Planned Giving Can Secure Organizational Legacy While Building Lasting Relationships With Members

Planned giving, also known as legacy giving, is a powerful yet often overlooked strategy for fundraising organizations to secure their future and strengthen relationships with members, according to an article by ASAE. Despite its unfamiliarity, planned giving proves beneficial by diversifying non-dues revenue and ensuring predictability over time.

Planned giving encompasses donations contributed through a donor’s estate or financial plan, commonly in the form of bequests in wills. Various planned gifts include beneficiary designations on life insurance policies, charitable gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, and pooled income funds. Organizations may also pursue non-cash gifts like stock and cryptocurrency as part of their planned giving programs.

The benefits of prioritizing planned giving are significant. It offers an efficient way to generate diversified, predictable revenue, with studies indicating that bequest donors tend to increase their annual giving over time. Organizations prioritizing non-cash gifts grow six times faster than those that don’t. For donors, planned giving provides an opportunity to build meaningful legacies, gain financial and estate planning flexibility, and potentially receive significant tax benefits.

To build relationships with legacy donors, organizations should actively promote their planned giving program through various channels, identify potential donors through surveys and outreach, emphasize the benefits of planned giving, provide social proof through testimonials, and create an exclusive legacy society for planned donors.

Planned giving offers fundraising organizations valuable opportunities for revenue diversification and relationship deepening, and initiating a program is more accessible than many may initially think.