Author: Viken Mikaelian

A new report from Giving USA shows that despite charitable giving reaching a new high for 2023, inflation took a hefty toll. It proves what we’ve been saying all along: Planned giving works, and it’s a lifeboat in the stormy waters of inflation.

Over 60 percent of all Americans are missing a critical legal document: Their last will and testament. While there are a lot of important reasons to create a will and keep it updated, here are the Top 10.

First-hand accounts back it up. The data proves it. And numbers don’t lie. But despite hearing over and over again that donor stories sell, they still remain one of the most under-utilized tools in planned giving.

As marketing guru Seth Godin says, repetition builds trust, and consistency stands out. Have you ever been annoyed at a company just because it made a change to its marketing or advertising campaigns? Maybe it was a business that switched its slogan for no reason; or maybe it was a firm that did a complete about-face and changed its name to something ridiculous or created a brand-new ad campaign, when the old one was working quite well.

As long as technology has existed, there’s been a perception that seniors are not just slow to adopt it, but resistant to use it. Some fundraisers still say things like, “Our donors are all older, so they aren’t online.” Well, we dug into the facts and figures about seniors and technology in 2024 … and what we learned blows those skeptics completely out of the water.

A donor makes a verbal promise to include a planned gift for your organization in their will, but they never send you a signed intention form. Then the donor dies. How do you ask the family if the gift was included in the donor’s estate plan? This type of situation happens frequently.

Sometimes a board member or nonprofit will ask us, “Why planned giving? People are giving us annual gifts and we don’t want to impact that source of revenue.” Unfortunately, this is the logic that keeps among the 99% of nonprofits that do not pursue planned gifts. Here’s how to join the top 1%.

It’s tempting to think about marketing as a collection of traditional outreach. Sure, part of it is which we have been offering for years. Display ads, postcards, surveys, tag lines, digital media, videos — the list goes on. But marketing is more than that. Marketing also includes things you might not immediately think of.