Fundraisers slow to ask for bequests
Howard Lake | 12 September 2007 | News
The reluctance to discuss planned giving and particularly bequests may be due more to the attitude of fundraisers than donors, a seminar on planned giving has heard. ‘Planned Giving:Challenges and Approaches for Environmental Organisations and Museums’ was held in Belfast and attended by a range of organisations in the cultural and community sector.
The seminar was organised by the European Association of Planned Giving and hosted by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra. Jan Jennings of Boston based Viking Consulting led the seminar and shared her experience of working both in the United States and Britain.
Jan said fundraisers need to have more confidence in their cause and in her experience donors are more open to discussing sensitive issues related to planned giving and bequests than fundraisers think. Jan said ‘recognition societies’ of people who had committed to the organisation were popular in the United States.
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The best prospects for membership organisations are those people who give over time and recency of donations is less important in indentifying bequest prospects, according to Jan. US statistics show that 8% of the ‚€295 billion donated to charity each year comes from bequests.
On a practical level, Jan suggested that organisations should use all their marketing materials to promote planned giving. She also recommended sending legacy material with all donor ‘thank yous.’
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.