Category: Planned Giving Marketing

Planned giving donors can choose from several different kinds of giving vehicles to leave their legacy with your organization. One of those vehicles is a donor-advised fund. While these different tools may sound complicated, you can learn the basics of these tools to help guide your donors. Donor-advised funds are a dynamic planned giving vehicle that can provide a major gift to a nonprofit while also delivering peace of mind to your major donor.

It’s no understatement that the purpose of many nonprofits is to solve the world’s most urgent and challenging questions, often with the fewest resources. Issues like hunger, economic development, poverty, addiction, affordable housing, animal neglect, education, environmental hazards and more are often the core of our organizations’ purpose. But when your cause is so big and complex, how do you discuss it with an audience experiencing a shrinking attention span and more charitable causes to support than ever?

“But they cut my budget this year!” It’s the same story, year after year, no matter what the economy’s doing. People blame their inability to “do planned giving” on a lack of money. After 25 years in the planned giving marketing world this complaint comes in consistently. So what else has changed? I hear this in the corporate world, too.

Planned giving often ranks as one of the most intimidating forms of fundraising. However, planned giving is a sleeping giant, capable of directing significant donations to your nonprofit through donor-advised funds, bequests, and other planned giving vehicles. Help planned giving pay off for your organization by avoiding these five common mistakes in the planned giving sector.

Of all the marketing mistakes I’ve seen nonprofits make in planned giving, perfectionism is the second-worst. The first-worst is not doing any marketing at all. If you wonder why your planned giving program is inching along at a snail’s pace, perfectionism might be the problem.

If you follow philanthropy news, you’ve seen the headlines: “2022 Worst Year Ever for Fundraising!” “2023 Shaping Up to Be Even Worse!”

A planned giving website gives our “silent donors” (the ones who choose not to tell us about a planned gift) a place to go for information. Even the oldest prospects are online these days — they’re connecting with friends and family on social media; getting news from their favorite network’s website; and learning more about the causes they love by visiting them online. An online presence for your planned giving program is a 24/7 tool.

We’ve all seen those late-night TV infomercials by high-energy pitchmen selling the same old products year after year since the ’90s: “Just set it, and forget it!”, “Operators are standing by!”, “But wait, there’s more!” Regardless of what you think about their advertising styles, many of those companies are still around and enjoying hefty bottom lines by selling Showtime Rotisserie Grills, ThighMasters, Snuggies, and Ginsu Knives. And their success rates can be traced to one common denominator: consistent branding.