How to Increase Planned Gifts Without Increasing Headcount

The word “increase” is a bit of a conundrum.  Many nonprofits are being asked to do more (increase) with less (no increase). Your planned giving program is no different. Raising more planned gifts with increasing headcount is not just a recommendation but a requirement.

This necessitates working smarter, not harder.  The good news is that there are ways to focus your time to increase the number of planned gifts without adding headcount:

1. Start With You Inner Circle: The people most likely to give you a planned gift are the ones who know you the best: board members, former board members, volunteers, and consistent givers. The process of educating them about your mission is already done. Use that knowledge as a launching point to begin the planned giving conversation. You’ll find that the speed of this conversation with your inner circle will be different vs those who are not. 
2. Engage Your Legacy Society: Those in your Legacy Society are committed to advancing your organization.  Feature their stories in mailings, emails, and social media posts about planned giving (with their permission, of course!). They could very well become your best ambassadors for planned giving and initiate conversations with others even before you do. Consider taking a current legacy society member with you on a visit where you will talk about planned giving with a donor. The personal story the legacy society member tells about why they have included your organization in their plans will be impactful. The less talking you need to do, the better!
3. Create Your Model: Outside of your inner circle, look at those who are likely to leave a planned gift. Do your planned giving donors live in a certain state, zip code, and/or neighborhood? How many years have they given to your organization?  How have they been involved? Once you have developed this persona, you will be able to utilize your database to identify those who are most likely to leave a planned gift to you. If you don’t see any commonalities, look again and have someone else look at the data to see if any common traits emerge.
4. Embrace Your Tools: Utilizing a CRM like Virtuous or Bloomerang, in conjunction with the tools in The Giving Suite from LifeLegacy, will enable you to effectively steward both those who have made a planned gift and those who are likely to do so.  In the past, potential donor information was paper-based, then migrated to spreadsheets. Leveraging your CRM tactically makes it easier for you to find, engage, and steward your planned giving donors.
5. QCDs, the Gifts That Give Twice..or More:  When a person gives a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) the nonprofit receives the required minimum distribution (RMD), which is a requirement at age 73.5. Because the money is directed to the nonprofit the donor does not pay taxes on this disbursement. If the donor took the RMD directly to themselves, they would be taxed on it. This is a win-win; the donor saves on taxes, and your mission is funded. QCD donors are a key group to engage with regarding planned giving. Some nonprofits (from my personal experience) include them in my Legacy Society as a way to steward them for a planned gift. A donor has the opportunity to give again through a QCD, while also becoming a conduit to a planned gift, giving a third time!

As fundraisers, we don’t have a lot of time. There is no lack of things to do every day, and how many things on our list do we not get to? By focusing on who is most likely to give a planned gift, we can maximize our time for the most impact. LifeLegacy offers a library of planned giving-specific marketing tools to help you determine when, where, and how to effectively promote planned giving – ultimately leading to organizations like yours securing more gifts…without increasing headcount.