The 5% Challenge

Simon Trevelyan: President, S.T. Legacy GroupOctober 26, 2012 

The 5% Challenge

If you engage 3% - 5% of your supporters in legacy giving, you will create financial security for decades to come.(Av. Bequest in B.C. = $60,000)

Currently, most organizations with mature planned giving programs have engaged under 0.5% of their supporters in legacy giving.

The 5% Challenge

This challenge is not a theoretical idea.

I have achieved a 7% engagement level at one organization over 8 years.

Recently, I helped other charities achieve legacy engagement levels of 3% to 4% in a few years: creating a

20-fold increase in legacy commitments.

The absence of a strategic approach

You would think that strategic planning and planned giving would go hand-in-hand.

In fact, there is an absence of strategic planning in most planned giving programs.

That’s because the gift-planning method is largely a reactive process.

The absence of a strategic approach

Most organizations have no strategic legacy plan, just annual targets for visits and placing adverts in planned giving supplements.

This type of approach, not surprisingly, results in low legacy engagement levels.

Strategic planning

To get close to a engaging 5% of your supporters in legacy giving you need a strategic plan.

To lay the foundation for a successful strategic plan, ask yourself the following questions about your program and approach.

Strategic questions

1. How many legacy commitments and leads do you have and how many do you generate annually?

2. What marketing and solicitation systems do you use?

3. Are there marketing and solicitation systems that generate higher engagement levels?

4. What long-term goal could you set for the conversion of supporters to a legacy commitment if you had a better engagement system?

Strategic questions

5. What motivates supporters to leave a legacy to your organizational vision?

6. What is your case for support for legacy giving?

7. Do you have a legacy brand that sets your program apart from others?

8. Do you have marketing and solicitation systems? How effective are they in generating interest and gifts?

Strategic questions

9. Do you have cultivation and stewardship systems? Do they increase gift closure and gift security?

10. How do you measure the success of your program? 11. What information on legacy leads and donors do you

store in your database?12. How do you justify investment in your program so it

will grow?

The 9 steps of a strategic plan

I encourage organizations to develop the following 9 steps.

1. Set long-term goals

Establish 5-year legacy engagement goals:• the percentage of supporters you will convert to

a legacy commitment• the percentage of supporters who will be

interested in legacy giving (as a result of your marketing)

2. Understand what motivates giving

If you don’t have a clear idea of why people are motivated to leave a legacy, you cannot create effective marketing, solicitation and stewardship systems.

People generally leave legacies because they want their values to continue beyond their lifetime and because your mission/vision fit with those values.

2. Understand what motivates giving

2. Understand what motivates giving

Your primary focus should therefore be the values of prospective legacy donors and how your mission/vision fits those values.

Planning a gift should never be the focus: understanding the mechanism of giving does little to motivate giving.

3. Establish a legacy program brand

S.T. Legacy Group developed this brand for Seva Canada (Seva works to eradiate preventable blindness in developing countries).

3. Establish a legacy program brand

A good brand captures the essence of your program and conveys it in a simple format.

Branding creates expectations and promises about the goals and vision of your program and how each legacy gift will create a better future.

December 14th High Tea “Developing a Legacy Brand”

3. Develop a case for support

The case for support is a sentence that encapsulates why people should leave a legacy to your organization.

More on this on December 14th High Tea

4. Create marketing and solicitation systems

Having a marketing system that motivates your stakeholders is critical.

Some marketing is much more effective them others.

4. CPL for different marketing tactics

Cost to generate a legacy lead (CPL)

Advertising in supplements $2,000 - 10,000

Estate planning seminars $1,000 - 5,000

Estate planning newsletter $1,000 - 5,000

Direct mail appeal for legacy gifts $400 - 3,000

Legacy formvelope $100 - 1,000

S.T. Legacy Group legacy survey (via mail) $80 - 250S.T. Legacy Group legacy survey (on-line) + video $60 - 200

5. Establish culturally sensitive legacy solicitation

If you solicit legacy gifts face-to-face, then please, think again.

Asking someone to consider a gift that involves their death is probably not a good thing to do over tea and cookies.

5. Establish culturally sensitive legacy solicitation

The tea & cookies approach to soliciting legacy gifts: it doesn’t matter how good you are at asking for a gift, must donors will stonewall.

Why? Because you’ve brought up their demise and they are not comfortable talking about it with you. Donors need space to make these types of decisions.

5. Establish culturally sensitive legacy solicitation

The pressure of the face-to-face ask may be effective for major gift solicitations, but not end-of-life gifts.

A legacy survey system provides a sensitive and effective way to clarify legacy interest and gifts.

November Nov 9th High Tea: Legacy Surveys

6. Develop a follow-up and gift cultivation process

Charity engages a consultant; lots of leads are generated.

6. Develop a follow-up and gift cultivation process

No follow-up plan. Staff don’t have the capacity or tools to follow-up.

6. Develop a cultivation process

Gift cultivation is about moving legacy leads to a place where they are more likely to make a commitment, or legacy donors a larger commitment.

It’s a sensitive process, but it can be successfully implemented.

7. Create a stewardship system

The first step in any successful stewardship system is to know who your legacy donors and leads are.

7. Create a stewardship system

Large organizations with sophisticated database systems where all the data on legacy leads and commitments is stored on Excel spreadsheets.

7. Create a stewardship system

If you don’t stay in touch with your legacy leads and donors, they may find other causes to support and take you out of their will.

8. Develop a critical path

Make a plan and devote the necessary resources to implement it.

9. Build a case for greater investment

Some organizations make more than a million a year from legacy giving.

They invest (after staff costs) $10,000 - $20,000 in enhancing their legacy program.

How can this be?

9. Build a case for greater investment

If we were in the private sector, I guarantee that the investment in legacy giving would be 10 to 20 times greater.

Yet in the non-profit sector, we toddle along as if legacies are gifts from heaven that fall into our lap.

9. Build a case and greater investment

It’s time we got serious about building a case for greater investment in legacy giving.

A strategic plan will help us make that case.