Your guide to fundraising campaign types on GoFundMe Pro

Thousands of leading nonprofit organizations trust GoFundMe Pro to power their online fundraising. Once onboarded, the next step is choosing the right campaign type for your first—and future—fundraising efforts.

Below, we provide a breakdown of GoFundMe Pro’s trusted campaign types, their specific use cases, calls to action, and added value to your fundraising strategy. You’ll also see how GoFundMe’s unparalleled scale and intelligence can help take your campaigns even further.

GoFundMe Pro campaign types to consider

Every organization has unique fundraising ideas, goals, and ways of engaging supporters, which is why the right nonprofit fundraising campaign can make all the difference.

Using a mix of campaign types throughout the year helps diversify your revenue streams and connect with different target audiences. While each campaign may serve a distinct purpose, they all work toward the same powerful outcome: fueling your mission.

Direct giving

Direct giving campaigns enable supporters to give to your organization through an online donation page or form. This can include one-time gifts, crowdfunding-style campaigns with storytelling elements, and recurring donations. These campaigns are ideal for year-round fundraising and appeals that don’t require peer involvement.

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer campaigns empower supporters to fundraise on your behalf by creating fundraising pages to share with friends and family. This campaign type expands your reach through personal networks, builds community engagement, and is customizable for specific events, challenges, or giving days.

Events

Event campaigns help you raise funds tied to in-person, virtual, or hybrid events, such as galas, 5K charity runs, auctions, or livestreams. They combine ticketing, fundraising, and engagement tools to create a branded experience for attendees while supporting your fundraising goals.

When is the right time to leverage each campaign type?

Choosing the right campaign starts with clearly defined goals. Once you know what you want to achieve, you can select the format that offers the most effective path.

Aligning your strategy with the right campaign type keeps your fundraising focused and impactful.

Ideal scenarios for direct giving

Direct giving is a strong choice when your goal is to drive immediate donations from your existing audience. It helps you to deliver a clear, focused message directly from your organization, making it ideal for evergreen fundraising, urgent appeals, or time-bound campaigns where you want to control the narrative.

Giving directly from your website

A donation form is the most straightforward direct giving type, offering a way for supporters to give everything from major gifts to small donations directly to your organization without distraction. It’s often the evergreen destination linked from your website’s main donate button or featured in calls to action across your emails, social media posts, and other marketing communications.

Whether you want to drive one-time gifts or build a base of recurring donors, an optimized donation form is essential to sustaining successful fundraising efforts.

How to maximize your donation form with GoFundMe Pro

With embedded donation forms on Campaign Studio, you can offer existing and new donors a seamless giving experience without ever leaving your website. The tested, high-converting checkout flow requires no-code updates and loads in 0.3 seconds. You can also customize the form’s design to match your brand for a more personalized feel.

To further boost conversions, GoFundMe Pro donation forms include:

• Intelligent Ask Amounts that provides personalized donation amounts to each donor based on a combination of session data, nonprofit data, GoFundMe platform data, and third-party census and population data.
• Built-in nudges, prompts, and reminders that guide supporters toward completing their donations.
• Preferred payment methods that ensure a smooth experience for every donor.

Our internal fundraising platform testing has shown a 28% lift in revenue per site visitor with embedded giving enabled. Not only does it drive the highest conversion, but it also offers a better donor experience on mobile, automatically adjusting to different screen sizes and devices.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding campaigns go beyond a simple ask—they give you the space to tell your story, educate potential donors about your mission, and inspire them to give.

Unlike stand-alone donation forms, these online fundraising campaign pages often include more context, imagery, and storytelling elements to create a deeper connection with your audience. They’re ideal for time-bound goals, specific initiatives, or moments when you want to highlight impact while still driving one-time or recurring donations.

How to maximize your crowdfunding campaign with GoFundMe Pro

With Campaign Studio on GoFundMe Pro, you can:

• Build beautiful, high-performing crowdfunding pages using a drag-and-drop editor—no technical experience required.
• Enjoy lightning-fast page load times and built-in SEO tools to increase discoverability.
• Include real-time progress tracking to keep supporters motivated and engaged.
• Highlight matching gift programs and opportunities to help you increase momentum.
• Leverage Intelligent Ask Amounts to tailor suggested donation amounts for each visitor.
• Take advantage of our prebuilt layouts and customizable branding to make it easy to create a cohesive, engaging experience.
• Enable interactive features like donor comments, reactions, and activity feeds to help build social proof and urgency.
• Enhance your visual storytelling and likelihood of conversion with impact tiles, preferred payment methods, and our native Giving Cart solution.

Additionally, claiming your Nonprofit Page on GoFundMe connects your organization to a community of nearly 200 million potential supporters. Once your page is verified, it becomes easier for people to discover your cause and contribute to it directly, expanding your reach and increasing your visibility within the platform.

Recurring giving

While you can include a recurring option on your main donation form or page, creating a dedicated recurring giving campaign can be especially effective during membership drives or seasons focused on monthly giving.

How to maximize your GoFundMe Pro recurring giving campaign

Recurring campaign pages built with Studio offer all the same customization and performance features listed above—like personalized branding, Intelligent Ask Amounts, and prebuilt layouts—plus a few tools tailored specifically for sustaining donor relationships.

You can customize donation receipts, invite supporters to manage their recurring gifts, and receive notifications of failed payments so you can quickly follow up.

