Marcus runs development at a regional food bank, and the letter that arrived last spring still bothers him. An estate attorney wrote to say that a donor the food bank had known for years, a woman who gave modestly but faithfully, had left the organization a share of her estate. Nobody had ever asked her. Nobody had known it was coming. Billions of dollars pass through wills annually, and a portion of that, the part intended for nonprofits, can be directed to your organization if you ask and make it easy. Planned giving is the easiest major gift strategy: donors get benefit, you get revenue, and everyone wins. Yet 60% of nonprofits have no planned giving program, which leaves hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table from donors who want to give but do not know how.

What Planned Giving Actually Is

Planned giving is giving that happens outside the current budget cycle. A donor includes your nonprofit in their will, creates a trust, or uses a vehicle like a donor-advised fund, and the gift itself often arrives years after the donor commits to it. That timing gap is the whole point, and it is also the reason planned giving feels unfamiliar to fundraisers trained on annual campaigns. You are not asking for money the donor is currently spending. You are asking to be named in a plan the donor has already made or is going to make anyway, which means the ask does not compete with your annual appeal, your event, or your monthly giving program.

The advantages stack up on the donor's side, which is unusual in fundraising. There is no tax impact during their lifetime, because the money does not leave their hands now. There is a full tax deduction for the value of the gift. Some vehicles can provide income back to the donor while they are living. And the whole arrangement is deeply mission aligned in a way that a one-time gift rarely is, because it is legacy focused: the donor is deciding what their life adds up to and putting your organization inside that answer. When a fundraiser understands that, the conversation stops feeling like a solicitation and starts feeling like a planning session.

The Planned Giving Vehicles

Four vehicles cover most of what a small or mid-size nonprofit will encounter. They differ enormously in complexity, and matching the vehicle to the donor is most of the skill. The grid below is worth keeping in front of you during donor conversations so that you can recognize which one you are actually discussing.

Notice the pattern in that table. The vehicle that produces the most planned gift revenue is also the simplest one to ask for, and the vehicles that require professional advisors are the ones you will encounter least often. That should shape where you put your effort. Marketing a bequest sounds like "your legacy lasts forever, include us in your will," which is a sentence any board member can say at a lunch. Marketing a charitable remainder trust requires a donor who already has an estate attorney, assets to transfer, and a reason to want lifetime income. Both are worth having available. Only one of them belongs on your website's front door.

Launching Your Planned Giving Program

Step 1: Create a one-page planned giving guide. This is a simple document explaining bequests, CRTs, CGAs, and DAFs, one paragraph each. The critical element is the language donors can hand to their attorneys, because the moment of failure in planned giving is almost always the moment when an interested donor does not know what to say to a professional. Make the document accessible, meaning plain language, readable type, and available as a download rather than on request. One page is a real constraint, not a suggestion; a long brochure signals complexity, and complexity is what you are trying to remove.

Step 2: Add it to your website. Create a "remember us in your will" section and link the planned giving guide from it. Simple, visible, and inviting is the standard. A donor who is already thinking about their estate will go looking, and if the only giving page you have is a donation form with preset amounts, they will conclude you do not accept this kind of gift. Visibility does the work that outreach cannot, because it catches people at the moment they happen to be thinking about it rather than the moment you happen to be calling.

Step 3: Market to your major donors. Call your 20 to 30 major donors and open the subject directly: "We are expanding how supporters can partner with us. Many donors include us in long-term plans through wills or trusts. Is this something you have considered?" That phrasing normalizes the behavior by attributing it to other donors, and it asks a question that can be answered with "not yet" without ending the relationship. Expect that 10 to 20% will say yes or maybe, and those people become your planned gift prospects.

Step 4: Get legal and CPA support. Partner with a local estate planning attorney and a CPA. Their role is to review your guide for accuracy and to receive referrals from you when a donor wants one of the complex vehicles. You are not giving legal or tax advice and you should never appear to be. Most such professionals will work pro bono for nonprofits, particularly if they already care about your mission, so the barrier here is usually asking rather than paying.

Step 5: Track and steward. When someone commits a planned gift, document it. Send an annual thank-you. Update them on impact the same way you would update a current major donor, because that is what they are. When the gift is eventually received, steward it properly with major donor treatment. The failure mode is treating a planned gift commitment as a closed file rather than an open relationship, and the cost of that mistake is invisible until a family calls to say the will was revised.

The Bequest Strategy

Bequests are your entry point, and the numbers justify that focus: 80% of planned gifts are bequests. Everything else in this lesson is a variation you should be able to handle, but the bequest is the thing you should be actively asking for. The ask itself works best as a personal conversation rather than a mailing. It sounds like this: "As you think about your legacy, would you consider including us in your will? You work with your attorney to make it happen. We just need to be named." The last sentence is the one that lowers the barrier, because it tells the donor exactly how small their next step is.

