"Marketing" may sound like a term that doesn't have much to do with nonprofits, but all marketing really means is that you provide opportunities for donors to learn of the benefits and value of what you can provide. Endowment funds need to be marketed, just like any other service or program you offer. Marketing is largely about communication - telling people the fund exists, explaining why it was created, describing the ways people can contribute and the advantages of doing so, and helping donors understand how they can participate.
For a step-by-step guide on creating a Marketing Plan for your endowment fund, see pages 27-39 of the Congregational Endowment Guide. This helpful resource for planned giving programs is available for download on the LCF website.
Key Messages
Key messages are the two or three essential concepts that all audiences should know about your endowment fund. While the bequest program may have tailored messages touting the benefits of giving through a bequest to various target audiences, the overall key messages should serve as the cornerstones for all communication about the endowment fund. Your key messages should speak to the role of the endowment in supporting the mission and vision of your organization.
As reported in the April 9, 2009, issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a new study from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University indentified donors' motivations in making charitable gifts or bequests. The study indicates people think differently when making decisions about bequests than they do about short-term gifts; therefore, fundraisers should use different language for bequest appeals. For instance, donors who give once a year tend to respond to appeals that use concrete results - such as the fact that a $20 gift will inoculate a child against disease - people who make bequests tend to think in more abstract terms. Donors are more likely to respond to bequest appeals that emphasize the quality of care, the relief of suffering, or dignity provided to clients.
Bequest donors are less interested in how an organization will fulfill its mission than in why the mission is important. You should emphasize less how the donor's dollars will affect the organization, and more how the organization will affect society.
Who to Target
In spring 2008, The Stelter Company combined forces with the research firm Selzer & Company Inc. to provide insight into who names charities in their wills, when they do it and why. They discovered several important findings:
- 7% of Americans aged 40 and over have named nonprofits in their wills. In addition, another 10% are good prospects.
- The tendency to focus fundraising efforts on older donors defies changes in how Americans think about and plan for their estates. This new study reveals that fully two out of three U.S. residents aged 40 and over (64%) already have wills. And, the majority of those who have wills report creating them before they reached the age of 50. Decisions are therefore happening at a younger age than we might imagine.
- Once a nonprofit is included in a will, it is rarely dropped. Efforts to cultivate relationships with younger donors may come with a longer timeframe before results are seen; however, bequests made at younger ages are likely to stick and benefit the nonprofit in decades to come.
- Donors and potential donors strongly prefer to first learn about bequest giving by mail when compared to all other forms tested.
Another recent study, from the University of Georgia, which tracked 20,000 Americans over the age of 50 from 1995-2006, found that people who don't have children or grandchildren were the most likely to make charitable bequests. Among donors in the study who had completed a will, only 9.8% of those with grandchildren chose to make a charitable bequest, while 50 percent of the ones without off-spring included a provision for charity in their wills.
For those who do have children, reaching out to encourage them to include gifts to the endowment when they first create a will to provide for guardianship and care of their children would seem to be the most efficient strategy, given the fact that most charities remain in a will once included.