The Legacy Giving Program: How Nonprofits of Every Size Can Build a Bequest Program That Sustains the Mission for Generations
A Practitioner's Guide to Starting the Conversation, Establishing the Committee, and Building the Program
Table of Contents
Why Legacy Giving Is Different from Every Other Fundraising Conversation (Section 1 of 10)
The Neuroscience of Legacy Giving: What Brain Imaging Research Tells Fundraisers (Section 2 of 10)
Why "Legacy Giving" Outperforms "Planned Giving" — and What the Research Says (Section 3 of 10)
The Great Wealth Transfer: Why Legacy Giving Has Never Mattered More (Section 4 of 10)
Who Gives a Legacy Gift — and Why the Profile May Surprise You (Section 5 of 10)
Six Gift Vehicles Every Legacy Program Should Understand (Section 6 of 10)
How to Build a Legacy Giving Program: What Every Nonprofit Needs Before Starting (Section 7 of 10)
How to Build a Legacy Gift Committee That Activates Peer-to-Peer Legacy Conversations (Section 8 of 10)
How to Have the Legacy Giving Conversation (Section 9 of 10)
Five Action Steps to Take This Week (Section 10 of 10)
Executive Summary
Legacy giving — the decision by a donor to include a nonprofit in their will, trust, or estate plan — is the single largest fundraising opportunity most nonprofits have never seriously pursued. In 2024, charitable bequests totaled $45.84 billion in the United States, and the Great Wealth Transfer now underway is projected to move $123.7 trillion between generations by 2048, with nearly two-thirds coming from Baby Boomers. The average bequest is approximately 200 times larger than a donor's largest annual gift. Yet most small and mid-size nonprofits have no legacy giving program, no legacy gift committee, and no systematic approach to starting the conversation with the donors most likely to make the most significant philanthropic commitment of their lives.
This white paper argues that the reason most nonprofits have not built a legacy giving program is not lack of donor interest but lack of practitioner confidence — specifically, a failure to understand that legacy giving conversations are neurologically different from all other fundraising conversations, and that getting the approach wrong produces avoidance rather than commitment. The research of Dr. Russell N. James III at Texas Tech University, the author of the world's first and only peer-reviewed fMRI study of charitable bequest decision-making, explains why — and what to do instead.
The framework this paper offers is grounded in that neuroscience, organized around a Legacy Gift Committee with a strong chair, and designed for organizations of every size — including those without a dedicated gift planning officer.
Section 1 of 10 — Why Legacy Giving Is Different from Every Other Fundraising Conversation
Every fundraising conversation involves some element of persuasion — making the case for the mission, connecting the donor's values to the organization's work, and asking for a specific commitment. Legacy giving conversations involve all of that, and something fundamentally different besides.
When a donor makes an annual gift, they are making a financial decision, and when a donor makes a legacy gift, they are making an identity decision — choosing what their life will have meant, what will continue after they are gone, and whose name or whose values will be attached to something enduring. That is not a larger version of an annual gift ask. It is a different kind of human act altogether.
This distinction has practical consequences that most fundraising guides do not address. The techniques that work for annual giving — urgency, deadlines, matching challenges, year-end tax incentives — are largely counterproductive for legacy giving, because they activate the wrong psychological responses. Legacy giving requires a different approach, grounded in a different understanding of what is actually happening in the donor's mind when the conversation begins. That understanding comes from neuroscience, and the science is more precise than most practitioners realize.
Section 2 of 10 — The Neuroscience of Legacy Giving: What Brain Imaging Research Tells Fundraisers
Dr. Russell N. James III — J.D., Ph.D., CFP®, professor, and director of graduate studies in charitable financial planning at Texas Tech University — is the author of the world's first and, to date, only peer-reviewed study examining charitable bequest decision-making using fMRI neuroimaging. His 2013 paper, "Charitable Estate Planning as Visualized Autobiography: An fMRI Study of Its Neural Correlates," co-authored with Dr. Michael O'Boyle, has not been contradicted by subsequent research, and his book Inside the Mind of the Bequest Donor translates those findings into practical guidance that every legacy giving practitioner should read.