Then give them the language. Most donors who intend to make a bequest never complete it, not because they change their minds but because they do not know the mechanics and feel awkward asking. Hand them a sentence: "You can simply tell your attorney to add: 'I leave [X amount or percentage] to [Organization Name], located at [address], tax ID [number].'" Include your legal name, address, and tax identification number in your guide so nobody has to hunt for them. A donor who has that paragraph in hand can finish the job in a single short call to their lawyer.

Marketing sits alongside the asking. Include bequests in your annual report. Mention them in newsletters. Share stories of donors who have included you, with their permission. The goal is to normalize it, because a bequest is a private decision that people make more readily when they have evidence that others like them have made it. Silence on the subject reads as absence of a program, and donors will not ask you whether you accept something you have never mentioned.

The Revenue Math

The arithmetic is worth doing on your own list rather than taking on faith, because it is what will persuade a skeptical board. Start with your major donor count. Assume 50 major donors. If 30% commit a bequest, that is 15 commitments, and the future revenue is 15 multiplied by whatever your average bequest turns out to be. You will not know that average until you have a few, so use a conservative placeholder from comparable organizations in your area and label it as an assumption rather than a projection.

The timing matters as much as the total. Of those 15 commitments, perhaps 5 will actually be received within a Year 1 to 5 window, which is the average timeframe; the rest arrive later, sometimes much later. That is the honest shape of the revenue, and presenting it that way protects you from the board member who hears "planned giving" and starts writing the amount into next year's budget. Even conservative planning suggests planned giving generates meaningful revenue over a 5 to 10 year horizon from modest outreach, which is a genuinely unusual return for a program whose main cost is a one-page document and a series of conversations you were going to have anyway.

Building a Legacy Society

Formalize the program with a "legacy society" or "legacy club" whose members are donors who have committed major gifts or planned gifts. The mechanism is simple recognition: special communications, an annual gathering, and impact reports that show the outcomes tied to their specific gift. None of that requires meaningful budget, and that is precisely why it is undervalued. What it produces is a category of belonging, and donors who belong to something behave differently from donors who merely give to it.

Legacy society members often increase their current gifts, add donations outside the plan, and become genuine advocates who bring other people into the same conversation. The society also solves a practical problem: it gives you a reason to contact planned gift donors regularly without appearing to check whether they are still alive. The annual gathering and the impact report are the relationship, and the relationship is what keeps the commitment intact through the years when nothing else is happening.

Anti-Patterns

• Waiting until donors are elderly. People in their 60s and 70s are ideal to ask about bequests, but people in their 40s and 50s also care about legacy and are often writing a first will around a house purchase or a child. Ask broadly rather than restricting the conversation to your oldest supporters.
• Making it too complex. Bequests are simple; CRTs and CGAs are not. Leading with the complex vehicles buries the accessible one. Make the complex vehicles available but never make them the default.
• No follow-up after the commitment. A donor commits a planned gift and then hears nothing. Maintain the relationship and send annual updates, so that when they pass and the gift arrives, their family knows you cared about the person and not only the money.
• Poor documentation. Confirm bequest commitments and get them in writing where possible. Legacy society membership acknowledgment is one way to formalize what would otherwise be a remembered conversation.
• Giving legal or tax advice. Explaining what a vehicle is differs from advising a donor on their estate. Refer to the attorney and the CPA, keep your guide reviewed by them, and stay on your side of that line.
• Turning modest bequests away. Setting a minimum for legacy society membership or for planned giving recognition tells faithful small donors that their legacy does not count. Accept all commitments.

Practice Prompts

• Draft the one-page guide. Write one paragraph each on bequests, CRTs, CGAs, and DAFs, then add the bequest language donors can hand to an attorney, including your legal name, address, and tax ID.
• Write your website section. Compose the "remember us in your will" block for your giving page, in plain language, with a link to the guide.
• Build the call list. Identify your major donors and rank them for the planned giving conversation. Note which ones have given faithfully for a long time rather than in large amounts, because those are frequently your best bequest prospects.
• Rehearse the ask. Say the legacy framing out loud until it sounds like you: "As you think about your legacy and what matters to you, have you considered including us in your long-term plans?"
• Recruit your professionals. Approach one local estate planning attorney and one CPA about reviewing your guide and receiving referrals, and ask directly whether they will do it pro bono.
• Design the legacy society. Decide the name, the recognition, the annual touchpoint, and how a commitment gets recorded in your database so it survives staff turnover.
• Run the arithmetic. Take your major donor count, apply a commitment rate you can defend, and present the result to your board as a range with its timing, not as a line in next year's budget.

