What’s Your Organization’s Legacy Gift Potential?

You know your organization needs a healthy legacy gift pipeline. It’s an important piece of the strategic plan. Maybe it’s even a goal that shows up on your performance evaluation.  

But how much money should you have in the gift pipeline? To calculate your potential for in-will gifts, think about the current trends for active donors. If an organization has a healthy legacy giving program in place, about 3.5-5.5% of active donors have the capacity to become legacy donors.  

What percentage of your active donors are currently known legacy givers? 

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy and Giving USA, the average legacy gift size is somewhere around $50,000-$80,000. If you know the number of active donors within your organization, you can work towards turning 3.5-5.5% of them into legacy donors.  

You can also determine a legacy goal in dollars; just multiply the number of potential legacy givers by $50,000. For example, if you have 10,000 active donors, 3.5% would be 350 potential legacy givers. 350 multiplied by $50,000 gives you a legacy pipeline of $17.5 million! 

Let’s crunch the numbers for your legacy pipeline: 

• You have ______ active donors 

• Multiply the number of active donors by .035 = ______ potential legacy givers 

• Multiply the number of potential givers by $50,000 = ______ potential legacy dollars 

Now that you have a destination in mind, how will you get there? Let Canopy be your guide. 

P.S. Come to our presentation at the CGP Conference! We’ll be partnering with Kelsey Tyler of Second Harvest Heartland, a client who had enormous success in growing their legacy pipeline with Canopy’s assistance. We’d love to see you there!