7 Rules for Marketing Planned Gifts to Donors

Bequests and other planned gifts provide a significant source of revenue for nonprofits.” To get started, find ways to weave messages about planned gifts into your existing outreach materials — an approach Sargent calls “legacy drip-feed marketing” — rather than creating new communications focused on this form of giving.If you talk only about bequests, she says, “you’ve managed to cover more than 85 percent of how all planned gifts are made, which is by a will or a trust.To learn more about marketing planned gifts, watch the recent Chronicle webinar on this topic and follow Lisa Sargent on Twitter (@lisasargent2).

But many donors don’t include charities in their will simply because they were never asked, says Lisa Sargent, founder of an eponymous fundraising consultancy.As Professor Russell James of Texas Tech University recommends, use words that resonate with donors: gift planning, will planning, legacy planning, gifts in wills, trusts, or retirement accounts.