Smart fundraising professionals realize the value of understanding their nonprofit organization’s planned giving potential. Unfortunately, it has not always been easy to quantify that potential, until now.
Charities that do not have a planned giving program will want to know how much money their organization can raise through such a program before they decide whether a budget investment would be worthwhile.
Nonprofit organizations that already engage in planned giving will want to know whether their program is achieving all it can or if there is room for significant growth.
Nonprofit Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, and board members, will want to know the potential of planned giving before they agree to invest scarce budget resources in a program to acquire planned gifts.
To help fundraising professionals gauge their organization’s planned giving potential, I included a “Bequest Potential Worksheet” in my award-winning book Donor-Centered Planned Gift Marketing. Now, I’ve collaborated with Greg Warner and his team at MarketSmart to develop the free, electronic Bequest Potential Calculator.
You will find the electronic Calculator easy to use. Instead of entering a bunch of numbers on a paper worksheet and then manually working through the calculations, now all you have to do is enter the number of donors to your organization. The Bequest Potential Calculator does all of the calculations for you, and provides a written explanation of the results.
When you use the Calculator, you’ll have the comfort of knowing that I incorporated the input of Texas Tech philanthropy researcher Russell James, JD, PhD when updating my algorithm.
While Charitable Bequests are only one type of planned gift, gift planners generally consider them the most common form of planned giving. So, if you want to begin to understand your organization’s planned giving potential, checkout the Bequest Potential Calculator. Although it is not a forecasting tool, the Calculator will help you begin to better understand your organization’s potential.
Once you’ve used the Calculator, let me know what you think. How close are you to realizing your organization’s potential? Have you met or exceeded your organization’s potential?
That’s what Michael Rosen says… What do you say?
Michael Rosen Says... 