Important Numbers You, Your Boss & Your Board Need To Know About Planned Gifts – Part III
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Last month, I began sharing interesting numbers around planned giving programs that help us to better understand planned gifts, our donors that make them, the marketing that we create and the collection and application of data surrounding all of these. You can read my original blog here and Part II here.
To summarize so far:
- In the next 20 years, there may be $30 trillion or more inherited by the Baby Boomer population’s children and grandchildren with an estimated $1.5 - $6 trillion in charitable gifts going to non-profits in the U.S. between 2017 and 2030. Are you poised to accept your share of this transfer?
- 95% of all planned gifts are in the simple form of a bequest in wills, trusts or through beneficiary forms designation gifts. I’ve written a glossary of planned giving terms to help you get familiar with these and other terms. Are you comfortable with simple terminology about deferred giving?
- According to recent research, donors who make bequests increase their current gift amount in the 5 years following the planned gift creation by 75%. A 75% in a $20 annual gift would be a $35 gift. $1,000 increases to $1,750 and $10,000 rises to $17,500. Looking for possible hidden bequest donors in your CRM? Run a report to see whose made a 75% increase in their gift from 5 years ago and ask them directly if they qualify for membership in your legacy society.
- An examination on IRS data on estates over $2,000,000 found that charitable bequests are the largest type of reported deferred gifts. On average, they’re 2.74 times the total lifetime giving of a donor. Are you discussing charitable bequest options with your current investment-level donors? Other studies indicate that 50% or more of them create this deferred gift option in their estate plans.
Are you ready for some more numbers!?
56 to 1
Smart people at AskRIGHT, took a deep look into the return on investment – or ROI - achieved at a variety of non-profits they studied. We’ve long heard from others that ROI for planned giving programs is the best of all fundraising activity returns – and we have recent proof that it is! How to interpret 56 to 1? For every $1 dollar spent / $X are received. Here’s a few comparisons from their review of 10-years of data averaged to a conclusion:
$25,000 - $100,000
That’s the range into which the median planned gift for most respondents to two separately collected surveys indicated they received in 2017. The middle mark between the two is $62,500.
Do you know the average gift amount at your organization? It’s not hard to calculate. You take the sum of all gifts received and divide by the number of donors that made those gifts. For most of the customers I’ve had the privilege to work with at Blackbaud Target Analytics, I'd estimate that their average gift is between $50 and $250. With that range as an estimate, it’s also not hard to calculate how many “average” gifts the organization would need to acquire in order to replace one missed planned gift.
56 to 1
Smart people at AskRIGHT, took a deep look into the return on investment – or ROI - achieved at a variety of non-profits they studied. We’ve long heard from others that ROI for planned giving programs is the best of all fundraising activity returns – and we have recent proof that it is! How to interpret 56 to 1? For every $1 dollar spent / $X are received. Here’s a few comparisons from their review of 10-years of data averaged to a conclusion:
- Direct mail appeals 3.66 to 1
- Events 3.43 to 1
- Major Gifts 33.33 to 1
- Planned Gifts 56.83 to 1
$25,000 - $100,000
That’s the range into which the median planned gift for most respondents to two separately collected surveys indicated they received in 2017. The middle mark between the two is $62,500.
Do you know the average gift amount at your organization? It’s not hard to calculate. You take the sum of all gifts received and divide by the number of donors that made those gifts. For most of the customers I’ve had the privilege to work with at Blackbaud Target Analytics, I'd estimate that their average gift is between $50 and $250. With that range as an estimate, it’s also not hard to calculate how many “average” gifts the organization would need to acquire in order to replace one missed planned gift.
- At the lower end: $62,500 divided by $50 = 1,250.
- At the upper end: $62,500 divided by $250 = 250.
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07/26/2018 6:29am EDT
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