Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining us today for Creative Partnerships Australia’s Knowledge Series webinar, Proactive Bequest Strategies for Arts Companies, with Andrew Sabatino of Donor Republic. My name is James Boyd. I’m the State Manager of Western Australia for Creative Partnerships, and this is a series of eight professional development webinars for development managers working in the arts. I welcome you all from around Australia. 

May I first make an acknowledgement to Country. Creative Partnerships Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land on which we live, work and learn. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present, and to our shared future. 

As I mentioned, this is a series of eight seminars. This is the first one. We have guest speakers from around Australia, the UK and the USA. The Knowledge Series includes topics such as bequests, major gifts, tips on tax, stewardship, sponsorship, and the latest decision science of arts fundraising from the UK’s National Arts Fundraising School. We have responded to your requests for short, sharp professional development opportunities, and we hope that some of the Thursday mornings over the next few months will bring a new level of excitement to your work. 

Some housekeeping for today’s session. Please remain on mute with your camera off throughout the webinar. Andrew will respond to questions at the end of his presentation. If you can type questions into the chat box directly to me, James Boyd, I will pass them on to the presenter. If you have any technical issues, please direct message Katherine Creative Partnerships. She should appear at the top of your chat list. We are recording today’s session, and a copy will be emailed to you in the next week. 

Now to our first presenter of the 2020 Knowledge Series. Andrew Sabatino is co-founder and director of Donor Republic, which just last week won Agency of the Year in the 2020 Fundraising Institute of Australia Awards. Previously he led Guide Dogs in South Australia and the Northern Territory, raising their annual income from $1 million to $9 million. He later chaired Guide Dogs Australia’s National Fundraising Committee, increasing national fundraising from $53 million to $87 million. He is also a past state and national winner of the Fundraising Institute of Australia’s Fundraiser of the Year Award. Andrew, it’s terrific to have you as part of this. I know you have a lot of experience in the bequest area, and I’d like now to hand over to you for today’s session, Proactive Bequest Strategies for Arts Companies. 

Thank you very much, James, and nice to e-meet everybody. I will start by saying, and James and Katherine know this, that unfortunately I’ve had to take my pet dog to the vet this morning, and he’s lying right underneath my desk. If you hear him making noise, please excuse me. I’ll work through it. 

Donor Republic has been around for about five years. Prior to Donor Republic, as James mentioned, I was the head of marketing, fundraising and brand for Guide Dogs SA/NT, and later Guide Dogs Australia. I work across all areas of fundraising, and our agency works across all areas of fundraising. Today we are specifically talking about gifts in wills. 

Given my background was at Guide Dogs, I will share some Guide Dogs examples. That is only natural. I will also share some other examples to show you that you do not just need a puppy or a child to be successful in fundraising or gifts in wills practices. I am going to show you some diverse examples. 

The revenue that James mentioned, which I was responsible for at Guide Dogs SA/NT, started at about $1 million. Through using some integrated best practice fundraising principles, the team was able to grow gross and net revenue over the seven years I was there, quite substantially. Gifts in wills underpinned a lot of that growth. 

Because of that growth, I was asked to chair the Australia committee when revenue was declining for Guide Dogs Australia. I implemented many of the principles that I had used in SA/NT. That came after a lot of the states said, “I’m glad that worked for you in little old South Australia, but that’s not going to work here in Sydney, New South Wales, Victoria, Brisbane and so on.” 

What we were able to do was work through the principles of fundraising and the pillars of gifts in wills to show that it does not matter what cause you have or what state you are in. Typically speaking, if the principles and the fundamentals are there, that will create a solid foundation for growth. You will need to account for differences. Arts is a little bit different to health. We understand that. But generally speaking, my presentation today is about the foundations that will allow you to succeed. 

Some of you will be in different parts of your journey in fundraising. Some of you will have lots of staff. Some of you will have minimal staff. I am guessing most of you will be on the minimal side. Many of my clients, even the big ones, Oxfam, Greenpeace and the Cancer Councils, do not have the staff or budgets that you may think they do. That has been one of my big surprises in moving into an agency, seeing how under-resourced, under-budgeted and under-prepared many clients are. 

