How to Market Your Planned Giving Program on a Nonprofit Budget
Somewhere on your website, probably a few clicks deep, there is a page about leaving a gift in your will. Maybe it is a single line in the footer. Maybe a predecessor set up a legacy society years ago and nobody has mentioned it since. The program exists, technically, and almost none of your donors know it does. That is the quiet reality of planned giving at most small and mid-size shops, and it is one of the most expensive silences in all of fundraising.
I understand why it stays quiet. When you are wearing every hat in the development office, the gift that might arrive a decade from now loses every argument with the gift you need by Friday. But here is what I have learned, and it changed how I think about this entirely: marketing your planned giving program does not require a big budget, a gift officer with a law degree, or a glossy brochure. It mostly requires that you stop keeping the option a secret. Let me walk through why the quietest program in your building holds your biggest gifts, and how to bring it into the light without spending money you do not have.
Why the Quietest Program Holds Your Biggest Gifts
Start with the size of the thing. In 2024, Americans left an estimated $45.84 billion to charity through bequests, according to Giving USA. That is roughly 8 percent of all giving in the country, and it has held in that 7-to-9-percent range for decades. This is not a fringe channel or a trend that might fade. It is a steady river of generosity, and most of it flows to the organizations that simply thought to ask.
Bequests matter even more than that headline number suggests, because a gift in a will accounts for more than 90 percent of all planned gifts. When people describe the complicated world of charitable trusts and gift annuities, they are talking about a small slice of what actually happens. The overwhelming majority of planned giving is a person deciding to name your organization in the document that says where everything goes. And the size of that decision tends to dwarf anything they gave you while living. A donor who sent you $50 a year for twenty years, someone you might never have flagged as a major prospect, can leave a five-figure or six-figure gift at the end. The average bequest is often larger than a donor's entire lifetime of annual gifts combined.
So where is the gap? The gap is that most of these gifts never get made, and the reason is heartbreakingly simple. Only about 32 percent of Americans have a will at all, according to Caring.com's 2024 study, and among those who do, the vast majority were never once invited by a nonprofit they love to include it. People do not leave charitable bequests they were never told were possible. Your program is not competing against other charities for these gifts nearly as often as it is competing against silence. That should feel less like bad news and more like an open door.
Marketing Planned Giving Is Mostly Permission, Not Persuasion
The word "marketing" makes a lot of fundraisers tense up, because it sounds like pressure, like a campaign with a countdown clock. Planned giving marketing works differently, and once I understood the difference it took most of the anxiety out of it. You are not persuading anyone to do something they do not want to do. You are giving loyal supporters permission to do something many of them already feel drawn toward. Your job is awareness and reassurance, repeated gently over time, not a hard close.
That reframe also tells you who to talk to. The instinct is to chase your wealthiest donors, but bequest givers rarely fit that picture. The strongest legacy prospects are your most loyal donors, the ones who have given consistently for years regardless of the amount. Longevity of relationship predicts a planned gift far better than the size of any single check. This is exactly why it pays to stop treating every donor the same and instead build a simple segment of your long-tenured supporters, the people who have quietly stood with you through five, ten, fifteen years. That list, not your top-gift list, is where you start.
There is one fear worth naming directly, because it stops development directors from ever bringing this up: the worry that asking someone about a gift in their will might cause them to give less now. The evidence points the other way. Research by Texas Tech's Russell James, a leading academic voice on this, has found that donors who add a charity to their will tend to increase their annual giving afterward, not reduce it. When someone decides your mission belongs in their final act of generosity, they tend to lean in while they are living, too.
Most of this comes down to running a few simple habits on repeat, tracking the right people and sending the right message at the right moment, which is exactly the kind of workflow you can build a reliable system around instead of holding it all in your head.
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The Low-Cost Channels That Actually Work
You do not need a marketing budget for any of this. You need consistency and a handful of channels you already own. Here is where I would put the effort, roughly in order of return for the time it takes.
Fix your website first. Give planned giving a real page, not a buried sentence. It does not need to be elaborate. It needs plain-language answers to the questions people actually have: what kinds of gifts are possible, the simple sentence they can take to their attorney, and the name and contact of a real human at your organization they can talk to. Add a short line inviting people to let you know if they have already included you, because many have and never said so. This one page, written warmly, does more quiet work than almost anything else you can build.
Use the email list and newsletter you already send. You do not need a dedicated legacy campaign. You need a steady drip. A short story every quarter about a donor who left a gift, a single line at the bottom of your newsletter that says gifts in wills are welcome and easy to arrange, an occasional email to your loyal segment inviting a conversation. The goal is that the option becomes familiar, mentioned often enough that it stops feeling like a strange or morbid subject and starts feeling like a normal way to support the work.
Add the checkbox and the language everywhere gifts already happen. Put a simple "I have included, or am considering including, this organization in my will" checkbox on your response devices and donation forms, and add suggested bequest language to your acknowledgment letters. These cost nothing and turn every existing touchpoint into a gentle, standing invitation.
Then have the conversation. The single highest-return channel is not a channel at all, it is a personal conversation with a loyal donor, and it is free. This is where many fundraisers freeze, so it is worth learning how to raise it without making it feel morbid. Done well, it is one of the warmest conversations in all of fundraising, because you are asking someone how they would like their generosity to outlive them. Most people are honored to be asked. Very few have ever been given the chance.
None of these channels works as a one-time push. Planned giving marketing is a long, patient rhythm, which is why it belongs inside a stewardship plan you can actually keep rather than a burst of activity you do once and abandon. The organizations that raise real legacy money are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones that mentioned the option, warmly and consistently, for years.
Where to Start This Week
If your planned giving program has been sitting silent, you do not need a new plan or a new hire to start waking it up. Pick one of these and do it before the week is out.
1. Read your own legacy page as a donor would. Find it, if it exists, and ask whether a supporter could actually understand what to do and who to call. If it is buried or missing, drafting one clear page is your highest-leverage move, and you can start today.
2. Build your loyalty segment. Pull a simple list of everyone who has given for five or more years, at any amount. This is your legacy audience. It is almost never your top-gift list, and seeing it may surprise you.
3. Add one line to your next newsletter. A single, warm sentence that gifts in a will are welcome and easy to arrange, with a name to contact. That one line, sent to people who have never seen it, starts the awareness that every future bequest depends on.
4. Choose three people to talk to. From your loyalty segment, pick three donors you already have a genuine relationship with, and plan a real conversation with each, no pressure attached, just an honest question about how they would like to be remembered in the work.
Some of the most powerful planned gifts are not simple bequests at all but structured vehicles, like a whole life insurance policy that can multiply a donor's generosity far beyond what an annual gift ever could, and those are worth understanding before you sit down with a major supporter.
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Marketing your planned giving program is not really a marketing problem at all. It is a courage problem and a consistency problem, and both are within your reach on any budget. The dollars are already there, waiting in the wills of people who love what you do and simply have not been asked. Every quiet year that passes is a year those gifts go unnamed and, too often, unmade. Bring the option into the light this week, keep it there gently, and you give your mission a source of support that can outlast you, your board, and every campaign you will ever run. That is the compounding gift a well-marketed legacy program hands to the people who come after you, and it starts with breaking the silence.
C.J. Bergmen is a pastor, licensed counselor, and fundraising strategist who helps organizations and generous individuals approach giving with honesty and long-term vision.