Online Will Planners: Should Your Nonprofit Have One?

FreeWill already showed that any online will planner can work. The question isn’t if you should offer one—it’s whether you’ll keep your donors on your site… or send them away to someone else’s. Read on.

Online will planners are everywhere you look these days. From FreeWill, Rocket Lawyer, LegalZoom, Trust & Will, and GivingDocs to the comprehensive LegacyPlanner, it feels like everyone is offering their own version. And sometimes it seems like they all just appeared overnight, too.

But the truth is, the industry has been around for decades — both US Legal Wills and LegalZoom had online versions more than 20 years ago. So, what’s to thank (or blame) for the sudden growth? Like back-to-back Zoom meetings, bad manners, and remote work, it can all be traced back to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

It’s easy to see why: Online will makers offered the perfect solution for people who wanted to get their affairs in order and create a legacy while sheltering in place. They didn’t need to leave home — or even get off the couch — to complete a simple, legally binding estate plan that protected their loved ones and outlined their final wishes.

The result was a massive spike in the number of folks inquiring about and completing estate plans. A 2020 story from ABC News quoted one online will platform as seeing a “143% increase week-over-week in people creating wills.” Others reported even higher numbers.

And even though the rapid pace at which people were creating estate plans slowed with the end of the pandemic, one fact is very clear: Online will planning is here to stay.

But that doesn’t mean everyone is on board with the concept. There’s a lot of debate in the industry over whether we should give donors the opportunity to draft a will using a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach.

Some fear there may be liability issues. Others worry it works against the interests of financial advisors and ruins relationships. And some lawyers, of course, claim online will planning is simply an ill-advised concept.

Just the Facts

Before we dig any further, let’s look at a few facts:

• Online will planning is a tried and trusted technology, not a trend. It’s not complicated: Once an individual signs up, they create a secure, password-protected log in, and then answer a series of attorney-generated questions. They gather important financial documents, type in their relevant information, and voila! … the system generates a will. At the moment, just 12 states accept a will in digital form. In all others, a will must be printed and signed to be legal.
• Every online will maker works in essentially the same way to prepare a valid will — they have to, because they’re producing a legal document.
• Online will planners are designed for basic wills. They’re perfect for someone with a small family, average assets, and a straightforward estate that will likely not be contested by survivors.
• Online will planners are not designed for complicated estates. High-net-worth individuals, business owners, folks with special needs beneficiaries, property in multiple states, or anyone needing estate tax guidance should hire an estate attorney. (Some do, some don’t—and look what happens when they don’t!)
• Online will planners have a proven track record of increasing the number of bequests a nonprofit receives.
• About 70% of Americans still lack a valid estate plan, despite the Covid-era surge in will-making. (Here are some interesting statistics.)

Why Online Will Planners Make $ense

So, should you have an online will planner on your planned giving website?

Raise your sensible hand if:

• You want to encourage people to consider making your organization the beneficiary of a legacy gift.
• You want to make legacy giving to you easy.

Assuming you raised your hand twice, you’ve answered the question. You’re either going to help facilitate your donor’s philanthropy, or you’re not. If you don’t, someone else will.

But here’s what many nonprofits don’t consider: WHERE your donors complete their will matters just as much as WHETHER they complete one. When you send donors to a third-party platform, you’re essentially handing them a directory of other worthy causes. When the will planner is embedded directly on your website, your mission stays front and center throughout the entire process.

The Third-Party Redirect Problem: Why Referrals Hurt Your Legacy Giving

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Most “free will planners” aren’t will planners at all—they’re referral engines in disguise.

When a donor clicks “Create My Will” on most platforms here’s what actually happens: After gathering basic information, the platform hands them off. Donors are redirected to a third-party law firm, asked to book an attorney, or nudged toward creating new accounts on unfamiliar sites.

That’s not donor-centered. That’s disruption.

This referral model creates five major problems:

• Lost donors: Every redirect is a drop-off point. Studies show each extra step can lose 20–30% of users.
• Broken trust: Donors feel misled when “free will planner” turns into “here’s a lawyer who charges fees.”
• Vanishing mission: Your nonprofit disappears. Your message gets buried under a law firm’s logo.
• Giving catalog chaos: Some platforms display multiple nonprofits—your donor ends up in a buffet line of giving options.
• Data blackout: You lose visibility. Did the donor finish? Did they include you? You’ll never know.

LegacyPlanner™ Solves This

We built LegacyPlanner™ differently. We’re not in the referral business—we’re in the legacy giving business.

• When donors start their will on your site, they finish it there.
• No redirects. No hand-offs. No third-party lawyers.
• Just a clean, branded, trust-building experience—with your mission front and center.

While others treat estate planning as a funnel to sell legal services, we treat it as what it truly is:

• An extension of donor stewardship.
• A moment of legacy.
• Your opportunity to stay at the center of the story.

People are funny. If you don’t raise an issue, they’ll assume you know nothing about it. If they find information about wills and legacy giving on other organizations’ websites, but not yours, they’ll conclude those other organizations are set up to handle bequests—whereas yours is not. Which is why talking to donors about including your organization as a beneficiary of their estate should be something you absolutely do.

Even before the advent of online wills, encouraging donors to create a will was in every nonprofit’s best interest. They can’t leave you a bequest without one. Whether they do that through an attorney or a DIY approach is a personal decision—and it’s not your job to take sides.

Your job is to raise the issue and offer donor-friendly choices. Offering an option to create a will, for free, from the comfort of their home, is a no-brainer. You can educate donors on best practices and remind them of the importance of protecting loved ones—but in the end, they’ll do what they want to do. And they overwhelmingly want the simplicity of an online will.

When the will maker is on your nonprofit’s website, that makes it easier—and more likely—for your donors to support you with a gift. And when the planner is integrated into your site with your nonprofit’s branding, like LegacyPlanner™, it keeps your mission top of mind and positions you for success.

Your Next Steps

Keep in mind: Online will planners increase the number of bequests and legacy gifts nonprofits receive. If your board or leadership still has reservations, remind them that security has improved—and the results speak for themselves.

Not every donor will be a fit for a DIY tool. That’s why LegacyOrganizer exists. It doesn’t generate a will; it helps donors organize everything an attorney will need to draft one. Like LegacyPlanner™, it keeps your nonprofit top-of-mind and opens the door for deeper conversations about legacy giving.

The simple fact is, more Americans are choosing to create estate plans online from the comfort of their homes. The demand is high, the technology is solid, and this is the Digital Century.

Those nonprofits embracing the trend are seeing increased bequests and planned gifts from tools like LegacyPlanner.

FreeWill and the rest of the industry already proved online will planners work. The question isn’t if you should offer one—it’s whether you’ll keep donors on your site or send them to someone else’s.

Those that aren’t are already missing out, and the gap is only going to widen the longer they wait.”