Today I want you to walk away and think, “I can take this part,” or “We are doing okay in these areas, but I need to consider this area to transform our gifts in wills program.” Ultimately, as a fundraiser and as an agency, we promote diversified revenue programs and long-term sustainable fundraising. We are not a partner for one-off campaigns. We do not do one-hit wonders. 

I was at Guide Dogs for seven years. My business partner was at Cerebral Palsy Alliance for eight years. We believe in having a program for donors who give to you once, whether that is through direct mail, events, lottery or digital. Then you need to understand how they can convert to regular giving, and then mine the database and use propensity modelling to understand who has the capability to give a middle or major gift. You also need a proposition around a major gift campaign. 

Ultimately, how do you encourage a donor to leave a gift in their will? The ideal world is to nurture a donor up this pyramid. Realistically that does not happen. Donors come in and out of this pyramid whenever they want. It is important to preach a diversified revenue program and to understand that your gifts in wills or bequest program is the pinnacle, or the biggest in terms of average gift that you could ask for. 

My journey at Guide Dogs started with cute little puppies. They are amazing, but we did not have principles. We stuck a puppy in front of a pack and said, “Leave a bequest.” That was really where it stopped. We did not have the structure of the program that was required to succeed, and we did not have the propositions required to engage a donor base. 

In FY13, we launched our gifts in wills program, Buddy for Life, and I will talk you through that a bit later. You can see the impact that had on confirmed bequestors in South Australia alone. Across Australia, it is pushing 1,000 plus. Again, to reiterate, we do not just do that for a puppy or child client. It is across many causes and many not-for-profits that we work with. 

Our team is pushing 40 now, and we work across all areas of fundraising. We specialise in appeals, digital, events, peer-to-peer, major gifts, corporates, community, gifts in wills, you name it. 

I want to touch on the impact of COVID to set some context before I get into the presentation. Donor Republic was part of a group that funded a study. We had data from not-for-profits over a number of months to understand which programs were significantly affected and which were not. It is no coincidence that event-based programs struggled the most in those COVID months. Our clients, and the sector more broadly, had to “pivot” to virtual events. 

Rather than physically running around in a contained event environment, we encouraged people to do that around their block. Like the CEO Sleepout this year, people were sleeping in their house, on their back couch, in their car, or wherever it was. That was still a success, given there was expected to be a lot of revenue decline. 

In the gifts in wills space, while there was a slight decline, it was not catastrophic. What we are seeing now, because the study was only until June and we are going to do a February/March edition, is that it has picked back up again. It allowed people to have a conversation around the need to think about what will happen in their will, which ordinarily probably did not happen before COVID. 

Some sector benchmarking is shown here. The purple section is bequest income from an organisation called More Strategic, which is an agency like mine. They receive client data and create a benchmark. We share many clients. You can see that, just shy of regular giving, which is in the $50 million space, there is the importance and general upswing in gifts in wills giving over recent years. While I have presentations on regular giving, direct mail, digital and every other area, today we are focusing on gifts in wills. 

Often, when I am working with boards, they say, “Why should we invest in gifts in wills? We do not see a return for seven to 10 years. We need money now.” That is true in one sense. The average bequest, and I say average loosely because I do not think there has been a study done in a while, used to be around seven to 10 years. 

What that means is that, on a database or donor base, there are people who passed away within six to 12 months after confirming they were leaving a bequest, and there were some who passed away after 20 years. When you aggregate that data, the average is seven years. People then forget that a group of people are leaving gifts in their wills before that seven-year period, so people just do not bother, or they do not see an immediate return. 

Include a Charity, which is an organisation founded through the Fundraising Institute of Australia to promote charitable gifts in wills, did a study. In 2015, the number of people passing away over 60 was around 130,000. Of those, 7.5% left a gift in their will, and the average gift at that time was $52,000. That equated to $511 million in that market. 

Forecast rates for people passing away, due to the baby boomer population, would be almost five or six times higher. Because of the work Include a Charity is doing, the work not-for-profits are doing, and the number of boomers who potentially have not had children, which increases the propensity to leave a gift in your will, that was forecast to increase to 12.5%. Even if you keep the same average gift, which we know would likely increase for various reasons, including inflation, the gifts in wills market is going to increase significantly over time. 

