Legacy Giving: 5 Steps To Create a Game-Changing Pipeline
In 2020, when the pandemic shut down the world, your communities rose up and started giving to the organizations they love, knowing it would be difficult for organizations that make their communities so special to sustain themselves for the duration of the pandemic without the support of loyal donors. Many of you have done such great work to meet the needs of your organizations while showing gratitude to your donors. As we all started to work from home, we needed to find new ways to conduct business and communicate with each other. Do you recall the early days of the pandemic and spending hours on the phone with your aging parents to help them download, install, and use Zoom just so they could see you and their grandchildren? We were put in a position to try harder to connect with the people we love and the organizations that nurture our souls and feed the hungry.
Finding ways to have conversations and encouraging dialogue with your members and donors has never been more important than it is right now. Having the sensitive conversations around planned giving is even more important as we are in the golden age of philanthropy and Americans will transfer at least 41 trillion dollars between 1998 & 2052, and at least $6 trillion of that funding will be bequests to charity. Baby Boomers and their parents hold approximately 90% of the wealth in North America.
With an appetite to jump-start and strengthen your legacy program this article will provide you with five clear steps to help you identify how to use your budget to create an active approach that will lead you to a strong pipeline of legacy donors to steward.
1. View Your Possibilities Through A New Lens
In our conversations with Planned Giving Officers, we find that many organizations focus on major donors who have given high dollars as the prime prospects for a Planned Giving conversation. And they are, of course, however best practices show that they are not the only prime potential legacy donors. Your donors, members, and constituents who show loyalty to your non-profit are much more likely to include you in their estate planning regardless of the amount of money they have given to your organization. A donor that has given consistently over the course of 5-10 years is much more likely to include your organization in their will and estate than a donor who has given you one large gift.
Artsmarketing’s Legacy Builder™ campaigns focus on the low to middle donors, members, and constituents who show loyalty to your organization and we facilitate the conversion of more than 25% of those we have conversations with to your planned giving pipeline. The untapped potential is significant and should not be overlooked.
2. Build a Case for Support - Tell a Compelling Story
The case for support is central to a successful planned giving campaign and should be the guiding story and narrative of your campaign. At its core, the case for support should highlight how their lives have been enriched by your organization and how leaving a legacy gift can pass that enrichment on for generations to come, continuing to transform their community through your legacy program. The most effective cases can energize, motivate, and inspire your prospects to join your organization’s planned giving society and leave a lasting legacy. In a recent Legacy Builder™ campaign with BC SPCA we were able to illustrate how Legacy Gifts from the past helped them establish a pet food bank during the pandemic providing a resource to pet owners - who had suddenly lost their jobs and were unsure of how they were going to be able to feed their companion animals - with the assistance that allowed them to keep and care for their pets. It is important to note that nothing inspires and motivates your constituents more than a personal conversation around your case for support.
3. Be Proactive In Identifying Will And Estate Gift Potential Within Your Donor Database.
The next step to building a game-changing pipeline of legacy donors is to take a deep dive into your database and really get to know and understand your loyal donors and constituents. Find the people who have been long-term donors, as little as $100 a year or $10 a month for 5 to 10 years. Find the people who attended your events on a regular basis over the course of 5 to 10 years. Don’t forget the volunteers, they are some of the most loyal supporters and their lives have been enriched by volunteering with your organization. Finally, take a look at your current legacy donors, what has their involvement been with your organization. For example, in a recent Legacy Builder™ campaign Artsmarketing Services conducted with the Calgary Humane Society, they noticed that a consistent number of their legacy donors had participated in a lottery fundraiser conducted years ago. With this knowledge, we included lottery participants in the Legacy Builder™ campaign, as a result, we converted an average of 45% of the lottery participants we had conversations with to their Nine Lives Society pipeline. With a conservative bequest average of $25,000, the potential revenue of this segment is $4,725,000.
