How to run a planned giving campaign #4: Track

NOTE: This is part of a longer series on planned giving campaigns.

You’ve run your campaign and you think it’s gone well, but how well exactly? Tracking your donations can actually be difficult as when they may arrive will vary, obviously. Often, donors will fail to notify organizations that a gift has been included in their estate planning. Sometimes, this is intentional. More often than not, however, they simply overlooked it.

Your primary metric for determining if a campaign is fairly simple: funds raised or pledged. Did you have a goal? Did you meet it?

Can you go to your decision makers with a tangible number that you can point to and say, definitively, “yes, this was a success, and here’s why”? If it was a success, you have all the ammunition you need to do it again. If not, you can take lessons learned from what went right and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Success!

A single repository of all declared gifts must be kept not just for you, but also for future fundraisers and the organization as a whole. It may be years — or decades — before these gifts are actually transferred. There’s a good chance that you will not be in your current role when it arrives. A sound, easy to understand system must be established for the future of the organization. Without one, it’s impossible to have an accurate, long-term picture of what your financial future is.

Once gifts have been secured, relationships should be maintained and grown.

• First, it’s the right thing to do. Your donors believe enough in your mission to make you a part of their legacy. That’s heavy stuff.
• Secondly, you want to ensure that the gift is kept in the donor’s estate plan — and if they’ve included you once, there’s always the potential for a larger gift.

Also, there may be data privacy issues to be aware of, depending on what you track and how. You may need a third-party to help maintain this information.