■

HATE (continued from page 1)