It’s June 2020. What is this blog all about? Stop legacy fundraising and start legacy marketing.
Stop reading and you will regret it. This is possibly one of the key moments to re-draft your strategy in the following decades.
Lockdown is easing. Is this fabulous news or scary news? I have not a clue; but probably both.
Leonardo da Vinci said: “Art is never finished; it is only abandoned”. Legacy giving is NEVER finished. Each of us can change our mind and add (or take out) a legacy at any time. ASK for a legacy and it will be abandoned. It invades your life. Oh, and BTW you only abandon it when you die.
Current evidence proves we are making more Wills than ever. The future is uncertain and this uncertainty triggers Will making.
But the sense of uncertainty lights a flame of sensitivity. A sensitivity about being asked for money or a legacy. BUT give people the awareness that they can do it and then they will. It is their choice NOT yours. That is what I mean by stop fundraising for legacies and start marketing them.
George Bernard Shaw said: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” A legacy can help re-create your charity’s future – to live on for future generations. How positive is that at the moment?
This is the time to regularly activate and integrate the awesome opportunity to give in a way which costs nothing NOW. It can be changed, but if passion is running high the act will be done.
George Bernard Shaw also said:
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations”
You are the torch – snuff it out and the financial future of your charity will suffer.
These views are based on the conversations I am having via Zoom and other platforms with current supporters and I am in awe of supporters’ views. Even more interesting is that because an online focus group/conversation means little investment in their time they are MORE popular than a face to face focus group/conversation.
Richard