Beyond Make-A-Will Month: Building Year-Round Planned Giving Cultivation

Rethinking Planned Giving Beyond the Seasonal Campaign

During the month of August, an initiative teams often leverage for their planned giving campaigns is Make-A-Will-Month. Though it's a natural hook for fundraisers to lean into, the message can fall flat when it’s an impersonal checklist or a beneficiary reminder that donors are left to make sense of, largely on their own.

The awareness around planned giving isn’t what donors are missing. It’s the next step. Rated prospects might be hearing about your organization’s planned giving program, but the individual, ongoing cultivation needed to convert those prospects into actual planned gifts is rarely possible due to staff capacity.  

This is where a Virtual Planned Giving Officer (VPGO) helps organizations approach this work differently.

A Virtual Planned Giving Officer autonomously cultivates donors one-to-one

Rather than treating August as a one-off campaign, it's one moment inside a year of cultivation that the organization has been building with that donor. By the time Make-A-Will-Month arrives, a VPGO knows which donors have shown interest in the organization, where those interests may lie, and which ones still need further cultivation. Now, the message that lands in August isn't the first thing a donor's heard from you — it's the next step in a conversation that's building toward the gift.

Making a legacy gift is rarely a single decision. A donor might start with a QCD from their IRA, expand to include a donor-advised fund, and when the time comes, decide to include the organization in their estate. Each of those steps is a signal and an opportunity to deepen the relationship, but only if there is capacity within your organization to individually cultivate these prospects.

Planned giving is one of the fastest-growing forms of philanthropy, with giving by bequest growing 19.7% last year, according to Giving USA. Reaching more of these unmanaged donors with individualized conversations is how organizations grow their planned giving and longer-term revenue.

So the question worth asking this August isn't just what your planned giving marketing looks like this month. It's what your program could look like a year from now, with more donors capable of a legacy gift receiving impactful and personalized engagement throughout the year that moves the needle.

Book a demo and see how a Virtual Planned Giving Officer can expand your organization's planned giving program.

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FAQ

What is Make-A-Will Month?

Make-A-Will Month, observed every August, is a time when many nonprofits highlight the importance of having a will. It's a natural moment for fundraising teams to bring up planned giving, often highlighting a checklist, a beneficiary reminder, or a general "here's how to get started."

What is a Virtual Planned Giving Officer (VPGO)?

A Virtual Planned Giving Officer is part of Version2.ai's Autonomous Fundraising platform, built to manage individualized outreach and cultivation for rated planned giving prospects.

How does a VPGO build toward Make-A-Will Month?

A VPGO takes each donor in its portfolio through a year-round, individualized moves management journey — learning interests, what donors respond to, and where they are in their own giving journey. So by the time Make-A-Will Month arrives, the message a donor receives isn't the first thing they've heard about planned giving. It's the next step in a conversation that's already underway.