James's central finding is that bequest giving and current giving stimulate different parts of the brain — legacy giving decisions activate the regions associated with autobiographical memory and personal identity, not the regions associated with financial calculation or charitable impulse, and this means that a legacy gift is not simply a larger annual gift but a different cognitive and emotional act requiring a different kind of conversation to unlock.
The Two Mechanisms: Avoidance and Autobiographical Heroism
James's research identifies two psychological mechanisms — both drawn from Terror Management Theory, a well-established framework in social psychology — that govern how donors respond to legacy giving conversations.
The first is avoidance. Human beings are neurologically wired to suppress thoughts connected to mortality, and when a fundraiser uses language that activates the donor's awareness of death — "estate plan," "when you are gone," "end-of-life wishes," "what happens to your assets after you die" — the brain's avoidance response fires. The donor changes the subject. They become vague, say "that's a great idea, I should talk to my attorney," and never do — not because they are being dishonest but because they are being neurologically avoidant. The fundraiser triggered the wrong mechanism.
The second is autobiographical heroism and symbolic immortality. When a donor imagines their name on a program that will still be running in twenty years, their values living on in the mission they supported, and the people who will be served by their gift long after they are gone, a different part of the brain engages entirely — the region connected to identity, meaning, purpose, and the desire to be remembered for something that mattered. It is activating rather than avoidant, and it produces commitment rather than postponement.
James's practical guidance, drawn directly from these findings, is precise: start conversations by working to trigger autobiographical memories associated with the charity or the cause the charity represents, because the donor's own story is what matters most and the fundraiser's job is to connect the organization's future to that story. The governing principle is established here — in a legacy giving conversation, the donor's story comes first and the organization's needs come second, if they come at all in an early conversation — and James's research makes this not a practitioner preference but a neurological imperative.
What This Means for Language
James noted explicitly that the terminology professionals have come to be comfortable with through repeated exposure is not necessarily the best language to use in a marketing context — and the specific language implications are what the next section addresses directly.
Section 3 of 10 — Why "Legacy Giving" Outperforms "Planned Giving" — and What the Research Says
The terminology shift from "planned giving" to "legacy giving" is not a marketing preference. It is a decision grounded in the neuroscience described in Section 2, and understanding why makes every subsequent language decision in the program easier.
"Planned giving" is the term the profession has used for decades, and it remains the language of the field's professional body — the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (charitablegiftplanners.org), whose membership represents the sector's deepest technical expertise. When working with professional advisors, attorneys, and financial planners, the technical vocabulary of gift planning — bequests, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, life income gifts — remains appropriate and precise.
In donor conversations, however, "planned giving" is counterproductive for exactly the reasons James identified — it activates avoidance by associating the conversation with legal complexity, financial planning, deferred gratification, and mortality — while "legacy giving" activates autobiographical heroism by connecting the act to what the donor will leave behind, what will bear their values, and what will continue. The distinction is not semantic. It is neurological.
Throughout this white paper and in all donor-facing communications — the legacy society name, the brochure, the website language, the conversation openers — the term "legacy giving" is used. Whatever name your organization chooses should connect the act of giving to the enduring impact the donor wants to have, because the naming itself is part of the cultivation. With that principle established, the scale of what is at stake makes the urgency of beginning unmistakable.
Section 4 of 10 — The Great Wealth Transfer: Why Legacy Giving Has Never Mattered More
The case for building a legacy giving program now — not eventually, not when the organization is larger, not when a gift planning officer is on staff — is grounded in both the current data and a generational moment that will not recur.
Bequest giving in 2024 totaled $45.84 billion, making it the third largest source of charitable revenue in the United States after individual gifts and foundation grants — larger than all corporate giving combined. The average bequest increased by 15 percent in 2024, bequests accounted for 8 percent of charitable giving that year, and the average planned gift amount is almost 200 times a donor's largest annual gift. Cerulli Associates forecasts that from 2024 to 2048, an estimated $123.7 trillion of wealth will transfer between generations, with nearly two-thirds coming from Baby Boomers, and robust legacy giving strategies are among the most significant opportunities available to nonprofits to secure some of that transfer.