Reflection

Think about the donors who have supported you longest rather than largest, and ask when any of them was last invited into a conversation about legacy. Most organizations discover that their planned giving prospects and their major gift prospects are different people, and that the difference has been invisible because the only question ever asked was how much someone could give this year. Then ask what happens at your organization when a donor dies. If the answer is that nobody knows until a letter arrives, you do not have a planned giving program; you have luck, and luck does not scale.

Glossary

• Planned giving: giving that happens outside the current budget cycle, arranged now and often received years later.
• Bequest: a gift made through a will or trust, in which the donor names the organization to receive a stated amount or percentage.
• Charitable remainder trust (CRT): a trust into which the donor transfers assets, drawing income for life, with the remainder passing to the nonprofit.
• Charitable gift annuity (CGA): an arrangement in which the donor makes a gift in return for fixed income for life, with the remainder going to the nonprofit.
• Donor-advised fund (DAF): a fund the donor establishes and takes a deduction for, from which they recommend grants to nonprofits over time.
• Remainder: the portion of a trust or annuity arrangement that passes to the nonprofit once the donor's income interest ends.
• Legacy society: a recognition group whose members have committed major or planned gifts, used to formalize and steward those commitments.
• Bequest language: the sentence a donor gives their attorney naming the organization, its address, and its tax identification number.
• Stewardship: the ongoing relationship work that follows a commitment, including annual thanks, impact updates, and personal contact.

Related Lessons

• Major Gift Fundraising: Identification, Cultivation, Solicitation, Stewardship
• Donor-Advised Funds: How to Market to and Steward DAF Donors
• Mid-Level Donor Strategy: The Overlooked Segment
• Non-Cash Asset Fundraising: Stock, Crypto, DAFs, and Planned Giving
• Monthly Giving Programs: Building Recurring Revenue That Grows

Closing

Planned giving rewards organizations that are willing to be patient and specific. The patience is structural, because the revenue arrives on a timeline you do not control. The specificity is what you actually control: a one-page guide, a visible page on your website, a sentence a donor can hand to an attorney, a list of people worth calling, and a habit of staying in touch after the commitment rather than filing it. Marcus's food bank received that estate gift by accident. The next one will not be an accident, because he now has a program that makes the ask normal and the answer easy. Start with bequests, keep the complex vehicles available for the donors who need them, and treat every commitment as the beginning of a relationship rather than the end of a solicitation.

Key Takeaways

• Planned giving happens outside the current budget cycle, so it does not compete with your annual appeal for the same dollars.
• Most nonprofits have no program at all, which means the competition for a donor's legacy attention is thinner than the competition for their checkbook.
• Lead with bequests. They are the simplest vehicle and they account for the large majority of planned gifts.
• Remove the mechanical barrier by giving donors the exact language for their attorney, along with your legal name, address, and tax ID.
• Ask across age bands rather than confining the conversation to your oldest donors.
• Refer complex vehicles to an estate attorney and a CPA, and get your guide reviewed by them rather than writing advice yourself.
• Document every commitment and steward it annually, because an unattended commitment can quietly disappear.
• A legacy society costs almost nothing and converts a private decision into a form of belonging.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we need a lawyer to handle planned giving? For bequests, no. Donors work with their own attorney, and your role is to provide the language and the organizational details. For CRTs and CGAs, yes, and the right move is to partner with an estate planning lawyer rather than improvise. Many will work pro bono for nonprofits, so the cost is usually minimal. What you are buying is accuracy in your materials and a trusted referral for donors who need one.

What if someone wants to leave a bequest but is not wealthy? Accept it. A bequest from a modest donor is still a real gift, and modest donors who have given faithfully for years are among the most likely to leave one. Do not require minimum amounts for legacy society membership or for planned giving recognition. Minimums filter out exactly the loyal supporters whose legacy decisions you most want to influence, and they cost you goodwill for no gain.

How do we ask about bequests without seeming ghoulish? Lead with legacy and impact rather than mortality. "As you think about your legacy and what matters to you, have you considered including us in your long-term plans?" frames the conversation positively and puts the donor in the role of someone deciding what their life stands for. The discomfort most fundraisers feel is usually their own rather than the donor's; people who have written a will have already thought about this and are frequently relieved to discuss it.

Should we follow up annually with planned gift commitments? Yes. An annual thank-you, an impact report, and a personal note keep the relationship alive and the commitment solid. Many donors reconsider gifts if they feel forgotten, and a will is revised more easily than it was written. The annual contact is not a check-in on the gift; it is evidence that the organization values them now, which is what makes the future gift feel like the right decision.

Can we ask a living planned gift donor for an additional current gift? Yes, but carefully, and without pressure. Acknowledge the commitment first: "We know you have included us in your will, which means everything. If you are able to support this year's campaign as well, we would be grateful." Framing the current gift as optional additional support respects what they have already done. Legacy society members often do give more currently, but that happens because they were asked well, not because they were pushed.