How-To: Seamless Planned Giving Experiences & User Journeys

“Journeys” and “experiences” are more than just marketing buzzwords. Understanding these concepts can unlock many benefits for nonprofits across multiple aspects of their work.

By taking an intentional and holistic approach to how you attract, engage, and steward supporters (that is, the entire cycle of their relationship with your organization), you can see:

• Improved fundraising outcomes
• Deeper relationships
• An organically stronger community that attracts more attention

Let’s zoom in on planned giving and how optimizing your donors’ experiences can drive positive results. Planned giving is a major opportunity for nonprofits today, which many already recognize. 

However, fewer nonprofits recognize that these giving programs require the same intentionality as other fundraising streams to yield maximum benefits. Planned giving programs often grow organically in nonprofits that receive bequests and then build an ad hoc or passive approach around them going forward.

Remember, planned giving donors are among the most dedicated and connected to your causes. If anyone warrants special attention and care, it’s them.

How do you create the best possible experience for your planned gift donors and prospects? Let’s walk through the key stages of your relationships with them and point out best practices to keep in mind.

1. Identifying planned gift prospects

Start by considering how you first find potential planned gift donors and set the tone for your future relationships.

Your best prospects for any type of gift, planned gifts included, will generally come from within your existing contact list. Pre-existing connections mean these relationships will often be stronger from the very start. 

If you’re launching or seeking to grow your planned giving program, start the prospecting process by finding donors who’ve already committed bequests or are already interested in them by sending general surveys. The responses will give you a list for immediate outreach to either thank your committed donors or begin discussing planned gifts with interested donors one-on-one.

2. Create awareness for your planned giving program

But what next? For many organizations, expanding beyond self-reported prospects for planned giving is the first major hurdle of their programs. 

‍Remember that a seamless marketing journey builds awareness, so start there if you haven’t explicitly promoted planned gifts yet. You can:

• Add planned giving to your website’s Ways to Give page
• Highlight the program in your newsletters
• Schedule social media posts

From here, you can begin identifying potential prospects as they interact with your messaging. 

‍You can (and should) also get more intentional by implementing a typical donor pipeline for planned giving. Learn more about your existing donors and self-reported prospects and check out some industry research. Use these findings to develop prospect personas, filter your donor list, and begin reaching out to start conversations.

3. Engaging planned giving prospects

To effectively engage planned giving prospects, start by segmenting your contact lists. Segmentation improves nearly all aspects of your fundraising work, not only by helping you better prioritize your prospects but also by making it easy to tailor your messaging. Personalized outreach geared to smaller segments, their histories with your organization, and their giving motivations ultimately creates smoother donor experiences.

Master the fundamentals of donor segmentation and incorporate modern best practices (AI technology is increasingly helpful in this area), and you’ll set your program up for success.Segmentation and effective prospect research help you create more focused outreach content that improves the donor journey—but what should this content include?Root your planned giving outreach in the three key motivations of planned gift donors:

• Legacy-building with causes that matter to them
• Flexibility (both in terms of estate/financial planning and the ability to designate restrictions on gifts)
• Tax benefits, often substantial for donors and/or their heirs

Learn how to speak to these motivations in your messaging. Use real stories and quotes from planned gift donors if you have them, emphasizing the connection and impact this form of giving brings. Focus on these delivery channels for your planned giving campaign:

• Targeted email campaigns to broader segments
• Special mailers to smaller groups that announce your program
• One-on-one calls and emails for top prospects to initiate conversations faster and provide a fully customized experience

Many nonprofits succeed in engaging their planned giving prospects by offering educational materials about how these gifts work, their benefits, and their tax implications (just be mindful not to give explicit financial advice). Aim to be truly helpful. 

As you begin conversations with prospects, seek to learn more about them, their families, financial situations, and goals, etc. Then record these findings as you move closer to a solicitation. Regardless of whether they ultimately create a planned gift, you’ll have strengthened the relationships.

Our top tip for this stage: Establish a legacy society early. These small membership groups pull double duty—supporting your later stewardship efforts and generating powerful social proof to enrich future program outreach.

4. Facilitating planned gifts

Once prospects are ready to commit planned gifts to your nonprofit, you’ve reached a critical juncture in their journeys. How exactly will you facilitate and accept planned gifts on a logistical level? It’s easy to leave this process up to the donor to figure out, but that’s never the best choice.

Be proactive and helpful at this pivotal moment. We recommend using dedicated planned giving tools that allow you to control the donor experience for bequests. These gifts are the most popular and straightforward for donors, and other types of complex planned gifts will naturally require more one-on-one coordination if they arise.

‍Specifically, look for tools that help donors create bequest language for their wills and allow you to capture essential data about the gifts.

‍For context, an inability to collect real-time planned gift data is a common pitfall for nonprofits, and it can become a significant problem for older or neglected giving programs. Remember, bequests can be created or removed from wills at any time, and donors don’t need to notify you. If you don’t know about these changes and lack clear records of gifts, you can’t thank your donors, build your relationships, or proactively manage the program to grow it over time.

But by using tools that address this problem, you’ll improve your operations and create a more helpful experience for donors in which you guide them through the bequest process. Your online tool will do the heavy lifting for broad audiences that receive your general awareness-raising material. For top prospects, follow standard steps of one-on-one engagement, cultivation, and solicitation, personally directing them to your tool to create the bequest.

5. Long-term stewardship

After committing planned gifts, your donors’ experiences with your organization aren’t over—far from it. It’s up to you to keep up the engagement and maintain strong relationships with your donors.First, thank your planned gift donors. Expressing gratitude is likely already a cornerstone of your standard practices, but you need to take it a step further with planned gift donors.

They’ve proven a deep and meaningful commitment to your work and shared community. Let them know how much you appreciate them and their involvement through a combination of automated messages and personal outreach, even if it’s just a quick voicemail. 

‍After this initial expression of gratitude, though, the journey you’ve been constructing can easily trail off if you don’t take active steps to keep it moving and growing. ‍

Again, the best investment you can make in the long-term retention, stewardship, and overall experience of your planned gift donors is establishing a legacy society. Use it to provide special perks, offer exclusive events (even very casual ones), and simplify your communication with planned gift donors. You have immense flexibility with the tone and offerings of your legacy society, so think carefully about what your donors will most appreciate and regularly solicit their feedback.

A legacy society combined with an overarching stewardship plan or matrix that lays out standard messaging cadences for different types of donors will support your efforts and help fuel long-term growth. Stay on top of your engagement data over time to identify trends, implement feedback, and keep improving.

Developing a thoughtful planned giving experience

All donors deserve your gratitude and attention to their experiences, but planned gift donors particularly do. 

You already know to say “thank you” and communicate personally with these valuable supporters, but think bigger. The most effective (and overall most meaningful) way to show planned gift donors that you care is to provide them with intentional, thoughtful experiences. 

To ensure you stay on top of your planned gift donor communications, consider leveraging Momentum’s Donor Engagement platform. Every morning it sends you a prioritized list of donors to reach out to alongside recommended copy to send your donors. This helps you avoid high-priority donors from slipping through the cracks and ensures you continually engage planned givers after they’ve committed a bequest. 

Explore the Momentum platform for planned giving. 

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This article was written in partnership with Patrick Schmitt Co-CEO of FreeWill. Patrick co-founded FreeWill at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2016. FreeWill’s charitable giving platform makes it easier for nonprofit fundraising teams to unlock gifts, and to date has generated over $6.6 billion in new gift commitments for thousands of nonprofit organizations.