James's own perspective on this generational moment is sobering: "There are not enough Gen Xers to fill the shoes of Baby Boomer donors — they just don't exist. If your core donor is 70, in 15 years there will be fewer 70-year-olds than there are today." The window for securing legacy gifts from the Baby Boomer generation is open now and will not remain open indefinitely — organizations that build legacy giving programs in the next five years will be the ones that benefit from the Great Wealth Transfer, while organizations that wait will find the window has passed.
CCS Fundraising's State of Planned Giving report found that legacy gifts comprised more than 16 percent of overall fundraising and 11 percent of campaigns for the nonprofits surveyed, and for a small nonprofit with an annual budget of $1 million, a single bequest of $100,000 represents ten percent of annual revenue — potentially transformational. The donors most likely to make that gift are already in the organization's donor file, which makes understanding who they are the next essential question.
Section 5 of 10 — Who Gives a Legacy Gift — and Why the Profile May Surprise You
The practitioner-manual school of planned giving has historically targeted a specific demographic profile: older donors, typically over seventy, with significant assets, and often without children or with adult children who are financially independent. This profile is not wrong — it describes a highly likely legacy giving candidate — but James's research suggests it is far too narrow to serve as the primary screening criterion.
The fMRI findings show that legacy giving decisions are primarily driven by psychological profile, not demographic profile. The predictors of legacy giving intent are a strong sense of personal identity and life narrative, a feeling that one's life has had purpose and meaning, a desire for that meaning to outlast one's physical presence, and a deep connection to a cause or organization that represents one's values. Childlessness is the single most significant demographic predictor of charitable bequest because symbolic immortality requires something identified with the decedent that will live beyond them — and without biological descendants, a charitable bequest becomes the primary vehicle for that legacy. But the attitudinal predictors apply across all demographic groups and all ages.
Rising interest in legacy gifts across all age groups confirms this, with even donors aged 18 to 24 now creating bequests, and a thirty-five-year-old passionate mission advocate with a deep personal connection to the organization's work and a strong sense of their own values may be a better legacy prospect than a seventy-year-old affluent donor with no emotional connection to the mission. The cultivation approach differs — a younger donor's bequest is a long-horizon commitment that deepens over decades — but the conversation that opens it is the same.
The practical implication is direct: do not screen legacy prospects primarily by age or wealth, but by depth of relationship, consistency of giving, engagement with the mission, and the degree to which the organization's work is personally meaningful to them. Those are the predictors James's research identifies as most significant — and they are the ones any development team is already tracking, which means the prospect pool is already visible. Understanding what to offer those prospects begins with the six gift vehicles every legacy program needs to understand.
Section 6 of 10 — Six Gift Vehicles Every Legacy Program Should Understand
A legacy giving program does not require mastery of all gift vehicles. It requires enough literacy to have an informed conversation with a donor and to know when to refer them to a qualified estate attorney or financial advisor — because the organization's role is to inspire the legacy commitment, not to provide legal advice. The six vehicles below cover the vast majority of legacy gifts that small and mid-size nonprofits will encounter.
1. The Bequest is by far the most common and most accessible legacy gift — a provision in a donor's will or living trust that designates a future gift to the organization as a specific dollar amount, a percentage of the estate, or the residual estate after other bequests are made. Bequests require no current outlay, no surrender of assets, and no irrevocable commitment during the donor's lifetime since the donor can revise the bequest at any time. They are the appropriate starting point for virtually every legacy giving conversation and the vehicle the organization should be fully prepared to discuss with any interested donor.
2. The Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT) provides income to the donor or designated beneficiaries for a term of years or for life, with the remainder passing to the organization at the trust's conclusion, offering the donor both a current charitable deduction and a lifetime income stream — making CRTs particularly attractive to donors with appreciated assets who want current income without capital gains exposure.
3. The Charitable Lead Trust (CLT) is the inverse of the CRT: the organization receives income for a term of years, and the remainder passes to the donor's heirs, making CLTs estate planning vehicles that reduce the taxable value of assets transferred to heirs while supporting the organization during the trust's term.
4. Life Insurance Gifts allow a donor to name the organization as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy or to donate an existing policy outright, and they are particularly accessible to younger donors who want to make a significant future commitment without current financial sacrifice.
