Some people do this kind of thing for fun. Intrepid members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club swim in the Atlantic Ocean every Sunday from November to April. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 1903, the group has hosted a public plunge for New Year\u2019s Day, open to all brave souls. In 2019, they used the plunge to raise money for the Coney Island neighborhood and nonprofits that serve it. They raised more than $55,000!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The folks at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) haven\u2019t been jumping into the freezing ocean for 115 years, but they\u2019re quite established plungers, too. 2019 marked their 14th year jumping into the Potomac River to call attention to climate change and raise money for their programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2018, CCAN used CauseVox to raise $128,835 with their Polar Bear Plunge. In 2019, they got all the way to $145,131! Both years, they left their fundraising goals in the dust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Both the Coney Island Polar Bear Club and CCAN followed some best polar plunge practices to make their plunges so successful. You can, too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s how to run your very own polar plunge:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before you jump into the (frozen) fundraising water, you\u2019ll need to make a plan. The difference between a bunch of chilly wet people on a beach and a fantastic fundraising force lies in the way you plan, run, and support your campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike a polar plunge, fundraising with an online platform should feel like swimming through warm, quiet water. Easy, pleasant, and not-frustrating. If your fundraising platform is needlessly complicating your fundraising, eating up all your time, and in general just being a pain in the neck, it\u2019s time to switch to something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Kelly McLaughlin took on running CCAN\u2019s Polar Bear Plunge, she did her research. She found that in previous years, staff had spent the majority of their time wrestling with clunky software, not helping fundraisers raise more. She knew she needed a fundraising platform for the plunge that would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also wanted to be able to customize fields, automate some functions, and to know that if she needed help, customer support would be there for her. She chose CauseVox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe ease of use of CauseVox and quick response, whenever we needed help, was really great and it made coming over to [CauseVox] a really obvious, easy choice,\u201d she told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does your polar plunge registration process work? Are you chasing down waivers, and getting buried under t-shirt order forms? Do participants need to fill out a mountain of paperwork at the event? Time to streamline!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tackling liability, safety issues, and rewards are important, but they\u2019re not fundraising. Free up your time by combining as many processes as possible into one place, your fundraising platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Coney Island Polar Bears made it possible to register for the event, fill out a liability waiver, and make a personal fundraising page, all on CauseVox. Participants could easily complete everything before the plunge and focus on fundraising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n CCAN also ran registration, fundraising, and waivers through their CauseVox page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They even used CauseVox\u2019s easily customizable fields<\/a> to add t-shirt sizes directly into their registration form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fewer forms, less paper to chase, and an easier time for everyone. Streamlining makes life easier for nonprofits, as well as participants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of tracking data in several different applications, CauseVox lets you manage and support your participants and teams through a single event dashboard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can check in on individual campaigns, manage registration, and process donations quickly and simply. You can even personalize and automate registration confirmations and donation receipts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why are we freeing up all this time from unnecessary admin tasks? So you can spend more time doing the important things: connecting with your fundraisers and donors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Freed up from the hassle of uncooperative software, Kelly was able to devote her time to helping her plungers fundraise. When she surveyed other peer-to-peer fundraising<\/a> professionals, she got a solid piece of advice: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are two strategies to grow your p2p event, and that\u2019s to get more people to fundraise for you OR get the same people to fundraise smarter for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly says, \u201cThat was my big \u201caha\u201d moment. Looking back at CCAN\u2019s materials, I realized they were going for quantity, and that was having diminishing returns as we maxed out the number of folks willing to jump into freezing water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So instead of trying to attract more and more new fundraisers, she decided to help her existing plungers turn into fundraising superstars. \u201cI needed to add the quality,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cI put together a fundraising guide and toolkit. We did webinars, I did calls with fundraising teams. Basically, we were empowering people to fundraise better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly had time to create tools and resources for plungers, send weekly coaching emails, and share fundraising tips because she wasn\u2019t spending her time re-entering data or fighting with her fundraising software. It paid off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of our staff members who raised $300 the year before raised nearly $2,000 the next year, just by following our fundraising guide,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cA first-year fundraiser raised $1,000, and when I reached out to her to ask what she did, she said, \u2018I just did what you told me to do. It worked!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Kelly, you can help your fundraisers raise more by providing them with a toolkit <\/a>and support. Make sure they have your contact information in case they have questions and keep in touch throughout the campaign. Make them feel like part of the team, long before they jump in the water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A peer to peer campaign that starts online but ends with a big in-person event holds many opportunities to build excitement. Keep your peer to peer fundraisers engaged throughout the campaign by celebrating every time you reach a milestone, and keeping them up to date on the campaign\u2019s progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Showing how donations will make an impact is an important part of getting donors and fundraisers excited. Connect your fundraising milestones to real-life impact and human stories to inspire your community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep building the momentum with: <\/p>\n\n\n\n After everyone\u2019s come out of the water and started sipping their hot cocoa, the work isn\u2019t done. A solid follow-up strategy will help you keep the goodwill going, and start building a strong base for next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An event as wild as jumping into an icy body of water shouldn\u2019t come with a boring thank you letter! Include pictures and videos from the event in your acknowledgments to remind everyone just how cool (sorry) your event was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly used emails she\u2019d written ahead of time, adding the final information after the plunge. She sent one to each plunger, thanking them for plunging, reminding them what they raised, and sharing photos from the events. She also included template text for them to send to their donors, along with a photo or video of them plunging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Peer-to-peer events rely on supporters reaching out to their social networks. This enables your nonprofit to extend its reach and connect with people you might not have otherwise come in contact with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It also means that most of these new donors are most connected with the peer to peer fundraiser whose campaign they gave to, rather than your organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This isn\u2019t necessarily bad. It just means you have to approach donor retention from a different perspective and focus more on retaining your peer to peer fundraisers than the donors they brought in. Kelly puts it like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe really saw the donor retention strategy more as focused on plunger retention. If we could retain more of our plungers, we\u2019d by default retain more of our donors. If my aunt gives to my plunge but doesn\u2019t care about the organization, and then I don\u2019t do it, you lose my aunt…but if I do it for 5 years, you better believe my aunt is gonna donate all 5 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, you should still offer donors a chance to get to know your organization. They may come to support you on their own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As well as thanking them for their donation, and reminding them whose campaign they supported, include information about your mission and a way for them to get involved, like signing up for your email newsletter, or following your social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Event Planning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fundraising Planning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"polar-plunge-coney-island\"](\"https:\/\/causevox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/coney-island-campaign.png\")
![\"ccan-polar-plunge\"](\"https:\/\/causevox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/polar-bear-plunge-2.png\")
How To Run A Polar Plunge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Don\u2019t Let Your Fundraising Platform Sink You<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. Streamline Your Processes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"polar-plunge-registration-details\"](\"https:\/\/causevox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/coney-island-updates.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n3. Help Your Fundraisers Raise More<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"polar-plunge-toolkit\"](\"https:\/\/causevox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/ccan-resources-1.png\")
4. Make It Exciting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5. Follow Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Polar Plunge Checklist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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