The Pentera Blog
Why It's Important to Include Impact in Your Planned Giving Marketing Materials
The planned giving departments of many nonprofits are quite adept at including donor stories in their marketing publications but are not nearly as prolific when it comes to reporting the positive impact of the charity. Yet research studies show that donors are becoming more and more interested in a charity's results when deciding to give or keep giving. And you can easily report your charity's impact.
The latest research comes from Fidelity Charitable, which found that 39% of donors giving at least $1,000 per year said they "track results for most or all nonprofits I support." While this was not a survey of planned giving donors, those donating $1,000 per year or more are likely to be planned giving prospects—either now or in the future.
Fidelity also found that the younger the giver, the more likely that the donor tracks impact. While 32% of Baby Boomers track nonprofit impact, the percentage is up to 40% for Gen X donors and 66% for Millennial donors, the study reported. As those younger generations age and begin making planned gifts, the importance of communicating impact is likely to increase.
Two kinds of impact
The donors in the Fidelity study are thinking of impact the way we traditionally do: What good is the nonprofit accomplishing in pursuit of its mission? So a university might report about the number of students it is graduating and what some of them have gone on to do, a hospital might report on all the successful surgeries performed in the previous year, or a museum might report on the number of people who in the past year have participated in education programs.
There is also another slant on reporting impact that is particularly effective in planned giving marketing materials: The direct impact of a gift or group of gifts. When restricted bequests are realized and the funds are used for that restricted purpose, the impact of the gift is easily described. Rather than focusing on the donor (or group of donors), you can focus on the benefits of the gift(s)—the impact.
Simple tips about how to report impact
Comprehensive impact stories are great—but they take time to research and write.* Fortunately, impact can be easily reported in many other ways:
- Include a chart or graph that shows how many people you helped in the past year.
- List your various programs, highlighting the new ones.
- Feature a quote from an individual helped by your charity.
- Tell how many people are in your legacy society and how many have joined recently.
- Briefly describe a recent realized gift and how the funds were used.
You can probably come up with many other ways that you can quickly and easily show the impact of your nonprofit. In addition, you may be able to connect with departments at your organization that can easily provide statistics and stories already written about the impact your nonprofit is having on society.
Those $1,000-per-year donors who "track results"—and who may be planned giving prospects, either now or in the future—are chomping at the bit to read about your nonprofit's impact.
*For its clients, Pentera will write one free impact story for each marketing newsletter.
