Welcome to the new age
If you’ve not heard by now, let us be the first to tell you: online will-writing is a thing. And, like other digital services, it has all the expected perks. It’s quick, affordable and easy to use. You can even update an online will whenever you like, as life changes — pretty nifty!
But, why should you care about online wills? And how are they important for legacy fundraising?
Well, for one, they aren’t going away anytime soon, so charities need to get used to them. Writing a will online is massively popular, particularly among Millennials. 52% of people born between 1981 and 1996 will look to create a digital will. Considering that most people opted to use a solicitor several years ago, that’s a big change.
More wills written means more legacy donations for your charity. But while getting legacy gifts is great news, there’s still other things to consider. How are you tracking intended legacies? And, more to the point, how well do you know your donors? Do you understand their motivations for legacy giving?
Don’t stress — online wills have you covered here, too. Here’s 5 simple ways that we’ve been helping charities with our online wills.
Grow your income
Without online wills, you risk missing out on potential legators that are used to doing everything online. Millennials are a prime example of this. They’re not only the most liable to use online wills, but they’re also the most generous.
In fact, they’re 86% more likely to leave a gift to charity than Baby Boomers. Without online wills, you risk cutting yourself off from crucial legacy funding.
Legacy giving prompts
Effective communication with supporters is vital to growing your legacy income. Within our wills, we show bespoke legacy prompts to your supporters. This helps to encourage them to remember you in their will and increases the chance that they leave a gift.
Trackable campaigns
With Beyond, you’ll have access to a bespoke dashboard that tracks your legacies in real-time. It’ll show you both the type and volume of legacy gift left in each will (where applicable).
This gives you complete confidence when planning for the future. You’ll be able to measure how successful your campaigns are and keep track of incoming funds.
Discover what’s driving your legacies
With around 80% of legacies arriving out of the blue, it’s already difficult enough to get at reasons for donors’ giving. But our wills dashboard gives you the opportunity to contact your legators, in life.
We ask legacy supporters for consent to share their contact details with you. Once given, you’ll be able to get in touch via email, phone or postal address (this is GDPR compliant). Contacting your living legators helps you to discover the motivations behind their gift.
Build on digital insights
We give you quick and easy access to basic information about your supporters. You’ll be able to see anonymised demographics on each will-writer, including: gender, age, region, and the number and age of any children.
Basic insights can help you to categorise your donors. In turn, you’ll be able to optimise your future legacy campaigns for each supporter base.
Want to know more?
If you’re keen to find out more about how online wills help your legacy fundraising, get in touch with [email protected].
