I was lying on the beach with my wife a few years back when a client buzzed through my cellphone, declaring in a sorrowful voice, “I’m going to have to apologize to all of them. In fact, I am writing the apology letter now.”
Everyone tells you to “start a blog.” Here’s what they don’t tell you: A bad blog—stale, generic, lifeless—is worse than no blog at all. It doesn’t just fail to help you. It actively hurts you. Especially in planned giving, where trust is your currency. The Dangerous Myth: “Just Show Up” Over the years, the marketing world has sold nonprofits a polished lie: “Be on the internet. Be on Facebook. Start a blog. And the donors will come.” Wrong. Effortless presence equals invisible results. There’s no such thing as set it and forget it marketing. That dead blog on your site? It’s not neutral. It’s telling your donors: You’re behind the times. You don’t follow through. You’re just checking boxes. And if you’re asking someone to leave a legacy gift, that impression is fatal. Blogging Isn’t About Frequency. It’s About Presence. A vibrant blog proves you’re paying attention. It says: We’re active. We’re thinking. We’re engaged. A dead blog says: We’ve moved on. Maybe you should too. Donors don’t need more content—they need relevance. They need to see that you’re alive and alert, not running on autopilot. That’s especially true when you’re guiding them toward complex, long-term decisions like planned giving. 👉 Want an example of relevant, timely thought leadership? Visit Philanthropy.org — where we amplify bold, informed voices in the sector. If You’re Going to Blog, Do It Right A good blog: Offers fresh, practical insights. Speaks in a real voice (not boardroom jargon). Builds credibility and boosts SEO. Encourages repeat visits and longer time-on-site. Turns casual visitors into engaged supporters. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s a fact—if you commit to doing it right. Otherwise, skip it. Archive it. Remove the tab. Don’t publish filler just because someone told you to. Spontaneity Is the New Authority Forget keyword-stuffed nonsense. Forget posts written by ChatGPT on autopilot.What today’s donor wants is clarity. Relevance. A human voice. That doesn’t mean daily updates. It means topical, sharp, intentional writing. Think of your blog like a handshake. If it’s limp, it doesn’t matter how often you do it. Legacy Giving Demands More Than Lip Service You’re not selling cookies. You’re guiding people toward a powerful, often emotional decision about their legacy. So what happens when they click “Blog” and find… nothing? Or worse: outdated tax tips from 2014 and recycled posts from your CRM vendor. They leave. And they don’t come back. But when your blog reinforces credibility, speaks directly to donors, and makes the complex feel simple? That’s where trust begins. Want the easier way to do it right? Check out our Planned Giving Micro Website — turnkey, smart, and built to attract legacy-minded donors without lifting a finger. Final Word: Silence Is Better Than Sloppiness Here’s the bottom line: A great blog builds trust. A lazy blog destroys it. No blog at all is better than a bad one. So don’t be a ghost. And don’t be noise.Be present. Be sharp. Be useful. If you’re going to blog, own it. Otherwise, take it down and focus your energy where it matters.
There’s something graceful about smart messaging. Maybe that’s why it works. And fundraisers competing for charitable dollars need every marketing advantage they can get in engaging and persuading prospects.
How do you view planned giving? Is planned giving simple, or complicated? One of the biggest misunderstandings I see in the nonprofit world is the mistaken belief that planned giving is complex and mysterious.
More than 40 years ago, comedian Steve Martin did an inflation routine that featured the line, “Gee, I got four dollars; I think I’ll throw it out into the street.” This came during the time of gas strikes and a recession in the 1970s, when many folks felt like their dollars weren’t going very far. These days, four dollars looks infinitely smaller than it looked back then. In 21st Century America, we’ve been desensitized to dollar amounts up to and including those with 12 zeros after them (i.e. numbers in the trillions). No surprise there: One hesitates to pay attention to numbers that big when they appear all the time with a negative sign and a dollar sign in front of them. The problem for fundraisers, of course, is that when even a million dollars looks paltry, donors can easily feel that their “small” gifts won’t make much of a difference to your organization. They need to know they’re wrong about that. It’s our job to tell them that every gift helps. So it’s crucial for planned giving to be specific: Let prospects know exactly how much good their donation will do in concrete, real-world terms. Explain to them how important all donors are to accomplishing your organization’s mission. Show them how all planned gifts contribute to growing your nonprofit’s endowment over the long term. Emphasize that your gratitude for and recognition of their gift is based on the fact that every dollar looks big to your nonprofit. And let’s all hope that one day in the future we won’t be so familiar with how many zeros there are in a trillion. Category: Giving
Johnny has done something more: He has contributed over $156 million dollars from his estate to a variety of charitable groups.
