Let's Move on from Wills Days

Let's move on from Wills Days

by Christiana Stergiou

Some bequest staff love Wills Days. They spend most of their time organising an event: finding solicitors, deciding whether to charge, finding venues, advertising and the like. Great fun.  Thanks to Wills Days, they need never ask a single supporter, or potential supporter, for a bequest. They just hope that by coming to a Wills Day, a few good people may include the charity in their Will.

And it is the last point where Wills Days fall down, time and time again. The word ‘hope’ is used a lot in such flawed strategies. I recently conducted a strategic analysis of Wills Days for a charity who had based their bequest strategy around such activities for many years. In the past year, they had conducted ten Wills Days and made almost 300 Wills for the public. However, only about six participants told bequest staff they had included that charity in their Will. That is about 2% of prospects. Furthermore, these were small bequest of about $1,000. That’s a lot of work for six small bequests.

Bequest staff will often say that many people don’t want to tell a charity about their bequest. However, bequest strategy and tactics can only be evaluated based on known outcomes. And the solicitors who participated said they found that Wills Days were generally ineffective for seeking charitable bequests, but that yes, they had made quite a few Wills. A great public service – but this is usually not a charity’s core business or, by any means, an effective bequest tactic.

If your Wills Day is not able to turn at least 5% of participants into immediate bequestors, who leave you a percentage of their estate (not just a fixed sum of $1,000, or the like), then you need to think of other methods that can yield these results. If you are already getting these results  then, of course, do more Wills Days – but make sure you are measuring the outcomes properly.

Let’s just face it, Wills Days are not an effective bequest fundraising tool for the majority of charities. They take up valuable time, money and staff for a very low return. Your charity’s efforts would most likely be better allocated to direct marketing bequests to your supporters and prospective supporters by mail and telephone.

 So I urge you to get serious about bequest fundraising - it can be the single most effective method of fundraising for your organisation, changing the lives of your beneficiaries well into the future. To make this happen, your strategy needs to:

1.        Ask your most likely supporters and potential supporters, for a bequest.  You can do lots of complex targeting, but avoid the delay that this usually causes and focus on everyone who is over 50 years old. This will find genuine hot, warm and cool bequest prospects that you can concentrate the majority of your efforts on. If you don’t know how old someone is, start with people who have supported your charity for a long time with frequent gifts.

2.        Actively work with those supporters to encourage them to making a residual or percentage bequest (this can be done through mail and phone).

3.       Be really, really nice to bequestors and potential bequestors at every step in their journey to including your charity in their Will.  Make sure all appeals and communications to them mention their bequest (and yes, they should receive appeals – just add a personalised paragraph).

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has done just this. In 2006, 338 supporters had confirmed a gift to ACF in their Will. Now, less than 12 months later, this has grown to 778 supporters. An impressive 4.7 % of all of ACF’s cash donors have made a bequest and a further 13% (!!) are intending or considering doing so. This means a brighter future for our precious environment, at a time when dangerous climate change is front of mind for many Australians.  In 2006, ACF received about $500,000 from bequests. These 440 new bequests alone will translate into over $17 million of future income.

ACF’s strategy is a holistic, direct marketing approach to bequests. Their tactics – effective donor surveys to identify existing and potential bequestors, brilliant follow up (mail and phone) and excellent customer care which recognises and thanks donors for their bequest or bequest intention. That’s their secret – not Wills Days.

Christiana now works in Hong Kong for Pareto Fundraising, but before crossing to the dark side of agency life, she was in charge of bequests at the National Heart Foundation of Australia (QLD/VIC) and, most recently, Mission Australia. Please email christiana@paretofundraising.com for more information on this article.