One of the key reasons is based on survey and census data through the government. The number of people who will have no children, or the number of couples who will have no children, is forecast to increase from 8% to 23% over 20 years. Not having children is probably the number one driver, propensity modelling score, or reason why someone would be more inclined to leave a gift in their will. Typically speaking, if you have children, you want to make sure they are looked after first. If you do not, then you have the ability to make a profound difference elsewhere. 

Before you can start your bequest program, or gifts in wills program, there are a couple of assumptions I am going to make. The first is that you need to have a staff member doing this, or some form of budget. When we first launched, we had $5,000 for a bequest campaign. Some of you might think that is a lot. Some of you might think that is nothing. We increased that to about $25,000 over time because we saw success. 

Having said that, if you do not have any budget and it is largely up to you, then I am going to show you what you can and cannot do in the framework I provide. I am also going to assume you have a database to work with, or some form of donor base. That is a given for any not-for-profit. 

I am going to assume staff are educated about the difference between a percentage, a pecuniary gift, a cash gift, a residual gift, an asset, and how those work. You will also need to understand whether the bequest is part of another campaign or capital campaign. 

I am also going to assume that you understand your donor. The donor who is typically leaving gifts in wills at this present moment, and this can fluctuate, usually falls within a primary age category, and then there is a secondary age category or demographic. You bring that secondary group along the journey until the ask. 

Understanding the age at death sounds morbid, but it is important. The data at this particular point shows that most people are passing away, male and female, in the 85 to 95 bracket, or even in the 80 to 95 bracket. That means they were born around 1925 to 1940. Whether they had children or no children during World War II matters. Typically speaking, husbands may have gone off to war to fight. Wives were at home and may not have had time for children during that period, or their partners may have passed away during the war. Understanding what happened during that period is critical. 

There are varying levels of experience that a donor might have around the Great Depression. Some of that experience might be about needing to make something from nothing. Some might be about trusting charities deeply. Some might be about really difficult and traumatic times. The more we can understand the donor, and the more we can use language that is about them and not us, the better our bequest program will land. 

A lot of families at that time, I think 90% if not 95%, were brought up in religious households. Having that religious skew in your gifts in wills program is something for you to consider in terms of faith, hope and values-based language, because that may resonate with that donor base. Whoever is writing the material needs to immerse themselves in understanding the target market. 

I am going to assume that you have some form of calendar of activity. In 2013–14, the Guide Dogs calendar of activity showed the team what they were doing in July, August, September, October and across 12 months. I took over a team that said, “We do not know what to do. Tell us.” I said, “Let’s rework that. What could we do? What are we doing in July, and how could we integrate gifts in wills into that? What are we doing in every other program where we could have some form of engagement in a calendar?” At a minimum, we needed at least one activity per month to engage our gifts in wills program, and that needed to change and evolve over time. 

Having taken over the team at Guide Dogs, which was three people, myself and two others, and with both other people promoted from reception, they did not have an understanding of the principles of fundraising. That allowed me to create three key pillars as a framework, and those three key pillars led to nine steps. One was macro and one was micro. 

The first macro pillar is data and donors. What are we doing around data and donors to help us understand how to build a successful gifts in wills program? How do we know who the target market is? I am going to show you some examples of who the target market is and how we got that wrong the first time we did our gifts in wills program. 

Then we need to have a culture around collecting data, understanding donor motivations, and understanding donors within the requirements of privacy compliance and the Privacy Act. It is completely fine to collect data or marketing collateral that relates to your program, so you can customise your communications based on donor preferences. Donor surveys are critical in any gifts in wills program, as is a culture of data collection. 

Then, when we move into the core program, the question is: what is our gifts in wills program going to be about? There is this notion of bequest building, donor onboarding and donor engagement. When someone makes a gift to us for the first time, or as a repeat donor, what are they left with about our brand that builds their loyalty to us? That is not directly involved in gifts in wills, but it indirectly links to increasing the propensity of someone leaving a gift in their will. 

Then you need to understand your proposition, your messaging, your style, your conversion packs, your ask packs, your follow-up packs, your inquiry packs and your thank you packs. What are we trying to get across? What does our organisation stand for? Is that coming across in our messaging through gifts in wills? 

