Are you missing out on support from those who love you most?

By Julia Magnuson-Ford

VP Business Development at PGgrowth

I’ve grown up living in many different places and loving to travel. Part of the joy I find is meeting new friends and experiencing new things. But when times get tough and I really need support, it’s my old friends that I call. The ones I’ve know since school, or my first co-workers. The sounds of their familiar voices and the way they know me soothes me like nothing else.

As fundraisers, it’s often said that we’re in the business of raising friends. And it’s true, we are often attracted to finding more and new donors, seeking out the new connections and growing our organization’s base of support. Our annual programs form the foundation for this fundraising. It is the dollars raised from these supporters that will make up this year’s budget and allow the mission of the organization to be carried out in its day-to-day programs and activities.

Healthy annual programs do spend time trying to convert new friends into long term friends. They provide opportunities, such as monthly giving and solid donor stewardship practices, to encourage donors to give again and again. Not every friend will stick around, but many will, and they help our executive directors sleep at night, knowing that some portion of next year’s budget is already covered through reoccurring gifts.

But what about the really long-term donors? Perhaps you might have heard them referred to as “loyal donors.” How do we as fundraisers acknowledge and address these people who have stuck with our organization through good times and the bad? Whose support we know we count on for many years, decades even?

I believe, that as fundraisers, the next logical step for these long-term donors is often overlooked. Because it doesn’t show up in this year’s annual budget, and because it requires a different kind of conversation from what we’re used to, we miss the opportunity that lies with the supporters that have been with us for the long haul. That is, asking for the legacy gift.

Just brushing up your fundraising lingo here: a legacy gift, also known as a planned gift, is a gift made to a charitable organization in an individual’s will or estate plans. The charity will not receive the gift until the donor has passed away.

What? Talk about death, taxes and last wishes, you might say. I’d don’t think so. No one will want to talk to me about those things – I don’t want to talk about them!

Yet, if you return to the idea of friendship – what would be more natural for a good friend to do than to extend their support far into the future? Those friends believe in us, and dare I say, love us, for something that is more than our accomplishments this year. These friends see the good in us and our potential and just wanna hang out, through the ups and downs of our lives. And I believe this is true of our loyal donors as well.

These donors know your organization as much more then the work you did last year. They’ve seen staff come and go, they’ve watch programs develop and disappear. Yet they don’t stop believing in the importance of your organization’s mission. Year after year, they commit resources to you to carry out that mission and vision.

Legacy giving is the largest gift most Canadians will ever be able to make. After their family is taken care of, many people feel proud to be able to continue to support the causes that mattered to them during their lifetime as part of their estate plans. And, as you can imagine – estates that include property in cities with real estate booms can result in a sizeable gift from a donor who may consider themselves modestly middle class, 

Side note: It was charitable organizations that had proactive planned giving programs in place that were best able to survive the shocks to fundraising during the pandemic.

So, as a fundraiser, are you paying attention to your oldest donors and supporters? Do you treat them as you would your long-term friends? And have you extended the legacy giving invitation to them yet? If not, what are you waiting for? 

PGgrowth provides resources to organizations of all sizes that are looking to up-level their game when it comes to planned giving. From staff training to organizational assessments, we can help you find the tools you need to make legacy giving a significant, sustainable revenue stream for your charity.