By Nathan Stelter, President, The Stelter Company

Ever feel like you could use a boost in your work? Something concrete to prove that your efforts are yielding a solid return on investment?

We’ve discussed the efficacy of using data and metrics to guide your planned giving marketing strategies and determine ROI in previous posts on our Stelter Insights blog.

Today, however, we’re talking about YOU—your return on investment; or using data and metrics to prove to yourself and to leadership that you’re doing a good job.

A Few Points to Bolster Your Confidence

Planned giving is nothing for decision-makers to dismiss.

  • Highpoint: In 2022, for example, charitable bequests (the most common type of planned gift) accounted for 9% of all donations, totaling $45.60 billion. That’s more than double the donations from corporations ($21.08 billion).

Planned giving remains a steady, secure funding source even amid uncertain times.

  • Highpoint: A Blackbaud report shows that some organizations receive over 25% of their annual revenue from planned gifts, with these gifts increasing nearly 5% every year, even during times of widespread financial distress.

Planned giving offers a higher ROI than major gifts or annual gifts.

  • Highpoint: A typical planned gift is 200 to 300 times the size of a donor’s largest annual gift.

Planned giving lifts all boats.

Planned gifts enable your nonprofit to plan with confidence. In fact, it’s not a “nice-to-have” in your organization’s overall funding program but an absolute anchor to help ensure your nonprofit’s long-term sustainability.

  • Highpoint: The average time from inception to maturity for a planned gift is seven to 10 years. Remind people that planned gifts aren’t as deferred as they might think.

Donors who’ve made a planned gift often have a stronger attachment to your organization. They’re invested—financially and emotionally.

Determining the Worth of Your Work

Data and metrics give your board, committees, development teams and even your boss the confidence to get behind planned giving. These concrete measurements show that short-term tactics, combined with a long-term strategy, will continue to yield a pipeline of planned gifts.

Part 1—Start Here For a Foundation

Review the National Standards for Gift Planning Success (NSGPS) to inform your ROI. They are a framework—already classified and organized—to advance your program and ensure accountability.

Our Stelter team is professionally invested in these standards, which means they’ve been scrutinized and vetted repeatedly to ensure their clarity and effectiveness.

I’ve been a board member and chair of the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners, the group that spearheaded these standards, and co-chaired the NSGPS task force. Lynn M. Gaumer, JD, Stelter’s senior gift planning consultant, has been involved as chair of CGP Leadership Institute.

TIP: The place to start for ROI measurement tools is Ability and Capacity to Execute.

The National Standards for Gift Planning Success

Real-world applications:

  1. Under each standard, write bullet points or a narrative about what you’re doing to advance the standard. Try a SWOT analysis for a more complete understanding.
  2. This is a good exercise to impart clarity and a way forward for you and your planned giving team. It also can be used to validate your work to leadership.

Part 2—Drill Deeper for Solid Backing

You’ve got to be comfortable playing the long game in planned giving. As I mentioned earlier, it takes an average of seven to 10 years to realize funds from a planned gift intention. True, we’re not talking decades to receive a gift, but it can be a longer time frame than what some decision-makers expect or are comfortable with.

That’s why measuring ROI only in dollars received from planned gifts tells an incomplete story and reflects short-term, “show-me-the-money” thinking. A large part of your metrics should also focus on activity, or what you’re doing to move a prospect from awareness to action (i.e., making and notifying you of a planned gift).

Making these activities a metric relies on the assumption that purposeful, targeted activity will translate into dollars in the long term. These types of activities include:

  • Your contact plan. Document your marketing touches—like multichannel marketing efforts, calls and visits—monthly, quarterly and annually.
  • Identified/engaged planned gift prospects. Track reply card responses, prospect-initiated outreach (calls, emails) and repeat traffic to your gift planning website.
  • Planned gift intentions. How many intentions are you recognizing each year? How many prior revocable intentions are you stewarding? How many (if any) gifts were rescinded? How many new members did you add to your legacy society? These are all important questions to track and tackle to improve your fundraising effectiveness.

More Resources

Read more about advanced ROI measurements to provide deeper insight and proof of planned giving success. And we’ve got your back with more ways to use data. Below are the blogs I mentioned earlier for more support to prove that you are your nonprofit’s star ROI.

Yes, You Can Measure ROI in Planned Giving. Here’s How.
6 Essential Metrics to Track for Planned Giving Marketing Success