The phone is a great way to talk to donors. That could be done internally through your own resources or volunteers, or, if you have the capacity, by outsourcing to a professional call centre. We did split trials, and I think the market is moving more towards internal staff making those calls, but it is critical to have strong conversations with your donors. 

Events are also important. Having a culture where you can speak about gifts in wills openly at any event was a mandate from my CEO at Guide Dogs. At any event, and at every event, the importance of bequests had to be spoken about. That was a policy in our fundraising policy. 

If you were hosting donors, clients coming in to have their ears or eyes checked, or someone partnering with a guide dog for the first time, and you had a group of people, you had to talk about the importance of gifts in wills to our organisation. That was culturally led at the top. 

That also started with the CEO asking every board member and every executive to leave a gift in their will. It was about taking the uncomfortable and making it comfortable. That is what we know as normalising bequests. 

The third pillar is integration. How do we integrate bequests into other programs, build relationships and grow bequests? I took over a program at Guide Dogs where it just hovered on one step: relationships. That was it. It was only relationships. There was no understanding of the target market, no data collection system, no proposition development, no bequest collateral, no phone activity, no integration with events, and no integration with middle and major donors. You could see why the program was not going anywhere. It was hovering on one cylinder. 

I talked about integration into middle and major donors. This is critical, and I will explain why in the data. We also need to consider that a large proportion of gifts in wills will come unsolicited through donors who have always wanted to make a gift but have not quite got there. When they are dealing with their estate agents, the estate agent might say, “Have you considered a small percentage to philanthropy?” Then a list of brochures can come out, and you want to be part of that list. 

They are the three pillars and the nine steps that you can build a solid strategy around. That is how I formulated the Guide Dogs program and much of the strategy for my existing clients, which the creative team at Donor Republic put into a gifts in wills strategy tree. 

The numbers do not quite correlate yet, but generally speaking, this is a useful tool for anybody to understand where they are at. Do they have a strong foundation for growth? Do they have support at the leadership level? Does the CEO or board shy away from gifts in wills, or do they openly talk about it? That is critical. 

Is there training? Do we have a strong proposition? Do we have collateral and assets? Do we capture data? Do we understand data? Number two is supporter entry points. Where do our gifts in wills come from, and what are our communication journeys around them? 

Number three is how we treat our donors. Number four is the impact we are showing them around where their money is going. Number five is how we deepen engagement with core donors who can make a significant difference. Number six is the always-on lead generation, including surveys, asking and integration into direct mail. How is that looking? 

Number seven is the overarching awareness campaign. Number eight is how we move people from “I am interested,” to “I am considering,” to “I am intending,” to “I am confirmed,” and what the journey is there. Number nine is the thank you process. Once they are in, and once they have confirmed, what do we do? 

This is a useful framework, as are the three pillars and nine steps I showed you earlier. They are essentially the same. 

I am going to get into how I did it at Guide Dogs, and I am going to show you how some other clients have done it too. Step one is to establish and define your target market. The best way to do that is to use the benchmarking. 

We need to understand what increases a donor’s likelihood of leaving a gift in their will, because those are the donors we want to target. We know that age is a factor. We know that recency, frequency and value are factors. We know that they may love the cause, be connected to the cause, have someone who passed away and want to give in memory, or have been helped themselves. 

We might know that they are wealthy. They may be giving large gifts, live in affluent suburbs, or have family connected to someone who is. We might know that there has been a major life event, such as selling a business, selling a home or retiring. Through conversations with donors, we may or may not know these things, but our aim is to know when these things happen. 

One of the key things you need to know front and centre is whether they have children or grandchildren. Looking at the benchmarking, and thank you to Pareto Fundraising, who allowed me to share this, this shows the confirmed bequest rate of all the charities that went into the benchmarking. 

What you can see here is that major donors, regular givers who do not come from street or face-to-face fundraising, and donors who give through your direct mail program are the three strongest drivers for gifts in wills. In your direct mail program, you need an integration strategy for gifts in wills. In your regular giving program, where donors were not acquired through face-to-face, you need a conversion strategy. For your middle and major donors, the conversation around gifts in wills needs to be seamlessly integrated. 

