Inside the 2025 P2P Top 30

I appreciated that Natalie took pains to point out the growth in the sector, because the conventional wisdom about peer-to-peer fundraising is that the sector is stagnant. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’m sitting in on a growing number of strategy sessions during which the executives ask me what they should do about exiting peer-to-peer "because the sector isn’t working anymore.”

It’s a compelling narrative, but it’s wrong.

The overall gross revenue of the Top 30 has hovered around $1.5 billion for the last 20 years or so. But that total conceals a dramatic story of structural change. To see it, you have to look past the sum to see what’s happening inside the number.

The interactive chart above shows the Top 30 dataset on two tabs. The first tab, with the gray bars, shows the entire index. When you look at it, the sector truly does look stagnant.

However, on the second tab, I’ve split the Top 30 index into two groups: the “mega-decliners” and the remaining programs.

The “mega-decliners” are four once-mighty campaigns: Relay For Life, March for Babies, Race for the Cure, and the Komen 3-Day. In 2006, those four programs accounted for over half of the index’s total revenue. At one point, they reached over $800 million in total. Today, they bring in roughly $160 million. That’s a decline of about 80%.

The rest of the Top 30, however, has steadily grown and just hit an all-time high of $1.46 billion.

Said again: excluding a handful of once-dominant programs that declined sharply, the peer-to-peer Top 30 is at its all-time high. (Yes, those are nominal dollars, and yes, the membership of the index, like all indices, changes over time. I’ll address both of those dynamics in subsequent chapters to come in March.)

The growth has been hidden by a few enormous declines that drag the average down.

Like a forest fire that takes down some of the oldest growth and leaves room for a variety of young saplings, the sector isn’t flat. There is significant new growth, but it is offset by equally significant losses.

You can see it in the second chart above. It isn’t popular to say, I guess, because there’s very little public discourse about this. But there are once-larger organizations that made short-sighted decisions that absolutely gutted their communities. They took their supporters for granted, gutted the staff whom their supporters cared about, and rapidly destroyed the communities that did most of the heavy lifting.

If you reorganize and close all your local chapters — which might look great on a slide deck — who will support your participants? If you cut your field team and move them to a call center — which is a great idea for a one-year financial statement — who will build relationships? Who will know the name of your top fundraiser’s top five donors? Or their deceased relative who inspires their work? Or even the fundraiser’s name?

Relay for Life went from $438 million in 2008 to $62 million today. That’s an 86% decline. The Komen programs combined peaked above $240 million and now bring in about $34 million. March for Babies peaked at $116 million and now raises $24 million.

These organizations didn’t lose to a competitor. They didn’t get disrupted by technology. A few people at the top made management and branding decisions that showed a lack of respect for their field staff, partners, and communities – and so their communities left. (None of this, by the way, is intended as a criticism of the staff now currently at those programs, working hard to reinvent and retool. In almost every case, the senior executives responsible are long gone, and a new generation of leaders is working to rebuild.)

And so, when I hear, “We need to exit the sector because the sector is flat,” it concerns me on two fronts. First, the sector isn’t flat. It looks flat because of a few self-imposed implosions. And second, because the statement reminds me of exactly the kind of short-term thinking that leads to massive erosion in value.

If you are a fundraising professional concerned about your own peer-to-peer program, its value to your organization, and the overall health of the sector, one of the most important things you can do for your cause and your career is to learn how to manage upwards. The dynamics of peer-to-peer fundraising are still not well understood at the executive level of most organizations, nor is the fact that peer-to-peer is rooted in most development efforts. We have to be the ones to make the case.

Now let’s look at the other side of the ledger. Look at the organizations that have consistently invested in the community rather than cut it.