14 Magic Words for Planned Giving

Hello friends!

We’re running constant experiments over at FreeWill, and I promised to get better about sharing the results broadly so they can be used by any organization doing planned giving.

We just finished testing 50 different headlines (across approximately 12,000 people) to get folks to make planned gifts, and one headline performed nearly two times better than everything else.

Per Russell James’s research, one of the biggest hurdles in planned giving is that people have a natural “avoidance reaction” when it comes to thinking about their own mortality.

Here’s the headline: “Even if you plan to live to 150, you still need to make a plan.”

Our hypothesis is that this helps people think about their own mortality, while establishing that it’s not anytime soon, so it’s safe to engage with.

Good luck! This headline created twice as many people inquiring about planned gifts, and twice as many people making actual gifts. So I hope it’s helpful to you.

P.S. Want to learn more about FreeWill? Check out FreeWill.com/nonprofits