Since 2010, the Ocean Conservancy has regularly surveyed its members (donors who have given at least $15 in the past 18 months) about why the ocean is important to them.
In response to one of the questions—“Have you thought about or would you ever think about including Ocean Conservancy in your estate plans?”—quite a few members said yes.
“If you engage donors to get them thinking about your organization, then they’re more likely to think about whether they would consider a planned gift,” says Charlotte Meyer, the nonprofit’s director of planned giving.
The membership department began mailing the survey to more of its donors to uncover additional planned-giving prospects. It turned out that there was significant overlap between donors who were receiving the survey and those who ended up being planned-giving leads. Donors who had given between $50 and $250 and those who contributed monthly, for example, proved to be especially good prospects.
So in 2104, Ms. Meyer and the organization’s membership director looked for ways to make their work more complementary.
That year, the organization sent the survey to the bulk of its donors (excluding major-gift donors, board members, foundations, and lapsed donors) to test its effectiveness with different groups. The expansion made the mailing more expensive, but the fundraisers believed the long-term return would be worth it.
The planned-giving office paid for the mailing and managed the prospects, while income from the mailing went to the membership department. (While the survey does not include a request for donations, members commonly respond with a check, says Ms. Meyer.) With the planned-giving office cultivating more donors, membership expected that donors would also give more and larger gifts during their lives.
“People who have told us that they have included us in their estate plans give more and more and more to direct mail every year,” Ms. Meyer says. The number of estate gifts has gone up from 500 to about 1,300 since the survey began, and the direct-mail response rate has not gone down, she says.
Planned-giving marketing consultant Phyllis Freedman helped develop the materials sent to the members who express an interest in estate gifts. Those materials include a planned-giving toolkit with a worksheet for donors to evaluate their assets before meeting with a financial adviser and information about ways to make gifts that don’t cost anything during the donor’s lifetime.
The documents are frequently updated based on new research on best practices in planned-giving marketing, Ms. Freedman says.
The alignment between the planned giving, membership, and major-gift offices doesn’t end with this effort. The organization includes planned-giving messages in its other appeals and communications whenever possible.
By the numbers
Donors who have given at least $15 in the past 18 months: over 100,000
Planned-giving donors: About 1,300
Planned-giving donors who have also given at least $15 in the last 18 months: about 90 percent
Average bequest amount: $27,000-34,000
