Planned Giving: The $46 Billion Opportunity Nonprofits Miss
A mid-sized conservation land trust in the Midwest received a phone call from an estate attorney one January afternoon. The caller represented the estate of a donor who had given $150 every December for eleven years, always by check, always without fanfare. Her gifts were small enough that she never appeared on a major donor list, never flagged for personal outreach, never received a handwritten note from the executive director. She was a retired schoolteacher. She died the previous November. She had included the land trust in her will. The bequest was $340,000.
The development director who shared this story at a fundraising conference made a single observation that stayed with the room: the organization had no planned giving program, no legacy society, and no record of any personal conversation with this donor in more than a decade of giving. The gift arrived not because they had cultivated it. It arrived despite the fact that they hadn’t.
Most nonprofits have donors like her in their files right now. The question is whether they’ll build the relationship before or after the estate attorney calls.
The $46 Billion Blind Spot
Charitable bequests totaled $45.84 billion in the United States in 2024, representing nearly 8% of all charitable giving that year. That figure is both enormous and, given what it could be, undersized. Fewer than 6% of American adults include a charitable bequest in their estate plans, even as more than 90% make annual donations. The gap between what people give in life and what they leave behind is not a values gap. It is an infrastructure gap, and nonprofits bear primary responsibility for closing it.
Among Baby Boomers, only 8% have a charitable bequest included in their estate plans. That same generation is in the middle of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in American history. The math behind that combination should focus the attention of every development director in the country.
And yet most nonprofits allocate little to no budget, staff time, or strategic focus to planned giving cultivation. The result is $45 billion in realized bequests against a backdrop of trillions in untapped potential. The opportunity is not theoretical. It is already moving. The question is who captures it.
The Math Behind Bequests
The financial case for planned giving programs is among the strongest in all of fundraising.
The scale of individual gifts also changes the calculus entirely. Bequests from middle-class donors frequently exceed $100,000, and some institutions report that their average bequest is 2,500 times their average annual gift. A donor who gives $50 a year for twenty years and then leaves $150,000 to an organization has delivered 150 times more value through her estate than through her lifetime of annual checks. Organizations often have no idea that the gift is coming, because they had never had the conversation.
The sophisticated vehicles that intimidate many development teams (charitable remainder trusts, gift annuities, complex estate instruments) represent a small fraction of planned giving volume. The fundamental ask is simple: include us in your will. The cultivation challenge is making that ask feel natural, timely, and personal rather than transactional.
The Estate Planning Crisis That Kills Conversions
The biggest obstacle to planned giving growth is not organizational. It is structural. A donor who has not completed basic estate planning cannot make a bequest regardless of how deeply they value an organization’s mission.
Forty-seven percent of potential planned giving donors cite lack of an estate plan as the primary barrier to making a bequest commitment. This is an actionable insight. Organizations that make estate planning accessible as part of their donor engagement (by hosting free will clinics, partnering with estate attorneys for educational workshops, or sharing information about free online tools) remove the friction that prevents committed donors from acting on intentions they already hold.
The decline in estate planning rates has accelerated since the pandemic. Estate attorneys attribute it to a combination of procrastination, confusion about the process, and a widespread assumption that estate planning is only relevant to the wealthy. Nonprofits that help donors understand that a will is accessible and that a charitable bequest can be as simple as designating a percentage of an estate are planting seeds that compound over decades.
The Great Wealth Transfer Is Happening Now
This is not a moment to wait on. Baby Boomers will transfer an estimated $84.4 trillion in wealth over the next two decades. That is not a projection about a distant future. The oldest Boomers are 80. The transfer has already begun.
Planned giving prospects are identifiable and prioritizable. Consistent mid-level donors, 55 and older, who have given for five or more years are the most likely legacy gift candidates in virtually every nonprofit’s database. Many have already considered a bequest. They have simply never been asked by someone they trust.
Why Organizations Fail: The Intent Gap
Bequest intentions frequently fail to materialize into realized gifts. Donors who have told an organization they plan to include it in their will, or who have signed legacy society pledge cards, follow through less than half the time. The gap between stated intention and realized gift is where most planned giving programs quietly fail.
