Legacy fundraising is a brilliant way for charities to increase their donations and is a major source of income for many non-profits. It is the donations that people leave in their wills and more people are doing it every year. In the UK alone, £2.044 billion is raised each year for charities via legacies each year by generous people, and this figure is expected to triple over the next 40 years.
The problem is that most charities struggle to ask for these kinds of donations and may be missing out on large amounts of donations. To help you to capture this stream of donations and complete your charity’s goals we’ve got a few tips for effective legacy fundraising.
Before you start asking for legacy donations you need to first know who your possible donators may be. Not all the people who give you donations will be willing to be a legacy donator, and this is okay. Legacy donating is usually only done by your most dedicated donors.
Figure out who these people and then start to understand them. Know what motivates them to donate and you’ll be able to target them much better.
Simply asking people for money isn’t a good way to raise donations; you need to explain exactly what the money will do. Asking for somebody to “donate £500” doesn’t have the same impact that asking them to “provide a week’s food for 100 people displaced by conflict”.
Letting the prospective donor know exactly how the money will be spent will make them more likely to donate, and more likely to donate a higher amount.
Will making isn’t something that most people want to do in the first place, and even when they do it isn’t an easy task. You need to make it as easy as possible for people to include you in their will; possibly include a page on your website that has a guide to take people through the process of adding you in as a legacy donation.
You need to focus your legacy fundraising communications on the legacy that the donor will leave behind. Rather than focusing on will making and death, make it all about how the legacy donation is a reflection of someone’s beliefs, values and experiences.
People don’t just leave things to just any person or organisation in their will. This means that if you want to increase the amount of legacy donations you’re getting you need to start building a relationship with potential donors.
These five tips should hopefully help you to capture legacy donations for your charity and achieve the goals your charity has set out. Having a strong retail store is also a great way to help your charity work for its cause. Here at Nisyst, we’ve been helping charities with their retailing for years and that’s how we developed one of the best charity EPoS systems in the industry. If you’d like some information about how we can help your charity, don’t hesitate in contacting us on 01204 706 000 and a member of our team will be happy to help with your enquiries.
With over thirty years of experience developing EPoS systems, Nisyst is a family-owned business whose main mission is to make technology work harder for the charity sector.
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