The Value of Planned Giving Specialists

Too many nonprofits view planned gifts marketing through an annual fund lens. They hand the responsibility to an internal marketing team or fundraising partner, write “Don’t Forget to Include Us in Your Will,” send it to the usual suspects, and call it a day.

It’s an understandable impulse, especially at organizations where everyone wears multiple hats and budgets are a huge concern. But this approach is costing these groups a lot of money. We’re not talking about small amounts either. According to Giving USA, the typical planned gift is somewhere between 200 and 300 times the size of a donor’s largest annual fund contribution. Think about that for a second. A donor who gives you $1000 a year might leave you $200,000 or more in their estate. That’s a transformational gift and securing it requires transformational thought.

If you’re treating planned giving as just another fundraising vertical, that’s a problem. So, what can you do about it?

Annual Fund Marketing and Planned Giving Marketing Are Fundamentally Different Disciplines

Your marketing team or partner agency is probably immensely talented. The issue is that the skills, strategies, and instincts required for each type of fundraising are genuinely different, and almost opposite in some ways.

Annual fund marketing is built around urgency. Year-end deadlines. Matching gift campaigns. Giving Tuesday countdowns. The whole model is designed to move people to action right now, usually through emotional appeals that create a sense of immediacy. Annual fund metrics reward quick response: open rates, click-throughs, and dollars raised in a campaign window.

Planned giving is a completely different conversation. You’re not asking donors to reach for their credit card today. You’re asking them to think about their legacy – what they want their life to have meant and what impact they want to leave behind. That requires a completely different voice, a different cadence, and a very different understanding of the donor.

Annual fund marketing and relationship-driven giving operate on different principles. One is transactional by design, and the other is built around long-term relationships. These are two distinct disciplines driven by different psychological and strategic principles.

The Audience Is Different In Ways That Really Matter

Something that surprises a lot of organizations is that your planned giving audience isn’t really the same group as your annual fund audience, even though there’s considerable overlap.

Planned giving prospects are typically long-time loyal donors. They’re people who have been giving to you for years, often in modest amounts, who have a deep emotional connection to your mission. They’re not necessarily your biggest annual donors. In fact, research consistently shows that many of the most impactful planned gifts come from donors who gave small amounts for decades, not from your major gift portfolio. CZG’s own extensive results show fewer than 30% of planned giving donors were also major gift donors.

The demographic reality matters here, too. Baby Boomers currently give nearly 43% of all philanthropic dollars and are the generation most likely to have planned giving vehicles already in place or under consideration. (See The Great Wealth Transfer.) This group responds to messaging that is personal, mission-centered, and relationship-driven. They’re not into mass marketing eblasts.

What’s more, only about 37% of people age 30 and older know what “planned giving” means. That’s a critical insight. If your marketing team is using jargon-heavy language aimed at a financially sophisticated audience, they’re likely missing most of the people who could become legacy donors. One landmark study conducted by planned giving researcher Dr. Russell James – and confirmed by CZG’s own results – found that when donors were asked if they’d consider making a “bequest gift,” 18% said yes. But when asked about leaving “a gift in your will,” 28% expressed interest. Same concept, different language, and a 10-percentage-point difference in response. That’s the kind of nuance that planned giving specialists are trained to recognize, and that general fundraisers often miss entirely.

The Relationship Timeline Is Completely Different

Annual fund marketing operates on a short cycle. You send a message, someone gives (or doesn’t), and you move on to the next campaign. The average time from inception to maturity for a planned gift, by contrast, is 7 to 10 years.

Planned giving marketing is fundamentally about relationship-building over time. It requires consistent, thoughtful outreach that keeps your organization in a donor’s mind and heart for years, hopefully without feeling pushy or transactional. Reaching out to planned giving prospects at least 10 to 20 times per year through a thoughtful mix of touchpoints is considered a baseline for effective programs.

Effective planned giving programs are built on multi-year contact strategies, legacy society stewardship, personal conversations, and patient cultivation. These are not skills that translate directly from running a year-end direct mail campaign. They require their own set of competencies and a completely different mindset.

Getting the Messaging Wrong Can Do Damage

This is a point that doesn’t get discussed enough. Bad planned gifts marketing isn’t just ineffective – it can actively harm your relationship with your most loyal donors.

When donors who have given to you faithfully for 20 years receive a tone-deaf appeal that treats a legacy gift like an impulse purchase, it feels disrespectful. These donors are thinking about mortality, legacy, and what their lives have meant. They deserve messaging that meets them where they are.

Annual fund marketers are trained to break through the noise. Planned giving specialists are trained to create moments of quiet connection.

The right planned giving messaging:

• Leads with legacy and mission, not deadlines or organizational need
• Celebrates the donor’s identity as someone who cares deeply about a cause
• Uses plain language, not financial or legal jargon
• Tells donor stories. Preferably real stories about real people who chose to leave a gift
• Avoids asking for money in the traditional sense; instead, it invites donors into a conversation

The Segmentation and Prospect Identification Is More Nuanced

Effective annual fund marketing typically segments by giving level, recency, frequency, and geographic information. It’s a solid science, and it works well for its intended purpose.

