Fundraising with Bonfire and Classy

How to Use Bonfire with Your Classy Peer-to-Peer Fundraiser

Peer-to-peer fundraising is one of the most powerful fundraising methods for nonprofits that give individuals the opportunity to raise money on behalf of your organization. If your nonprofit is already using Classy, you’re likely familiar with the power of peer-to-peer fundraising, and we’re here to show you how our Bonfire + Classy Integration can help you amplify that power even more!

What is Bonfire? 

Bonfire is a free online platform where anyone can sell shirts online, fundraise for a good cause, or simply order custom-printed products directly. With our peer-to-peer fundraising feature and integration with Classy, your nonprofit can run a peer-to-peer fundraiser on Bonfire AND Classy at the same time.

Peer-to-Peer Events
Enhance your organization’s events by empowering your community to launch apparel-based fundraisers on your behalf. Learn More

How Do Bonfire and Classy Work Together?

The Bonfire + Classy integration creates a seamless fundraising experience across the two platforms.

Team captains can easily connect their Bonfire campaigns to their Classy campaigns so their sales show up on their donor feed. To create a seamless fundraising experience across the platforms, all of the donor data collected on Bonfire is automatically synced to your Classy account so you never have to worry about fragmented data. Plus, all of the money raised from their shirt sales is sent directly to your organization.

How to Set Up the Classy Integration

Once you’ve started your peer-to-peer fundraiser on Classy, you need to connect your Bonfire and Classy accounts. At that point, team captains and supporters can connect their Bonfire peer-to-peer fundraiser with their Classy campaigns. 

1. Verify your nonprofit
If you haven’t already, verify your organization on Bonfire so you can utilize our complete set of fundraising features for nonprofits and then request access to the Classy integration

2. Enable the Classy integration
Go to the Account section in your Dashboard, click the “Integrations” tab, and there you’ll see the option to connect your Classy account.

3. Connect your accounts
Finally, connect your Classy account to Bonfire and select the specific Classy campaigns you want to make available for connection. 

Create Your Design

Once your organization is all set up on Bonfire and you’ve enabled the integration, create a t-shirt design for your team captains to customize with their team name or phrase. If you already have a logo or design for your peer-to-peer campaign, you can re-use it here. Or, if you want something more unique, you can work with our custom design team to create something created that fits your needs.

Notify & Prepare Your Supporters

Now that your organization is all set up on Bonfire and you have your design, it’s time to let your team captains and supporters know about this great opportunity to sell custom t-shirts and sweatshirts alongside their Classy campaigns. Let them know how they can get started, where they can get the design for their shirt, and how they can connect their Bonfire campaign to their Classy campaign. 

You can also provide your supporters with a t-shirt fundraising toolkit to help them to run a successful fundraising campaign. In our experience, a useful toolkit should contain:

  • All of your brand logos, graphics and slogans, and mission statements.
  • Photos and videos that they can use to enhance their fundraising pages and in any promotions.
  • The official t-shirt design team that captains should be using on their shirts
  • Social media and email templates that they can copy and paste from to use in their promotional efforts.
  • Guides and resources that help them know how to run a successful peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

Don’t forget to encourage your supporters to link to their Bonfire campaigns from their Classy campaigns! This way, anyone coming to the Classy page can easily navigate to the fundraiser on Bonfire. 

During the Campaign

Keep your community engaged and spread awareness about your cause by sharing content and fundraising updates throughout your campaign.

  • Share the story behind your cause and why people should start their own teams to fundraise for your organization
  • Send an email to your community to inform them about the campaign. As time goes on, update your audience on the progress of the campaign and how close you are to reaching your goals. This information can be found in your Bonfire Dashboard.
  • Promote some of your favorite designs that supporters have created for their campaigns on social and email. This can encourage your community to get more involved if they haven’t already and create more on your behalf.
  • Instagram and Facebook are great platforms to utilize. Don’t forget about Facebook Live and Instagram Stories; they are a quick and easy way to post all about the fundraising opportunities!
  • Promote “weekly winners” who have sold the most shirts or raised the most money.

Check out our promotional guides to learn everything you need to know about promoting your campaigns.

After the Campaign Ends

As your supporters’ t-shirt campaigns begin to end on Bonfire, it’s time to start thanking everyone who participated and request your payout of all the money they raised. To make things as easy as possible, we’ve made it possible for you to do both of these things from your Bonfire Dashboard.

Thank Your Supporters

To thank everyone who launched a campaign on behalf of your organization, go to the “Giving campaigns” tab in the Campaign section of your Bonfire Dashboard and select the campaign you want to message. Then click the button that says “❤️ Send a thank you note”, write your message and click send! This is a quick and easy way to make sure your supporters feel the love from you and your organization.

Use your Bonfire Dashboard to send a thank you note to everyone who launched a t-shirt fundraiser on behalf of your organization.

Another way to show your supporters love is to publicly praise the top fundraising teams and designs! When sending out that final email or creating a social media post to announce the final amount raised, give a little shout-out to those campaigns that sold the most shirts, raised the most money, or just had awesome designs!

Request Your Payouts

You can view and request payouts in the Payouts section of your Bonfire Dashboard. You will be able to see payouts from Campaigns created and owned by your organization as well as payouts from your Team Captains.

Use your Bonfire Campaign Dashboard to see the amount raised and the status of each Giving Campaign for your organization.

As the batches close, you’ll see the donations and purchases begin to appear on the respective Classy team page they’re fundraising for, and the donor data from Bonfire will be synced to your Classy account. It’s that easy!

Use Your New Donor Data to Your Advantage

Don’t forget to take advantage of the donor data and sync it with your CRM! You can then create personalized marketing campaigns; create a list of the supporters who bought merch and send them an email when you create new shirts in the future. Make sure to identify “super donors” who made donations to the Classy Campaign and bought a shirt from the Bonfire Campaign, you’ll want to reach out to them as well! Lastly, you can find any first-time supporters who bought a shirt and send them a personalized thank you message, as well as an email with more information about how they can help. 


Don’t let your nonprofit be limited by running another “donation-only” fundraiser. With no platform or inventory fees, using Bonfire and our free integration is a no-brainer for every nonprofit using Classy. If your organization is already verified on Bonfire, you can get started by requesting access to the integration below. If you’re not verified yet, then you just need to create your free Bonfire account and claim your organization.

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