The reasons are predictable. Estate plans change. Financial circumstances shift. Adult children weigh in on distribution decisions. And the nonprofit’s relationship with the donor weakens over time because the organization stops investing in it once the pledge card is filed away. A donor who made a bequest commitment five years ago and has received nothing since but mass email campaigns has no particular reason to maintain that commitment when an estate attorney asks her to review her documents.
The organizations that convert bequest intentions at significantly higher rates share one defining practice: they maintain genuine personal relationships with legacy society members over years and decades. Personal calls. Individual updates on mission progress. Exclusive invitations. Recognition in publications. Handwritten notes on meaningful dates. Not automated touchpoints. Not first-name merge fields in bulk email. Personal contact from a real person who knows the donor’s name and genuinely values the relationship.
Building Your Legacy Society
A legacy society does not require a six-figure planned giving budget. Research from the Nonprofit Learning Lab shows that a legacy society launched with as few as four to six identified planned giving donors strengthens donor connections and establishes a foundation for ongoing cultivation. The architecture matters less than the intention behind it.
Identifying Your Prospects
Start with donors who have given consistently for five or more years, are 55 or older, and whose giving history suggests deep alignment with the mission rather than transactional participation. These are the donors who give in December not because they received an appeal but because they care. Talk to your executive director, board members, and engaged volunteers about who in the community might be a legacy gift prospect. The best lead list is often in the minds of the people closest to the mission, not in the CRM.
Opening the Conversation
Planned giving conversations are not solicitations. They are invitations to deepen a relationship that already exists. The opening question is not “Would you consider including us in your will?” It is “Have you thought about how you’d like to give after your lifetime?” One is a transactional ask. The other is a genuine conversation between people who share a commitment to the same mission.
Sustaining the Relationship Over Time
Legacy society members need to feel they belong to something meaningful, not just to a list. Annual gatherings, behind-the-scenes access, personal updates from leadership, and recognition in your annual report all signal that the relationship matters. Between these larger touchpoints, personal notes, calls on significant anniversaries, and updates tied to specific mission milestones keep the connection warm. A handwritten note that arrives on the anniversary of a donor’s first gift, or in response to something meaningful in their personal life, costs almost nothing to send. It communicates something no automated sequence can replicate: that someone at this organization thought of this person specifically, today.
The Nonprofit Competitive Advantage
The organizations winning at planned giving are not the ones with the most sophisticated software or the largest direct marketing budgets. They are the ones with the most genuine relationships.
A donor who feels known by an organization, who receives a personal call when something significant happens in the community, who finds a handwritten note in her mailbox with no particular agenda, is a donor who does not revise her will when a development director turns over or a direct mail appeal fails to land. The relationship holds because it was built on something real.
Bequest giving declined 1.6% in actual dollars and 4.4% adjusted for inflation in 2024. The sector is moving in the wrong direction. The nonprofits that will reverse that trend for themselves are the ones that stop treating planned giving as a campaign to run and start treating it as a form of care to sustain. The $46 billion in annual bequest giving is already flowing. The question every development team should be asking is not whether to pursue it. The question is whether the relationships are strong enough to earn it.
FAQ
Is planned giving only for wealthy donors?
No. Bequests from middle-class donors frequently exceed $100,000, and some organizations find that their average bequest is 2,500 times their average annual gift. The opportunity spans income levels, but it requires identifying and cultivating the right prospects. Consistent donors who have given at any level for five or more years are worth a personal conversation about their long-term philanthropic intentions.
How do we start a planned giving program with limited staff?
Start with identification, not infrastructure. A legacy society can launch with four to six identified prospects and no dedicated software. The essential elements are a named society, a simple recognition structure, and a genuine commitment to personal, ongoing outreach with members. A development director who spends two hours a week on legacy cultivation has the foundation of a program worth building on.
Why do so many bequest intentions fail to materialize?
Many stated bequest intentions don’t result in gifts, primarily because organizations fail to maintain consistent personal contact after the intention is expressed. Nonprofits that stay in genuine relationship with legacy society members through calls, personal notes, and exclusive updates convert intentions at significantly higher rates. The pledge card is not the goal. The ongoing relationship is.
What is the ROI on a planned giving program?
Legacy giving is among the highest-return fundraising strategies available. The compounding nature of relationship investment means that organizations with even small, well-cultivated legacy societies consistently see returns that dwarf digital fundraising channels where acquisition costs eat the margin.