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Want a Bigger Budget for Your Planned Gift Marketing Efforts?
Here’s a strategy that will help you get a bigger budget for your planned gift marketing efforts.
Post your successes on the wall outside of your office.
That’s right. Post charts, graphs, notes, pictures (and anything else that will show everyone that your efforts are bearing fruit) right outside your office on the wall. Make ’em big and easy to read. Make ’em simple and easy to understand. Show your staff, your board, and your leadership:
- A list of donors who disclosed their gift intentions this year
- A list of folks who said they’d consider a legacy gift
- The average bequest size for your organization
- The growth trajectory of your organization’s legacy society (by month, by quarter, by year)
- And more
Try it and your budget will grow. I promise.
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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?
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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 encourage clients to send a monthly or quarterly short email showing new legacy gifts by name, type, and which staff/volunteers are responsible for securing them. This goes out to board members, development staff and maybe broader (including the CFO0, and the legacy giving committee members.
Good idea Greg L.
For over two decades, I created quarterly reports that included the items you’ve mentioned. I distributed them not only to my manager(s), dept. leads and the board/fundraising committee, but also to all other staff members in a quarterly email. My theory: if no one knows why you’ve got your door closed or why you’re out of the office so much, they may have come to a negative conclusion – “She’s never working. She’s always out of the office.”
It happened to me early in my planned giving career, when my new manager said to me during the annual performance review: “Everybody thinks you don’t work as hard as they do because you’re never here. I’d like to see you in your office more often.” – Wow!
Greg, your ideas are wonderful. I also created what I called “The story of the gift” – which was an occasional description of how the planned gift came to be, including how the first conversation with the donor happened, how other people within the organization or on the board were involved and a short description of the eventual planned gift commitment. Numbers are terrific, but stories are eliminating.
Thanks for your great wisdom and keeping us talking!
“The Story of the Gift”
Very smart (as usual) Katherine.
I encourage clients to send a monthly or quarterly short email showing new legacy gifts by name, type, and which staff/volunteers are responsible for securing them. This goes out to board members, development staff and maybe broader (including the CFO0, and the legacy giving committee members.
Good idea Greg L.
For over two decades, I created quarterly reports that included the items you’ve mentioned. I distributed them not only to my manager(s), dept. leads and the board/fundraising committee, but also to all other staff members in a quarterly email. My theory: if no one knows why you’ve got your door closed or why you’re out of the office so much, they may have come to a negative conclusion – “She’s never working. She’s always out of the office.”
It happened to me early in my planned giving career, when my new manager said to me during the annual performance review: “Everybody thinks you don’t work as hard as they do because you’re never here. I’d like to see you in your office more often.” – Wow!
Greg, your ideas are wonderful. I also created what I called “The story of the gift” – which was an occasional description of how the planned gift came to be, including how the first conversation with the donor happened, how other people within the organization or on the board were involved and a short description of the eventual planned gift commitment. Numbers are terrific, but stories are eliminating.
Thanks for your great wisdom and keeping us talking!
“The Story of the Gift”
Very smart (as usual) Katherine.