Planned Giving Marketing

Have you ever wondered why your planned giving newsletters are not getting a good response? Because chances are they are not even getting read.

The nonprofit world needs more Debs—people who say it like it is, who recognize planned giving is for average ordinary people, who aren’t afraid to say the hard things when they need to be said.

Did you know that people now have shorter attention spans than… goldfish? As wild as that sounds, there was a study by Microsoft suggesting just that. Whether it’s true or not, one thing is clear: human attention spans are short. This creates a big challenge for anyone trying to build an online presence for their giving programs.

A client told me recently that we should be publishing more about what’s NEW in planned giving. Seems reasonable, right? Everyone likes new stuff. We all want to know the trends, be on the cutting-edge, sound knowledgeable at professional events.

Storytelling is your nonprofit’s most powerful marketing tool. But everyone else is using it, too. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need storyselling—a strategic form of storytelling designed to motivate your donors and prospects to action.

Forget what you’ve heard about planned giving. Just do the math. Baby Boomers, who are among the wealthiest and most charitable Americans, are dying at a rate of about 6,000 per day. And unless your nonprofit has a planned giving program, that means about $6 billion in estate dollars is being lost every day. Unless you’re planning to fail, it’s time to reprioritize that marketing budget. By the way, we also “explain” what’s a billion. It’s an eye-opener.

You’ve seen it before: a nonprofit posts about a successful event on its Facebook page (or LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Pinterest, or…) and racks up thousands of likes and shares. The team high-fives and takes a bow and … then what happens?

Asking an influential member of your community for a large gift is often an intimidating task. While effective donor prospecting can eliminate some of the anxieties involved, tools like a major donor society also go a long way to secure a big ask. Major donor societies provide exclusive, insider access to your highest-dollar donors, generating significant revenue by developing intimate relationships with excellent stewardship.