Your Next Legacy Donor is Giving to You Monthly
I still remember the day I realized that everything I thought I knew about legacy giving was wrong.
I was a couple of years into my fundraising career. I'd cut my teeth raising money for causes I believed in, and I thought I knew which levers moved the most dollars. I was aware of this thing called legacy and planned giving, but I'd filed it under someday. My thinking went like this: "We've got to hit this year's numbers. I can't afford to focus on something that won't pay off for ten or twenty years."
Then I got to work alongside people who knew far more than I did. Mike Buwalda, the founder of what is now Canopy Giving. Jack Strong, then a VP of Development, a client, and a friend. And Dr. Russell James, a researcher and leading expert in the field.
What I learned from them upended my assumptions. Legacy giving doesn't only pay off in the distant future – it pays off today. And Russell James' research shows that when a donor makes a legacy commitment, their current giving goes up.
I learned something else I'd gotten wrong – that I as a fundraiser had a personal role to play in inviting people into legacy giving. It wasn't a passive thing that happened in the background. It was an invitation I could extend in the communications we created and in the donors we stewarded.
Legacy giving isn't just an investment in the future. It's an investment that pays off today and tomorrow.
It was a lesson that proved helpful later as I began to understand how recurring giving wasn’t merely an investment in tomorrow.
Like legacy giving, sustainable giving is an investment that pays off today and tomorrow.
There’s one more thing that sustainable and legacy giving have in common – one feeds the other.
Sustaining Donors Are Legacy Donors
A legacy gift is the ultimate sign of loyal generosity.
And if loyalty is what pays off in a legacy gift, then the question becomes: who are your most loyal donors? Not necessarily your wealthiest. Not necessarily your oldest. Your most loyal donors are the ones who have decided, month after month, to keep showing up. They're your sustainers.
A legacy gift is the ultimate expression of an ongoing relationship. And a monthly gift is one of the clearest signals that such a relationship exists. When a donor gives to you every single month, they're telling you something a single gift never can: I'm with you. I'm in this. I've made you part of my regular expression of generosity.
Which is exactly the disposition that leads someone to make you part of their legacy.
This is what I mean when I say your recurring donors are worth more than you think. We tend to look outside our sustainer file for legacy prospects, when the strongest ones are already inside it, consistently demonstrating their commitment to the cause every month.
💡 Takeaway: The clearest predictor of whether a donor will leave a legacy gift isn't wealth – it's loyalty. Age matters for when a gift is likely to come, but loyalty signals the intent. And no group is more loyal than your sustainers.
The Evidence: Three Independent Confirmations
This isn't a hunch. It shows up in the research from multiple sources. Here are three:
Loyalty – Recurring donors are 6X more likely to leave a legacy gift than non-recurring donors. Based on research by Dr. Claire Routley, who found that loyalty is the leading factor in whether someone makes a planned gift – and no group demonstrates loyalty more clearly than sustainers.
Frequency – Giving frequency is one of the most predictive factors for legacy giving. Dan Hubka and the team at Canopy Giving have worked with more than 200 charities and helped raise an estimated $3.5 billion in expected legacy gifts over the past twelve years. They ran a thorough analysis of the factors most associated with leaving a legacy gift. After longevity on the file, the single most predictive factor was giving frequency. The donors giving most often were the donors most likely to give a legacy gift.
Estate Planning – Recurring donors tend to have a higher prevalence of charities in their estate plans. In forthcoming research on evangelical mid-level donors, The Critical Gap: Understanding Evangelical Mid-level Donors, the teams at BBS & Associates and Grey Matter Research found a striking gap. Among donors who are not sustainers with any organization, just 10% have a charity in their estate plan. Among those who are sustainers with at least one organization, fully 34% do. Being a sustainer more than triples the likelihood of having a charity in the plan.
Three different sources. Three different methods. One conclusion.
💡 Takeaway: Loyalty, frequency, and sustainer status all point the same way. Sustaining donors are one of the richest sources of legacy donors.
Why This Is the Highest-Leverage Lever of All
Across a series of Wave Reports, we've looked at the value hiding inside your recurring donor file:
✅ Your sustainers will give additional one-time gifts: Your Recurring Donors Aren’t Done Giving.
✅ Your sustainers will increase their monthly amount: The Ask Most Nonprofits Never Make.
✅ Your sustainers are a source of mid- and major donors waiting to be recognized: Your Next Major Donor is Already Giving Monthly.
Legacy is the last and largest of these levers.
For most donors, a legacy gift is the single biggest gift they will ever make. It's the culmination of a lifetime of generosity. And here's what makes it the highest-leverage opportunity you have: it costs you almost nothing to pursue. You're not acquiring a new donor or building a new relationship from scratch. You're deepening a relationship you already have, with someone who has already told you, every month, that they're committed.
Think of it as the far end of a curve you already know. The vast majority – 97% – of a recurring donor's lifetime value arrives after their first gift. A legacy commitment sits at the very end of that curve, and it can dwarf everything that came before it.
💡 Takeaway: A legacy gift is often the largest expression of generosity a donor ever makes, and it comes from a relationship you already have. That's the definition of high leverage.
What to Actually Do About It
You don't need a formal planned giving department to start. You need to stop treating legacy as a someday program for someone else's donors, and start inviting your sustainers into it. Here's where to begin.
Talk about it, early and often. Don't wait until you know a donor is elderly or wealthy to raise the topic of legacy giving. Weave the language into your ongoing sustainer communications so it becomes a normal part of the relationship.
Tell stories, not tax benefits. Dr. Russell James' research shows that donors are moved by values and stories, not by the mechanics of tax advantages. Share why others have chosen to leave a legacy, in their own words.
Invite sustainers to share their "why." The donors who give every month have a reason. Ask them for it. Those conversations are often the doorway to a legacy conversation.
Add it to your surveys. A simple question about whether a donor has considered including you in their plans will surface prospects you didn't know you had, right inside your sustainer file.
Extend the invitation. Remember the assumption I had to unlearn. Legacy giving doesn't just happen. Someone has to ask. That someone is you.
💡 Takeaway: Start by talking about legacy with the donors you already have. Your sustainers aren't a cold list. They're the warmest legacy prospects in your database.
Your Next Legacy Donor Isn't a Stranger
Here's where I landed, all those years ago, and where I hope you'll land today.
Legacy giving pays off now and later. The same is true with sustainable recurring giving. And the two aren't separate strategies competing for your attention. They're the same relationship, just viewed across a longer horizon.
Your next legacy donor isn't a stranger you have to go find. They're already on your file. They're already giving. And they've been telling you, one monthly gift at a time, that they're with you for the long haul.
Sustaining donors are legacy donors.
Until next week… Surf's Up! 🌊
– Dave