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Are Your Legacy Donors Spiteful?
Sad but true. Many legacy donors simply don’t want to see their hard-earned money going to their relatives.
Top reasons why?
1- Because they think they’ll “blow it all”!
2- Because they’ll waste it.
3- Because they won’t appreciate it.
4- Because they simply don’t deserve it!
Here are three quotes from real donors found in AFP’s 2008 report on bequest giving:
‘When (my mother) died she gave the money to the five of us kids and I watched two of my siblings just rip through the money, it was just an unbelievable waste and I thought, I don’t have any kids and I had originally had my will going to my siblings and then I thought – why?? They’d do the same thing with my hard earned money.’
‘I’d reached a point where I said.. you know what … I’m happy to leave them something but I worked damm hard for all this and I just kind of, it sounds petty, but I don’t want to necessarily make it easy for them when they have often made choices to work a lot less hard than I have…’
‘My fiancé is very aligned with me in the sense of not wanting … wanting to give a gift to family, but not wanting to give them everything and make it too easy’
Get the book!
Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
Want to help more people make impact by facilitating their acts of philanthropy but feel like too many obstacles keep getting in your way?
Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
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I think that it’s more about the loving than the giving. People will leave money to loved ones (and things) to secure quality of life like education and housing…a continuation of maintaining lifestyle. If they have children who are irresponsible then a trust is in order. Same with a nonprofit, if people love what it does, they’ll include it in their estate plan…a continuation of mission and their participation. How and what they leave determines the type of gift they’ll make and what it is.
I think that it’s more about the loving than the giving. People will leave money to loved ones (and things) to secure quality of life like education and housing…a continuation of maintaining lifestyle. If they have children who are irresponsible then a trust is in order. Same with a nonprofit, if people love what it does, they’ll include it in their estate plan…a continuation of mission and their participation. How and what they leave determines the type of gift they’ll make and what it is.