3 tips to be wildly effective with Planned Giving on #GivingTuesdayNow

“Bequests” — a charitable donation in someone’s last will or trust — are nearly $40B annually and almost ten percent of all giving in the US. 

But many organizations are missing out on making “planned giving” (bequests and other similar types of gift) an effective part of their fundraising strategy. 

With so many people looking for multiple ways to get involved with #GivingTuesdayNow, savvy nonprofits are including planned giving in their outreach, and are likely to be even more effective than their peers on May 5th.

Why planned giving is so incredibly important on #GivingTuesdayNow 

• The same donors who make $50 donations can often make bequests that are more than a thousand times larger. On our platform, FreeWill, the average bequest is nearly $80,000 (and these are mostly from middle- and upper-middle-class Americans).  
• In fact, a study of IRS data showed that a typical bequest is almost three times as large as the combined charitable giving over a person’s entire lifetime. Wow. 
• Right now, more people are doing estate planning than ever before. Searches for “how to make a will” on Google are 50% higher than they’ve ever been in Google’s entire existence. Charitable bequests on FreeWill were 6X higher in March of 2020 compared to the same month the previous year.  
• Bequests provide a way for supporters to make a powerful gift that costs them nothing today, which is a powerful option in a time of economic uncertainty. 
• AND, when a donor makes a bequest or other planned gift, research shows that their real-time giving goes up by 75% in the subsequent five years! 

Tip 1: Include planned giving as one of multiple options 

Research by the team at #GivingTuesday shows that participants want to help in more than one way -- and when they have choice, will choose to take multiple actions. Similarly our own research shows that including planned giving as one of three options (instead of all by itself) generates significantly higher participation. 

We’ve created free email templates and phone scripts that you can use to include planned giving in your overall messaging. As you can see in the snapshot below of one of the email templates, giving several options allows supporters to find which are right for them, and lets them participate in more than one way. 

Tip 2: Make planned giving common & inclusive

Some nonprofits make the mistake of only talking to folks in their seventies and eighties about planned giving, but savvy nonprofits know that going broader has two big advantages:

• People from 21-year-olds to octogenarians will be willing to include your organization in their will, providing you not only with future gifts, but also a clear list of people who are especially passionate about your mission and may want to get involved in other ways, financial and not.
• Older folks may recoil at the idea of planned giving fundraising if they feel as though they are being targeted because of their age. So a broader appeal will yield higher results from older demographics, too! 

Here’s some sample language you can use in an email, letter, or in a conversation with a supporter: 

• “Many people, from eighteen to eighty, who are passionate about [mission] choose to include a charitable gift to [organization] in their will. Is that something you’d like to learn more about?”

Tip 3: Provide clear, actionable next steps

A recent study showed that fewer than 32% of Americans have a legal will, and many who do haven’t updated it in decades. So most people won’t know exactly what to do next, even if they’re inspired to make a planned gift. 

Here are some options you can provide to them: 

1. Point supporters to a site like FreeWill.com, which provides free estate planning (including the ability to make a will online or prepare documents before going to see a lawyer), and makes charitable giving extremely easy. 
2. Give a form where they can request more information or a conversation with someone knowledgeable at your organization.
3.  A link to a page with sample language to include in a will or trust. Here’s an example of that language: 

I hereby give, devise, and bequeath ____ percent (___%) of my total estate, determined as of the date of my death, to [ORGANIZATION], a nonprofit organization located at [ADDRESS], Federal Tax ID #[EIN], for [ORGANIZATION]'s general use and purpose. 

Want to learn more? Join this webinar on how to be effective with planned giving for #GivingTuesdayNow on Tuesday, April 21, at noon ET. 

That’s it! Good luck, and feel free to be in touch at [email protected] if you need any help at all!

Authors

Patrick Schmitt and Jenny Xia Spradling are co-founders and co-CEOs of FreeWill, a startup that has helped to generate more than $1.3B in new charitable bequests and other donations. In 2019, Jenny and Patrick were named among “Top 50 Philanthropists” by Town & Country.