Leverage Make-A-Will Month to Boost Your Planned Giving Program

Note to development directors: Sending your donors information about August being Make-A-Will Month should occur the month before, in July. Multiple nuanced messages are recommended, parsing out aspects of the information found in this post across several touchpoints rather than sending everything at once.

The Great Wealth Transfer is no longer a future event — it is happening now. The oldest Baby Boomers turned 79 in 2025, and Cerulli Associates projects that $123.7 trillion in wealth will pass between generations by 2048. Those donors are deciding right now who to include in their estate plans, and many nonprofits are not yet in that conversation.

Charitable bequests totaled an estimated $45.84 billion in 2024, according to Giving USA 2025, representing nearly 8 percent of all charitable giving in the United States — a figure that has held remarkably stable for four decades. Yet many nonprofits dramatically underinvest in planned giving, mentioning legacy gifts once a year in a newsletter sidebar and hoping for the best.

August is National Make-A-Will Month, and it is one of the more practical opportunities on the fundraising calendar to begin or deepen that conversation with your donors. If your organization tends to experience a slowdown in summer giving — as many do — focusing on legacy giving outreach during July and August is a productive use of that time, planting seeds that can compound over years and decades rather than a single fiscal year.

A brief note on terminology worth sharing with your donors: you may see this work described as either "planned giving" or "legacy giving." Both terms refer to the same category of gifts — arrangements made during a donor's lifetime that are typically realized after their passing. "Planned giving" remains the dominant professional and legal term, used by the AFP, Giving USA, and the field's credentialing programs, and it is the language most development directors know. "Legacy giving" tends to resonate more naturally with donors, however, because it speaks to meaning and motivation rather than financial mechanics. Dr. Russell James, J.D., Ph.D., CFP®, Professor of Charitable Financial Planning at Texas Tech University, has documented this in peer-reviewed research: in a survey of 24 bequest gift descriptions tested among nearly 10,000 participants and published in VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (27:2, 998–1011), the best-performing description was simply, "Make a gift to charity in your will to support causes that have been important in your life." The lesson is that plain, values-centered language outperforms technical framing every time. In this post, both terms are used — "planned giving" when addressing development professionals, "legacy giving" when speaking about the donor's experience.

Why Legacy Gifts Are Worth Your Attention Right Now

The easiest legacy gift your supporters can make is to leave a portion of their estate to your organization as a bequest in their will. Even if that gift is only one percent of a donor's total estate, it can have a significant impact on your nonprofit's future. According to Giving USA, the average planned gift in the United States is more than $78,000 per donor's estate — and on FreeWill's platform, the average bequest size increased 15 percent in 2024 to $48,723.

Despite this, only 31 percent of Americans report having a will, according to the 2025 Trust & Will Estate Planning Report, which surveyed 10,000 respondents. Fifty-five percent have no estate planning documents at all. That gap is not primarily about wealth — it is about procrastination, perceived complexity, and the persistent myth that wills are only for people with substantial assets. That myth is worth debunking directly in your donor communications, because it is costing your organization gifts that would otherwise be made. Make-A-Will Month gives you a culturally recognized moment to address it directly, with a practical tool that removes the barriers your donors are most likely to cite.

What FreeWill Can Do for Your Donors and Your Program

I consider linking your planned giving program with FreeWill (freewill.com) a fundraising best practice, and here is why. FreeWill is a free online platform that guides donors through the process of creating a legally valid will — free for donors, straightforward to use, and available year-round, not only in August. The platform includes a simple, optional step that allows donors to designate a charitable bequest to an organization of their choosing, including yours.

The results are well-documented. Last August, FreeWill helped nonprofits raise $604 million in bequests by making it easier for donors to follow through on their planned giving intentions. Since its founding in 2016, FreeWill has generated over $6.6 billion in new gift commitments for thousands of nonprofit organizations. Estate plans made on FreeWill's platform are five times more likely to include bequests than the national average, and those gifts are more than twice as large.

Your organization can share a link to FreeWill with your donors even without a formal partnership — the tool is free and publicly accessible. Nonprofit organizations that partner with FreeWill receive a branded link to share with their supporters, along with the ability to track bequest commitments as they are made. Whether or not you pursue a formal partnership, including a link to freewill.com in your Make-A-Will Month communications gives your donors an immediate, actionable next step rather than a vague instruction to speak with an attorney — and it removes the cost and complexity barriers that are the most common reasons donors never follow through.

