nonprofit
National Estate Planning Awareness Week runs October 19–25. Most nonprofits will ignore it, then panic-blast donation appeals in December when everyone else is doing the same thing.
Smarter move: use the next two weeks to add a clean legacy-giving pathway to your website. Not a campaign. Not an event. Just a permanent page that turns “I’ve been thinking about leaving something in my will” into an actual conversation.
Legacy gifts — bequests, beneficiary designations, charitable trusts — represent the largest untapped revenue source for most nonprofits. Donors don’t need another emotional year-end email. They need clarity about how to include your organization in their estate plans, and they need it before the holiday fundraising noise starts.
Estate Planning Awareness Week gives you a natural content hook and a clear deadline. It’s not about running a legacy-giving campaign during the week itself — it’s about having infrastructure in place by that week so you can mention it once, then let it work quietly in the background.
Most planned gifts come from people who’ve been thinking about it for months or years. They don’t respond to urgency tactics. They respond to accessible information and a clear next step when they’re ready.
If your website doesn’t make legacy giving easy to find and understand, you’re losing gifts you’ll never know about.
You don’t need a complex planned-giving microsite. You need four things:
Not buried in a dropdown menu. Not combined with annual fund info. A standalone page, clearly labeled “Leave a Legacy” or “Include Us in Your Estate Plan,” linked prominently in your main navigation or footer.
Answer the questions people actually have:
Skip the legal jargon. Write like you’re talking to someone at a coffee shop who’s asking genuine questions.
A simple form or email address specifically for legacy-giving inquiries. Not your general contact form. Not your development director’s personal email that might change when they leave.
Someone considering a bequest wants to know they’re reaching the right person. Make that obvious.
Use a unique URL — yourorg.org/legacy or yourorg.org/planned-giving — so you can measure traffic. When you mention it in newsletters, social posts, or the one email you send during Estate Planning Awareness Week, you’ll know if anyone’s paying attention.
Don’t treat this like a year-end fundraising push. Legacy giving isn’t transactional. It’s relational and often private.
Don’t ask people to publicly announce their planned gifts. Some will want to. Most won’t. Respect that.
Don’t complicate it with multiple gift vehicles, tax scenarios, and technical explanations upfront. Lead with simplicity. Offer deeper resources for people who want them, but don’t make complexity the entry point.
And don’t skip this because “our donors are too young” or “we don’t have a planned-giving officer.” The median age of first-time bequest donors is dropping. Beneficiary designations take five minutes and don’t require an attorney. You don’t need specialized staff — you need a clear page and a willingness to have conversations.
Once your page is live, mention it once during Estate Planning Awareness Week. Email, social post, newsletter blurb — whatever fits your normal communication rhythm.
Something like: “October 19–25 is National Estate Planning Awareness Week. If you’ve ever thought about including [Organization] in your estate plan, we’ve made it simple: [link]. Questions? We’re here.”
That’s it. No hard sell. No emotional manipulation. Just useful information for people already thinking about it.
Then let the page do its job. Check your tracking link monthly. When inquiries come in, respond quickly and personally.
By mid-November, every nonprofit will be flooding inboxes with year-end appeals. Legacy giving gets lost in that noise because it’s not urgent and it’s not transactional.
October is quieter. Estate Planning Awareness Week gives you a reason to bring it up without it feeling random or desperate. And people updating their estate plans often do it in fall, not during holiday chaos.
You’re not competing for December dollars. You’re creating a pathway for a different kind of gift entirely.
This isn’t about October results. It’s about having infrastructure in place so that when someone’s attorney asks, “Any charities you want to include?” your organization is easy to add.
Most legacy gifts are discovered when the donor passes, not when they make the designation. You won’t see immediate ROI. You’ll see it in five years, ten years, twenty years — if you build the pathway now.
Two weeks until Estate Planning Awareness Week. Plenty of time to add a page, write an FAQ, set up a contact form, and create a tracking link.
Then one mention. Then patience.
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