Planned giving prospect identification requires multiple layers of analysis. The most predictive factors for planned giving aren’t the same as those for annual giving. Long-tenure donors, donors without children, widows and widowers, and donors who have had previous conversations about your mission tend to be stronger planned giving prospects than simply “your biggest donors.”

On average, only about 8% of a typical donor file has already made a planned gift. Targeting the right prospects and messaging to them appropriately requires expertise that goes beyond standard donor segmentation. Mailing planned giving marketing to your whole list can actually dilute the message and confuse donors who aren’t the right audience for it. This also has a negative impact on planned giving staff, who must then spend time talking to donors who are not in the right stage to consider a planned gift.

Specialists also understand the stewardship side of the equation. Once a donor has made a planned giving commitment, the stewardship strategy looks very different than it does for annual giving. It’s long-term, personal, and focused on reinforcing the donor’s sense of connection to your mission. Done right, it also doubles the value of the originally committed gift. Done wrong, it can cost you significantly since most planned gifts are fully revocable while the donor is living.

The ROI Case for Specialization Is Overwhelming

Of all the compelling reasons for specialized planned giving marketing, the numbers are hardest to argue with.

Research from Blackbaud (cited in Giving USA) shows that planned gifts grow at around 5% annually, even during economic downturns. Some organizations receive over 25% of their annual revenue from planned gifts. Donors who make a planned gift commitment also tend to increase their annual giving by around 75%. They don’t give less. They give more.

And yet, most nonprofits don’t have even a basic planned giving program in place. Of those that do, many are under-investing in specialized marketing and relying on general fundraising staff who lack the specific training to execute it well.

Organizations that cut corners on planned giving marketing by treating it as a secondary duty for an overwhelmed annual fund team or outsourcing to a traditional fundraising agency are leaving enormous amounts of money unrealized. It’s amazingly easy to miss out on millions in bequests to save thousands on a marketing budget.

What does “Specialized” Really Mean

So, what does it actually mean to use a planned giving specialist, and why does it matter who you partner with?

The honest answer is that not all marketing vendors are created equal. There’s a meaningful difference between a generalist agency that offers planned giving as a line item and a firm whose entire identity, staff expertise, and research infrastructure is built around legacy giving.

Here’s what a true planned giving marketing specialist brings to the table that a general marketing shop or your in-house annual fund team simply can’t replicate:

Decades of donor research, not guesswork. The best specialized agencies have spent years – in some cases, half a century – studying the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of planned giving donors across organizations of all types and sizes. That accumulated knowledge drives every creative decision, every channel recommendation, and every piece of copy. You get insights that were earned through real campaigns with real donors.

Highly nuanced creative that matches the audience. Planned giving marketing requires copy and design that informs and inspires, helping donors envision a personal legacy connected to a mission they love. This is a genuinely different creative discipline than writing an annual fund appeal. A firm that lives and breathes legacy marketing develops an instinct for what resonates with this audience that takes years to build.

Multi-channel strategy built for extended stewardship. Effective planned giving programs use a thoughtful mix of direct mail, digital outreach, and print supported by research. A specialized agency knows how to allocate resources across those channels in ways that are both cost-efficient and proven to generate quality leads over time.

Programs that protect and enhance your current revenue. One of the most common fears organizations have about planned giving marketing is that it will cannibalize annual fund giving. A well-designed program, executed by specialists, does the opposite. Properly structured planned giving outreach enhances current revenue streams while simultaneously building your organization’s financial future.

Training that translates directly into results. The right agency doesn’t just hand you a marketing package and disappear. They invest in your team by teaching staff and leadership the practical skills to guide donors to a place where they’re genuinely excited about creating a legacy with your organization.

Professional advisor leverage. One of the most underutilized planned giving strategies is cultivating relationships with the estate attorneys, financial planners, and CPAs who influence how their clients think about charitable giving. Specialists who have built these networks and developed proven strategies for engaging the advisor community can open doors that no in-house team is likely to access on their own.

The bottom line is that planned giving is a donor-centered discipline. The emphasis should always be on building relationships and putting your donor’s best interests first – not just moving them through a marketing funnel. That philosophy, consistently applied by a team with deep expertise and a long track record, is what separates programs that occasionally receive bequests from programs that reliably generate them year after year.

A Final Thought

If your organization is serious about planned giving, the question isn’t whether you can afford to work with a specialized agency. It’s whether you can afford not to.

The great wealth transfer is already underway. Trillions of dollars are moving between generations, and nonprofits with thoughtful, well-executed planned giving programs built on real expertise will be positioned to benefit. Those constructed on borrowed bandwidth will see those gifts go to organizations that invested in the relationship.

It’s not too late to start. But it does require treating planned giving as the distinct, specialized discipline that it is and giving it the dedicated expertise it deserves.

Have questions about building or improving your planned giving program? Get in touch today.