A solid fundraising program has diverse streams of revenue and that includes legacy giving. Legacy giving is the process of getting gifts through wills and estates, and those gifts typically come in the form of cash, stocks, properties, or insurance. Legacy gifts are the ultimate gift to a non-profit and often are seen as the culmination of the relationship between the donor and the organization. While we wish legacy gifts could just magically show up every year, it takes time to build a legacy giving program.
A colleague of mine who works in legacy giving once shared with me that legacy donors are a bit elusive given that making end-of-life plans is a personal and vulnerable activity. Legacy giving donors may choose to make their plans in private with little to no consultation with the organization. Therefore a big portion of building a legacy giving program is the on-going marketing of it. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to market legacy giving and today I’m going to show you the value of using email to support a legacy giving program as well as some great examples of legacy giving content marketing.
Why Your Legacy Giving Program Needs An Email Component
Email is a scalable way to consistently get legacy giving marketing materials in front of the right audience. Here’s why.
While legacy gifts most often come from people who are over the age of 70, your legacy giving prospects aren’t just donors in retirement. A lot of estate planning happens in people’s 30s and 40s. In fact, the most common time in someone's life to make a will is when they have kids. As we think about the strategy of having marketing conversations with legacy giving prospects, we ideally want to have these conversations with a younger audience than one might assume.
As I’ve dug into the list of demographics for many of my email consulting clients, I’ve noticed that a good chunk of the audience on email is consistently under 50. Since this is the audience for legacy giving marketing and an email program constantly needs content, it is a perfect marketing opportunity.
What Kind of Legacy Giving Content to Share in Emails
The kind of legacy giving content your non-profit will want to share in emails won’t surprise you. Stories.
In the case of legacy giving marketing, stories are the ultimate social proof. Stories allow donors to hear from legacy giving donors about why they decided to leave a legacy gift. Their personal story, their values, and their reasons for giving make the case for you.
The key to using stories to help build a legacy giving program is having the story content live somewhere evergreen, like a website. This allows you to have cornerstone pieces of content that you can market in a multitude of ways over time. In the case of email, email can be used to drive traffic to the story and a legacy giving landing page.
How BC Women’s Health Foundation is Using Email to Build a Legacy Giving Program
BC Women’s Health Foundation supports the work of BC Women’s Hospital, one of the premier women’s hospitals in Western Canada. The Foundation has a robust community of supporters and began looking for ways to expand its legacy giving marketing to donors. Initially, they tried informational content such as information about making a will, but it wasn’t getting as much traction from their email audience.
The Foundation had a few legacy giving donor stories and they hired me to interview their donors, develop a series of three stories and accompanying emails for their list. I interviewed a former hospital staff member and long-time volunteer, as well as their board chair. These were really special conversations to me and it took time to develop considerate and thoughtful questions to ask during the interview. But it was well worth it because the stories are really inspiring.
If you’d like to take a look at the stories, here’s the board chair’s story, the former hospital staff member and long-time volunteer’s story, and a story about a memorial scholarship.
The results of this new approach to legacy giving marketing included higher open rates on emails, increased click-through rates compared to past legacy giving marketing emails, and more traffic to their legacy giving landing page.
Legacy Giving is a Long Game. Start Planting the Seeds Today
The metaphor of cultivating relationships in fundraising like one might cultivate a plant is so apt for legacy giving. It takes time, consistency, dedication, and of course, stories. Compelling story-based content is an essential piece of a legacy giving marketing strategy. The legacy giving stories you share today can help plant the seeds for years to come.
Interested in a story-based approach to legacy giving marketing? Need help finding and crafting legacy giving stories? I work with clients to help them develop compelling stories that support their fundraising goals. Learn more about my services here or book a call with me.