5. Retirement Plan Beneficiary Designations are among the most tax-efficient legacy gifts available, since donors who name a nonprofit as the beneficiary of an IRA, 401(k), or other retirement account allow the full value to pass to the organization free of income and estate taxes — assets that, if left to heirs, would be subject to income tax as they are withdrawn. For donors with significant retirement assets, this vehicle often makes more financial sense than a cash bequest and deserves specific mention in every legacy giving conversation.
6. Gifts of Real Estate and Other Assets — including appreciated securities, business interests, and tangible personal property — can be given outright or through a bequest, and organizations should have a gift acceptance policy that specifies which non-cash assets they will accept and the process for evaluating them. A white paper on developing a gift acceptance policy is forthcoming in this series; in the meantime, the companion white paper The Development Audit addresses the policy framework and BoardSource (boardsource.org) publishes sample policy language.
Where to learn more about these vehicles. For purely educational, non-promotional treatment of all six vehicles and the technical planning concepts behind them, the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (charitablegiftplanners.org) publishes free educational resources for both practitioners and donors. PlannedGiving.com also maintains a free public library of vehicle explanations written for a general audience. Both are reliable, non-commercial starting points for any development director building their own literacy in this area.
Section 7 of 10 — How to Build a Legacy Giving Program: What Every Nonprofit Needs Before Starting
A legacy giving program does not require a gift planning officer, a sophisticated CRM, or an endowment already in place. It does require five organizational conditions that are within reach of any stable nonprofit — and that serve as the foundation on which everything the subsequent sections describe is built.
A gift acceptance policy. The board must adopt a written policy specifying which legacy gift vehicles the organization will accept, how non-cash gifts will be evaluated and liquidated, and what restrictions it will and will not accept on bequests. Without this policy, a well-intentioned legacy gift can create legal, financial, or operational complications that undermine both the gift and the relationship. A dedicated white paper on developing a gift acceptance policy is forthcoming in this series. In the meantime, BoardSource (boardsource.org) and the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (charitablegiftplanners.org) both publish sample templates.
A CRM that tracks legacy giving conversations and commitments. Legacy donors must be flagged in the donor database, their conversations documented, and their commitments — even informal expressions of intent — recorded and stewarded. A multi-organizational study found that among donors who had confirmed the presence of a planned bequest gift to a charity, 35 percent generated no estate gift at death, with the average loss rate being 24 percent when the charity had at least one communication with the decedent within two years of death and 48 percent otherwise. This finding is one of the most important in the entire legacy giving literature: stewardship of legacy commitments is not optional but the mechanism that converts a stated intention into a realized gift.
A named legacy society. Every organization that pursues legacy gifts should establish a named legacy recognition community — a formal home for donors who have made or expressed interest in making a legacy commitment. The society's name should reflect the organization's mission and activate the autobiographical heroism mechanism James identified, connecting membership to something enduring and meaningful rather than to a financial transaction.
One of the most powerful — and most underused — strategies for naming the legacy society is to offer the naming right to a founding donor as a major gift in its own right. Approaching a committed supporter with the invitation "We are establishing a legacy recognition community, and we would like to offer you the opportunity to name it in honor of your family or someone whose memory you wish to honor" is itself a major gift ask, typically in the range of $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the organization's budget and donor pool. The naming gift does two things simultaneously: it funds the program's launch and it produces a society name that carries personal meaning for the naming donor — meaning that activates the autobiographical heroism mechanism in every subsequent legacy conversation with every future member. "The Eleanor and Richard Morse Legacy Circle" is more evocative and more humanly resonant than "The Legacy Society," because it tells a story rather than describing a category.
Bequest language. Every organization should have standard bequest language — a simple paragraph, drafted by legal counsel, that a donor can provide to their attorney for inclusion in a will or trust — available on the website, in the legacy society brochure, and ready to provide within twenty-four hours of any legacy conversation. The language should include the organization's legal name, address, and federal tax identification number.
Board understanding and commitment. The full board should understand what a legacy giving program is, why the organization is pursuing it, and what board members' role in it will be. A brief presentation at a board meeting — covering the James research, the scale of the opportunity, and the Legacy Gift Committee structure described in the next section — is the appropriate first step, and board members who have already made legacy commitments of their own are the most credible advocates for the program with prospective donors.