Whether building a formal membership program or encouraging consistent support, a recurring donation page makes it easy to grow your monthly donor community and keep your mission moving forward year-round.

Ideal scenarios for peer-to-peer

Launching a peer-to-peer campaign is a strategic choice when you want to expand your reach, raise awareness of your cause, and activate your community to fundraise on your behalf. Unlike direct giving, which relies on your organization making the ask, peer-to-peer campaigns empower supporters to tell their stories and rally donations from their personal networks.

As giving behaviors shift, we see more individuals place their trust in peers to help guide their donation decisions. That means it’s more important than ever to equip your supporters with tools to champion your cause and invite their communities to get involved.

How to maximize peer-to-peer fundraising with GoFundMe Pro

GoFundMe Pro is purpose-built to help your organization mobilize supporters and maximize the impact of your peer-to-peer campaigns. Here’s how it empowers your community to fundraise more effectively:

• Multichannel reach: Extend your campaign’s visibility across GoFundMe, your organization’s website, streaming platforms, email, and social media so supporters can champion your cause wherever they engage with their networks.
• Consistent, professional branding: Ensure every supporter’s fundraising page reflects your organization’s identity with cohesive branding, messaging, and imagery.
• Mobile-first payments: Provide a fast, intuitive checkout optimized for mobile so supporters can give in seconds, boosting conversion rates by removing barriers.
• Data-driven stewardship: Access supporter insights and performance data to inform how you recognize, coach, and re-engage supporters throughout your campaign, fueling healthy retention rates.
• Seamless supporter activation: Help supporters launch fundraisers for birthdays, other personal milestones, or whenever they feel inspired with one-click creation on GoFundMe.
• Built-in fundraising coaching: Give supporters the tools to succeed with built-in tips and prompts that help them tell their stories, engage their networks, and raise more.
• Motivational fundraising tools: Activate friendly competition and momentum with real-time leaderboards and fundraising thermometers that track progress and fuel excitement.
• Easy sharing tools: Expand your reach with integrated social and text-sharing features that help supporters spread the word quickly and widely.

Ideal scenarios for fundraising events

Launch a fundraising event when you want to bring your community members together—whether in person, online, or both—for a shared experience that drives deeper engagement and giving. Events are ideal for rallying supporters around a period of time, celebrating milestones, or creating a sense of urgency and excitement.

Ticketed events

A ticketed event is the right choice when hosting a gathering where admission adds value, such as a gala, benefit concert, art gallery, or fundraising dinner. These events offer a unique opportunity to raise funds while delivering a memorable experience to your supporters.

By selling tickets, you not only generate revenue up front but also signal the value of the event, helping drive attendance and engagement.

How to maximize your ticketed event using GoFundMe Pro

Live Events, our suite of in-person, online, and hybrid fundraising event tools, simplifies the admin and attendee experience with:

• Flexible ticketing options: Customize ticket types to fit your audience and event goals—create VIP packages, sponsor tickets, virtual attendee options, and more. You can use discount codes to incentivize early registration or reward key supporters.
• Secure, reliable transactions: Host your event with confidence, knowing that all transactions get protected by Level 1 PCI-compliant security and SSL encryption, built on Amazon Web Services for maximum reliability and data protection.
• Tailored registration experience: Personalize the ticketing and registration flow to meet the needs of your audience. You can collect relevant information, offer donor-friendly checkout options, and ensure a smooth, branded experience from start to finish.

Registration with fundraising events

A registration with fundraising campaign combines event participation with peer-to-peer fundraising, allowing attendees to either purchase a registration or commit to raising funds on behalf of your organization—or both.

This campaign type is ideal for races, athletic challenges, and endurance events, like a walk-a-thon, where participants often engage their personal networks to support their efforts. It’s a powerful way to deepen involvement, expand reach, and boost fundraising success by turning each registrant into an advocate for your nonprofit’s mission.

Use this format when you want to maximize participation while empowering supporters to raise additional funds beyond their individual contributions.

How to maximize your registration with fundraising event using GoFundMe Pro

GoFundMe Pro simplifies every step of your fundraising event, from setup to success. Here’s how:

• Launch personal and team fundraising pages in minutes: Attendees can easily create and customize fundraising pages, whether signing up individually or as part of a team. These mobile-optimized pages are accessible on any device, making it simple for supporters to get started and stay involved.
• Boost fundraising through built-in sharing tools: Supporters can quickly share their pages via text or social media with prefilled messages and links—no copying and pasting required. These streamlined sharing options help spread the word and bring in more donations effortlessly.
• Keep supporters motivated with automated milestone emails: Participants automatically receive celebration emails from GoFundMe to keep the momentum going after they reach key fundraising goals. These personalized touches encourage continued engagement and help sustain fundraising energy through event day.

Your next great campaign starts here

No matter which campaign type you choose—whether a traditional donation page, ticketed event, or peer-to-peer fundraising—GoFundMe Pro accommodates your goals and makes every fundraising experience easier and more effective.

We’re constantly improving the platform based on real user behavior and data. Visit our Research Hub to see how we use insights to evolve our tools and enhance the donor and supporter experience. Plus, check out our Inspiration Hub for examples of how other organizations bring their campaigns to life with Campaign Studio.

Copy editor: Ayanna Julien