“I don’t need to be recognized,” the donor commented, “but a sense of individual appreciation such as a personal thank-you goes a long way.”
Is Altruism an Endangered Attribute? What if the “I” in “iPad” turned out to be Gordon “Greed is good” Gekko from the movie WALL STREET? While we don’t know if Gordon really has an iPad, we’re sure he’s out there, at least in spirit, because results from a recent survey of iPad owners by MyType seem to show that his real-world confreres make up a hefty proportion of those who have purchased this trendy new tech toy. Specifically, as reported by Eliot Van Buskirk in the 7/27/2010 edition of Wired.Com, the survey conducted this spring by MyType (a consumer research firm specializing in personality inventories) indicated that: “iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, ‘selfish elites.’” The Opposite of a Donor Presumably individuals who self-report in such a way as to generate these results don’t worry much about being “jerks” (to use one popular technical term). And also presumably Apple doesn’t care how altruistic their customers are just as long as they pay for their iPad. But these conclusions about iPad owners might be of some concern to fundraisers. Why? Because altruism is our business – you might even say it’s our bread and butter, not to mention the mainspring of endowment growth and organizational success. So any spike in the Scrooge population is bad medicine. Also, consider some of the other descriptors of iPad owners: Wealthy, sophisticated, highly-educated; and right on the cutting edge of information technology. So you might think of them as a good prospect for charitable giving, especially when solicited via e-marketing vectors. But only if you ignore the fact that they are selfish and unkind! Those Who Wait Get More of the Same? If we are starting to make you feel a little gloomy, brace yourself for another depressing factoid: The age range for these “selfish elite” respondents in the MyType survey was 30 to 50 years old. That means they represent the tail end of the Boomers plus Generation X plus the beginning of Generation Y. So fundraisers can look forward to these individuals passing through the charitable landscape clutching their iPads for the next 30 to 40 years. And that’s not a pretty picture. So is our world coming to an end…again? Going Forward with Plenty of Lemonade The good news is: Not only is it never too late, but strategizing for the future can begin right now. The MyType survey may be unwelcome news for fundraisers, but it’s also news we can use. Do we really have to give up on this unkind iPad cohort? Not yet. Consider: These people are highly educated; they went to school somewhere, and those institutions will have some special leverage in reaching them. Perhaps some selfish alumn would cherish having a big portrait of himself painted on the side of a new business school building he has endowed. Similarly, their enthusiasm for technology, business and finance, and wealth in general represents a chink in their armor. Suggest, for example, that they support state-of-the-art information technology for your hospital’s billing department. Also, they have professional affiliations, so they might smile on funding an accountancy internship with a Wall Street firm. The fact that they are tech-savvy means you can access them with smart messaging via whatever new techie medium happens to be hot. If you meet them on the cutting edge, you may catch them with their egos down. Individuals who are ostentatiously selfish and unkind at age 35 may find themselves experiencing a change of heart as they mature. You can help them make that change. Remember, only one night’s worth of powerful messaging turned Mr. Scrooge around completely! The results of the MyType survey only really support one conclusion: that some people are a lot harder to market to than others. And we knew that already. So the challenge to fundraisers hasn’t really changed, it’s just been brought into sharper focus. The nonprofit organizations that will grow their endowment and accomplish their missions in the future will be those with creative and energetic fundraising professionals on staff who use their talent and drive to succeed in closing gifts regardless of resistance among their prospects… and whether or not they’re iPad owners. Category: Planned Giving Marketing
Do you cut back on food when times are tough? If that were the case, everyone would be slim and trim right about now. Marketing is the meat and potatoes (sorry, bad pun) of any fundraising operation, and cutting back, especially in a tight economy, is a recipe (sorry again) for problems down the road.
We recently heard of a non profit mailing out its annual report with a notice inside that read “In an effort to keep our costs low and use our resources to provide more food, we have reduced the size of our Annual Report. Please go to our website for a list of donors, volunteers and community partners.”
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