Section 8 of 10 — How to Build a Legacy Gift Committee That Activates Peer-to-Peer Legacy Conversations
A legacy giving program does not happen through staff effort alone. It requires a volunteer committee whose members extend the organization's network, carry the autobiographical heroism message peer-to-peer, and provide the kind of personal testimony that no appeal letter or brochure can replicate — and the Legacy Gift Committee is that instrument.
Why Peer Testimony Is the Most Neurologically Effective Tool Available
James's research establishes that the legacy giving conversation is fundamentally autobiographical, and the most powerful person to deliver that message is not a development director or a CEO but a peer who has already made a legacy commitment and can say, without institutional language and without any financial motive, "I made my commitment three years ago, and here is what it meant to me — here is what I want this organization to still be doing when my grandchildren are adults." That testimony activates the autobiographical heroism mechanism directly, and it is available to any organization whose most committed donors are willing to share their story.
The Chair
The Legacy Gift Committee Chair is the program's most important volunteer, and they should be someone who has already made a legacy commitment to the organization — or who is willing to do so as part of accepting the role — with the personal credibility and community standing to convene and lead a committee of peers. The Chair facilitates monthly or bimonthly committee meetings, cultivates relationships with prospects between meetings, and serves as the organization's primary legacy giving ambassador in community settings.
The Legacy Gift Committee Chair and the Development Committee Chair are distinct roles, though they should be in close coordination, because the Legacy Gift Committee has a distinct character — its members are often older, their motivation is personally autobiographical rather than organizationally strategic, and their conversations with prospects are fundamentally different in tone from the major gifts cultivation conversations the Development Committee conducts. The executive director attends Legacy Gift Committee meetings as a cultivation partner and mission storyteller but does not facilitate them. That role belongs to the Chair.
Committee Size and Meeting Cadence
Three to five members is the right size — fewer than three and the network is too thin, more than five and the intimate character of the committee's conversations becomes harder to sustain — and monthly or bimonthly meetings of one hour each provide sufficient cadence to maintain momentum without overtaxing volunteers whose primary contribution happens between meetings, in personal conversations with prospects.
The Three Member Profiles
The Legacy Testifier has already made a legacy commitment to the organization and is willing to share that experience with prospects in personal conversations and small cultivation gatherings. They need no particular professional skills or community prominence — only authentic connection to the mission and willingness to speak personally about why they made their commitment, which makes them the first and most essential profile to recruit.
The Connector brings broad personal relationships in the community and uses those relationships to introduce prospects to the organization and to fellow committee members who can share the legacy giving conversation — their value is in network access and in the social proof that their own enthusiasm provides to the people they introduce.
The Advisor brings professional knowledge of estate planning, financial planning, or tax law — typically a financial advisor, estate attorney, CPA, or retired gift planning professional — and their role is primarily internal: helping the committee assess which prospects are most appropriate to approach, advising on gift vehicle conversations, and serving as the bridge between the organization and the professional advisor relationships that most legacy gifts ultimately involve.
All three members should be comfortable developing their own capacity to have legacy giving conversations directly with prospects over time, because the profiles describe the talents the committee needs collectively rather than rigid role assignments. A Legacy Testifier who also knows the community well contributes to both functions, and an Advisor who is personally passionate about the mission may eventually become the committee's most effective cultivator. With the committee structured and the chair recruited, the most consequential skill is how the conversations themselves are conducted.
Section 9 of 10 — How to Have the Legacy Giving Conversation
James's research makes the governing principle explicit: the donor's autobiography comes first. The conversation begins with the donor's story — their connection to the mission, what it has meant to them, what they want their involvement to represent — and the legacy giving opportunity is introduced only after that autobiographical context has been established, because everything that follows depends on the foundation that context creates.
What Not to Do
The most common mistake in legacy giving conversations is leading with the financial or legal vehicle. "Have you thought about including us in your estate plan?" is an avoidance-activation question that pushes the donor toward legal complexity and mortality before any autobiographical connection has been made. Equally counterproductive is leading with the organization's needs: "We are hoping to build our endowment" and "We need to secure our long-term financial future" are organizational arguments that do not activate autobiographical heroism but instead activate the question "why should this be my problem?" — and that question is the opposite of commitment.