What to Communicate — and When

Even if you do not have a full planned giving campaign devoted to Make-A-Will Month, promoting it through email, social media, and direct mail in July and August can produce meaningful results. Send at minimum two emails across this period — one in late July and one in early August — and consider a mailing for donors who are not active email openers. The key is to parse the information across messages rather than delivering everything at once, so each communication has a single, clear point of focus.

When you communicate, focus on three things.

Debunk the will myth. Many of your donors believe that wills are only necessary if they have significant assets, and that belief may be the primary reason they have never made one. The reality is that a will matters for anyone who has preferences about where their assets go, who cares for their dependents, or who wants to leave something — even something modest — to a cause they care about. Connecting your donors to FreeWill removes the cost and complexity barriers in one step and gives the myth-busting message an immediate practical outlet.

Make the ask specific. Ask your donors to consider including your organization in their will, and be concrete about what even a small legacy gift makes possible for your mission. The top three motivations donors cite for making a legacy gift — drawn from the Giving USA Foundation's Leaving a Legacy study — are the importance of the cause; the belief that the nonprofit makes a significant impact; and the donor's ability to make a larger gift through their estate than would be possible from their lifetime income. Speak directly to all three in your communications, because each one addresses a different kind of donor.

Ask them to tell you. When you invite donors to include your nonprofit in their will, ask them to let you know when they do. This is not only good stewardship — it allows you to welcome them into your legacy society, recognize their commitment appropriately, and ensure they remain meaningfully connected to your organization in the years between the legacy gift commitment and its ultimate realization.

What the 860-Donor Survey Tells Us

The Giving USA Foundation's Leaving a Legacy: A New Look at Planned Giving Donors — a study led by Elizabeth Dale, Ph.D., of Seattle University, surveying more than 860 donors with interviews conducted in early 2019 — produced findings that should shape how any nonprofit approaches planned giving outreach. The full report is available at givingusa.org.

The average age at which donors wrote their first will was 44 years old, and 91.6 percent used a legal advisor — suggesting that professional guidance remains the norm even as online tools expand access. Over half (53 percent) established their first planned gift at the time of writing their first will, which means that Make-A-Will Month is a genuine cultivation moment, not merely a reminder campaign. The average age at which donors made their first planned gift was 52.8 years old, with gay and lesbian donors making their first gift somewhat earlier, at an average of 50.

The most common type of planned gift was a charitable bequest (68.1 percent), followed by a charitable beneficiary designation on a retirement plan (29.7 percent), insurance policy beneficiary (18.5 percent), and charitable trust (18.5 percent). Notably, donor-advised funds surpassed charitable gift annuities in the sample — a finding worth noting given the rapid growth of DAFs documented elsewhere in this series.

Only seven percent of study participants described their estate planning process as "very easy" or "somewhat easy," with another 22.9 percent reporting a neutral experience. This is exactly the gap that FreeWill is designed to close — and it is the gap your communications can help bridge by making the process feel accessible rather than daunting. The platform is available year-round, which means donors who hear about it in July or August can use it whenever they are ready, not only during the campaign window.

If You Already Have a Planned Giving Program

If your organization already has an active planned giving program, Make-A-Will Month is an opportunity to re-engage your existing legacy society members, reach mid-level donors who have given consistently for ten or more years and are statistically among your strongest bequest prospects, and use the cultural moment of August to open conversations that might otherwise feel premature.

The donors who are most likely to leave a bequest are not necessarily your largest annual donors — they are your most loyal ones. A donor who has given $250 every year for fifteen years has demonstrated a depth of commitment that wealth screening alone will not surface, and the summer months — when major gift cultivation and annual fund activity often slow — are a productive time to reach them with a legacy giving message that honors that commitment.

For a full treatment of planned giving strategy, stewardship, and program development, see the companion white paper on this blog: Legacy Giving: How to Build a Planned Giving Program That Produces Transformational Revenue for Your Nonprofit.

Is your organization promoting Make-A-Will Month this year — and what has worked for you in previous campaigns? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.

This post is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with development staff, executive directors, and board members who may find it useful — provided the author's byline remains intact: By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA. Reproduction in publications, training programs, or institutional materials requires attribution.