The trouble with Free Will offers…
Deciding to pledge a gift to charity in your will is a process that takes time. Remember a Charity adopted Prochaska and DiClemente's Stages of Change many years ago to illustrate that process - a useful reminder that most people who see your Free Will advert won't be at the right stage to take advantage of it.
Before anyone jumps on me for this… yes, of course there’s value in offering supporters the opportunity to have their will made for free. I’ve been working with charities on Free Will promotions since (yikes) the last century and yes, they do help generate legacy pledges; yes, they do help (to a degree) with forecasting legacy income, thanks to tangible measures like service take up rates, pledge rates, average gift values; and yes, they can be a pretty cost-efficient way to market legacy giving.
All marvellous stuff. But I do worry how ubiquitous Free Will offers have become recently – especially on social media. What started out as a great incentive to encourage more warm audiences to write their will is now used as a key marketing tool to attract much wider audiences. Which is fine if your cause has a very broad appeal, and maybe not so fine otherwise.
As a legacy marketer, you’d have to have been trapped under a wardrobe for quite a few years not to know that ‘the biggest ever intergenerational wealth transfer is already underway’ and that increasing numbers of charities are investing in ways to benefit from that. But making your Free Will promotions the top priority might not be the best use of that hard won budget.
My social feeds may not be typical of everyone my age because I actively seek out charities and social issues, but there are times when all I see is one ad after another offering me a free will. And honestly, there’s hardly any difference between them, let alone a clear reason why I might choose one charity over another.
And while I may not be a typical potential pledger, I’m not the only one to feel this way. One donor I was talking with recently about legacy promotions described them as ‘all pretty much of a muchness. It’s all pretty much the same story’. They went on to say ‘It must work, because they keep doing it, but for me it makes no difference whatsoever.’ Which was pretty disheartening to hear.
The trouble with Free Will offers is:
they’re more immediately measurable than other forms of legacy marketing, and so we are becoming overly reliant on them to gauge what ‘success’ looks like.
they only really serve a particular audience – those individuals who are at the point of writing or updating their will, and who are quite happy for a charity to foot the bill.
they look the same as every other free will offer out there
they’re practical, transactional offers that do little to communicate to audiences the ‘why’ in your legacy proposition
A Free Will offer is a great tool to have as part of your overall marketing mix. This is just a plea to be wary of it becoming your lead offer and relying on it to drive all your legacy leads. The journey to pledging a gift to charity can be as individual as the person who makes it and requires connection, capacity, consideration, belief and trust – not just a great offer to seal the deal.
On September 24th, we’re hosting an event with Legacy Futures to explore some more meaningful, bespoke routes to legacy lead generation. We have had a fantastic response to the event and are already at full capacity for our venue - but you can join the waiting list here : Link to Register
Bio
Gillian is part of DTV’s Creative Strategy team, working across all clients to find the sweet spots where the needs of NGOs and their audiences meet. She's led a huge range of fundraising and campaign messaging and communications, for more years than she cares to say.