What to Do Instead
Begin every legacy giving conversation — whether in a one-on-one meeting, a small cultivation gathering, or a committee member's personal conversation with a friend — with a question about the donor's story, such as "What has your involvement with this organization meant to you over the years?", "When you think about the people we serve, what comes to mind for you personally?", or "What would you want this organization to still be doing in twenty years — and what would it mean to you to know that it will be?" These questions activate autobiographical memory, invite the donor to articulate their own connection to the mission in their own words, and create the context in which a legacy giving conversation feels natural rather than transactional — because the donor has just told you, in their own language, exactly why a bequest to this organization fits into their life story.
From that autobiographical foundation, the legacy conversation can be introduced gently and specifically: "What you just described — what you want this organization to still be doing for the next generation — is exactly what a legacy gift makes possible. Many of our most committed supporters have found a way to ensure that through a provision in their will or trust. Is that something you have ever thought about?" That question invites rather than pushes, connects the gift vehicle to the donor's stated values rather than to the organization's financial needs, and gives the donor a path to yes that feels like the natural conclusion of their own story.
The Role of the Legacy Testifier in These Conversations
The most powerful version of this conversation is not a staff member asking the questions above — it is a fellow donor sharing their own experience unprompted, and a Legacy Testifier who says, in a small gathering or a one-on-one coffee, "I made my commitment to this organization two years ago, and I want to tell you why it was one of the most meaningful decisions I have made as a donor" is doing something no appeal letter or staff conversation can replicate. They are offering autobiographical proof that the decision makes sense and that it feels the way the prospect wants it to feel.
Train your Legacy Testifiers to tell their story simply, specifically, and without institutional language — not "I made a bequest because I believe in the organization's mission," which is institutional language, but "I made my commitment because I have watched what this program does for families like mine, and I want it to still be here for my grandchildren's generation — and their children's," which is autobiographical testimony that activates the right mechanism in the prospect's brain. With the conversation framework in place, the action steps that convert intention into program are within reach this week.
Section 10 of 10 — Five Action Steps to Take This Week
1. Name your three most likely legacy prospects. From your current donor file, identify three people who have given consistently for five or more years, who have deep personal connections to the mission, and who have expressed in any form — a comment at an event, a note in a letter, a conversation with a staff member — that the organization's work is personally meaningful to them. Those three names are the beginning of your legacy giving program.
2. Draft your standard bequest language. Work with your organization's attorney to produce a single paragraph of standard bequest language that a donor can provide to their estate attorney, including the organization's legal name, address, and federal tax identification number. Post it on your website and have it ready to send within twenty-four hours of any legacy giving conversation.
3. Recruit your Legacy Gift Committee Chair. Identify one person — someone who has already made or is willing to make a legacy commitment to the organization — who has the personal credibility, the community relationships, and the enthusiasm for the mission to serve as the committee's founding chair. Schedule that recruitment conversation this week, and do not wait until the full committee structure is designed before beginning.
4. Establish a legacy giving page on your website. The page should use legacy giving language throughout, explain how to include the organization in a will or trust, provide the standard bequest language, describe the legacy society by name, and include a simple form for donors to notify the organization of their commitment. FreeWill (freewill.com) and PlannedGiving.com both offer affordable legacy giving microsites designed for organizations without dedicated gift planning staff, and smaller nonprofits can now launch a legacy giving program with turnkey digital resources specifically designed for the smaller shop.
5. Identify your founding naming gift prospect. Consider approaching one highly committed donor with the invitation to name the legacy society in honor of their family or a person who was meaningful to them. This conversation is a major gift ask in its own right — typically in the range of $25,000 to $100,000 — and it produces a society name that carries personal meaning, activates autobiographical heroism for every future member, and funds the program's launch. The right person for this conversation is a donor who has already demonstrated deep mission alignment and who would be honored by the invitation to leave their name on something enduring.
A Note on Use
This white paper is offered freely for educational purposes. Please share it with executive directors, development directors, board members, and development committee 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. To request permission or discuss reprint rights, please reach out through the contact page.
What has your experience been with legacy giving conversations — and what has made the difference between a prospect who follows through and one who does not? Share your experience in the comments section of the website.
