People make charity gifts in a number of different ways, whether that be in memory or tribute to a loved one, in support of friends and family members fundraising efforts, or personally to a cause they feel strongly about. Even still, Donors may feel inclined to give regular recurring gifts, annually or spontaneously. But some of your supporters may be thinking even bigger than this.
What we are talking about is often referred to as Legacy Giving or Planned Giving, which is when a donor chooses to bequeath a charitable gift in their will.
But, how do we go about contacting these donors to show appreciation and stewardship while they are still with us?
How would we even know about the arrangements?
This has come up recently with a couple of our Support Services clients, and we thought, why not share what we have been working on.
Recently we had clients come to us expressing a desire to put a check box on their digital donation forms that would give donors the opportunity to indicate that they had or planned to make a donation in their will. With this information being tracked by the organization, they could establish a business procedure for following up with these donors both to thank them for the generous consideration and provide any support they could. Perhaps this donor even has an interesting story or connection to your organization or cause that would be worth sharing!
From a technology stand point, in both of these cases our clients were Luminate Online users, but we actually came up with two different approaches.
Approach 1
The first option that was implemented was to embed a survey question in the donation form. The survey question would be represented by the Planned Giving check box, and each time the box was checked, the survey would be submitted including the donor’s information. Upon survey submission there is an administrative notification email deployed to an employee at the organization, and they are able to contact the donor planning the Legacy Gift.
Approach 2
The second approach that we implemented was to create a custom field on a donation form which would be merged with a Luminate Online Custom Boolean field to capture responses on the constituent record. This allows the organization to pull a custom report on scheduled intervals to follow up with any constituent whose record had captured that they have or would like to make a legacy gift during a recent online transaction.
It is true, some of these legacy gifts will be made without prior knowledge. BUT, wouldn’t it be great if we could find out during the donor’s lifetime that they were making such a generous and meaningful gesture so that we could thank and recognize them appropriately?
If your organization is interested in coming up with a digital Planned Giving strategy that works for your organization and platforms, Contact our Support Services team, and we would be thrilled to assist in implementing a solution that works for your needs!