I was on a call with a lovely fundraiser talking about her planned giving. She said something that has stuck in my mind for months; “we have piecemeal-itis!”
She described her past efforts as “just doing what came up”. She took part in Will Power (a national gift-in-Will campaign in Canada), added check boxes to her reply slips, and hired a marketing agency to create a brochure.
Her charity has thousands of loyal donors, and she knows she should be getting better results. But despite a successful major gift fundraising career, she didn’t have the expertise – or time – to figure out how to put it all together.
And she’s not the only one with “piecemeal-itis”- it’s very common among the charities I work with . You can invest in all the “right” activities, but without an overarching strategy connecting them, you’re unlikely to see great results.
This month’s theme is planned giving operations (what I call “Program Architecture”, the “P” in my PLAN framework). I.e. the back-end that raises millions through gifts-in-Wills.
Today we’ll cover the most important operation - your strategy! (Or how to get out of “piecemeal-it is”).
To be honest, this is the most difficult part of planned giving operations to write about because strategy is customized to each charity. I almost skipped it, but it didn’t feel right to leave it out of a “Program Architecture” series because it is the most important part.
In mulling this over, I realized that there are ultimately 4 essential pieces to a solid planned giving strategy:
One: potential portfolio size. Gift-in-wills come from loyal supporters. They don’t always have to be donors – they could be volunteers, patrons (if you're an arts org), or even service users if they have assets (such as paid-off homes).
Your pool of loyal supporters should determine how much you should invest in legacy giving. (I define loyalty as a minimum of 5 years involvement, but 10+ years is the sweet spot).
If you only have 100 loyal donors, it’s beneficial to put a few low-lift legacy giving pieces into place, but otherwise you need to invest in building your annual and major giving donor base.
However, if you have more than 1,000 loyal supporters and little legacy giving, you’re leaving money on the table and it’s worthwhile prioritizing it.
Two: your goals. Are you starting your first program and looking for a proof-of-concept? Do you want rapid growth, doubling the number of loyal donors who leave a gift in their Will in the next 5 years? Or are you looking to turn-around a program that grew years ago, but has since stalled? Defining this will help you determine the following:
Three: your budget (in both time and money). Your budget and how much time you allocate to planned giving will be integral to meeting your goal.
Legacy giving requires consistency and expertise to be successful. If you don’t have expertise on your team, can you outsource it? If you don’t have the budget to outsource it, are you ready to invest time and money to train an in-house fundraiser, and grow your program slowly? Or does your portfolio and goals justify a full-time senior hire, and the 6-figure investment that comes along with it? If you need some help figuring this out, check out this comprehensive guide to planned giving services.
Four: Planned giving best practices. You could have a great portfolio, robust budget, capable staff, and still fall short if you’re not adhering to planned giving best practices. This is why it’s so important to have an expert guide your strategy.
Planned giving is its own form of fundraising. Just as you wouldn’t expect a grant writer to quickly become a major gift fundraiser, you can’t expect a major gift fundraiser to take on planned giving without extra time and resources to learn the craft.
For example, many charities spend 5-figures on newspaper ads, which reaches an audience outside of their existing network. Considering gifts-in-Wills mostly come from your loyal supporters - inside their network - that money would be better spent on a targeted cultivation series and survey to their existing donors. (This is also why “just copy what that other charity is doing” is not a good strategy).
There you go! While creating the right planned giving strategy for your charity will require its own unique approach, the above list has everything you need to get started!
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