4. Couple Your Passive Efforts with an Active Approach
You’ve now identified the potential within your own organization and built your case for support, the only investment you’ve had to make so far is time. The next step is to make a plan for communicating with your prospects. We most often hear how organizations have a landing page and do one dedicated mailing a year to their prospect list regarding planned giving. These are solid passive approaches and generally convert up to 1% of the prospects to the planned giving pipeline. Artsmarketing Services strongly recommends an integrated communication plan that includes not only a web presence but direct mail and telephone outreach even if that means paring down the list of prospects to fit your budget.
In 2018 Artsmarketing Services established a partnership with BC SPCA to conduct a Legacy Builder™ campaign. BC SPCA has a very large pool of donors ready to be asked to become a Forever Guardian. We opted to do some A/B testing and conducted a mail-only campaign consisting of 12,000 households as well as an integrated mail and phone campaign consisting of 3,000 households. The direct mail-only households resulted in 96 positive responses, a 0.8% response rate. The integrated direct mail phone campaign yielded 1,266 direct conversations with BC SPCA planned giving prospects and 773 bequest commitment and expectancies, a 61% conversion rate to the Forever Guardian pipeline. We have conducted 2 subsequent integrated mail and phone campaigns since the first one in 2018 and have scheduled the 4th. An integrated direct mail and phone campaign is a game-changer for any legacy program. Overall, the potential return on investment for all 3 completed campaigns to date is over $80 million dollars for BC SPCA. Integrated fundraising will increase your overall program ROI, help with new donor acquisition, attract major donors and upgrade smaller ones, and will get bequest confirmations in the door right away.
5. Stewardship of the Pipeline
You’ve built a solid Legacy pipeline for your organization, it is equally important to have a stewardship plan. Right now the competition for estate gifts is fierce, so you want to make sure that those who have already included you in their wills and estates will keep it there and who that are considering including your organization will continue to be inspired by the personal connections and work you’re doing. With the average bequest in North America between $30,000 and $70,000, you can’t afford to alienate your planned-gift donors through lack of communication. An intentional effort around building lasting relationships not only increases your planned giving efforts but will also increase their annual giving now. Research shows that as a donor agrees to a planned gift in their will, their current annual giving actually goes up by as much as 42% which gives your organization more access to unrestricted revenue now. Thoughtful gratitude and communication cost you nothing.
How can Artsmarketing Services help you achieve your Planned Giving goals?
Artsmarketing Services understands that a hands-on, personalized planned giving program is essential to the long-term stability of every non-profit organization. Many Legacy Giving donors do not identify themselves until someone speaks with them directly. That is why we developed a proactive personal invitation planned giving campaign. Artsmarketing Services calls its program Legacy Builder™. Our Legacy Builder™ program will provide clarity on who has included your non-profit organization in their legacy gift plans.
From the moment Artsmarketing Services begins working with you, we focus on how to bridge the information gap between you and your legacy donors. Working side by side with you, we become your direct line to increased support. We’ve spoken to tens of thousands of donors from more than sixty major charities in North America, generating over 25,000 bequest commitments conservatively estimated at more than $800 million.
In addition to catapulting an organization’s Planned Giving Campaign into the next level, the Legacy Builder™ campaign regularly achieves additional campaign results, including:
Identifying Major Gift Donors who are not currently on the organization’s radar
Developing extensive prospect/donor research
Communicating the vision and mission of the organization
Building awareness for your other programs -Capital/Endowment, Major Gifts and Annual Fund
Most importantly, a telephone-based Planned Giving Campaign builds one-on-one awareness of your charitable mission, leveraging past accomplishments and building on future opportunities and organizational aspirations.
The results of Legacy Builder™ Campaign are multi-faceted. Your organization will know:
Who has already included your organization in their legacy gift plans.
Who is in the process of including your organization in their legacy gift plans.
Who is now considering naming your organization in their legacy gift plans,
This knowledge gives your Planned Giving officers the power to plan and run focused, successful stewardship strategies now and well into your future.
To get a better understanding of how Artsmarketing Services can help you create a game changing pipeline for your legacy program contact us to set up a consultation.