Value is important. Your $1,000 donors are what you are looking for, but your middle donors and your $250 donors are also quite likely. Value is a key driver. Looking at recency, this is a really interesting slide. Donors who have given within a year are twice as likely to give. But from two years and above, the benchmarking suggests that donors are just as likely to give three, four, five, six or seven years after supporting your not-for-profit as they are after two years. 

We need to think about the lapsed donor strategy. I may have given $1,000 to your arts organisation five years ago, six years ago or seven years ago, and I may still think I am a key supporter because that was a large gift for me. It might be $10,000 or $100,000. But many not-for-profits treat those donors as deeply lapsed. They stop sending newsletters, stop calling them and stop thanking them. Think about this slide in terms of target market generation. 

Understanding the number of gifts someone makes within a year is also important. The more gifts, the better. Frequency of gift is critical. Then there is the age cohort of confirmed gifts in wills, which is not too different from the age-at-death slide I showed you previously. It is really around the 55-plus segment. What are we doing there to actively ask for a gift in their will, and what priming activity are we doing to nurture people so that when they enter these demographics, they are more likely to leave a gift in their will? 

This shows the confirmed bequest rates on people’s databases. You can see all the charities that entered that benchmark. One charity is doing incredibly well. I do not know who it is. The average of all these confirmed rates leads to what we preach as a minimum: you should aim for at least 1% of your entire donor base to give you a confirmed bequest. 

If you have 300 donors on your database, three to five is a good starting point to feel confident about where you have landed. That is an average and a general conversation, because those 300 donors might be 300 major donors who are actively giving to you, in which case you would want far more than 1%. Please bear with me in the general remarks and statistics, because they often vary. 

Direct mail is a key channel for gifts in wills. You can see how important a direct mail program is as a nurturing program into gifts in wills. Not only does direct mail generate cash in the short term, it is the strongest driver for regular giving in the mid-term, the strongest driver for major gifts in the mid to long term, and clearly the strongest driver for gifts in wills in the extreme long term. 

If you do not have a direct mail program, we advocate that all our clients think about the traditional backbone of fundraising, which has been direct mail for many years. Of course, there is now the emergence of regular giving and digital platforms, but direct mail will typically serve you very well because it lends itself to the demographic of donors who are likely to leave a gift in their will. 

This slide also mentions the likelihood of regular givers. Donors who have been with you and were not recruited through face-to-face or street fundraising are more likely to leave you a gift in their will. Donors recruited through street fundraising are less likely. If they have been with you for six or seven years, they are around half a per cent likely. You need to think about the conversion strategy for donors who have been with you for a long time and who give regularly. 

There is some really basic propensity modelling you can do in your databases, or even in an Excel sheet. If you do not have money to invest in a data analyst, you can build some basic scoring. If a donor has given five gifts or 10 gifts, score them this. If they have given for five years or 10 years, score them this. If they are a non-face-to-face regular giver, score them this. That score should probably be higher, but this is just a fictitious example. 

If they have given a certain gift amount, score them this. If their age fits the profile, score them this. If they have no children or grandchildren, your scoring is up to you. You might score that 10 or seven. If they have changed their address, it shows they are engaged. If they have sent us white mail before, called us, come to events or done a survey, we can score donors based on propensity modelling so we understand who to best target to leave a gift in their will. 

I will not bore you with all of that, but if you are investing a lot of money in data analytics, you can get some pretty sophisticated propensity modelling done for you. 

I am going to give you an example from 2008 at Guide Dogs. The team, prior to me joining, sent 20,000 mailings to our donor base and had 28 confirmed responses, at a response rate of 0.4%, and at a cost of $32,000. Through doing propensity modelling, and through really understanding the target market that is more likely to leave a gift in their will, we reduced that to 5,000 mailings. We had a similar number of confirmed responses, increased our response rate, and spent less. 

With that extra $25,000, you can do much more. This shows the importance of bequest propensity modelling, targeting and understanding your data, so you do not waste money, and so you optimise your performance and your budgets. 

Step two is about data collection. A really easy thing you can do is include tick boxes on appeals. For example, “I would like to leave a gift in my will to Guide Dogs,” or “I have already left a gift in my will.” If someone has already left a gift in their will, you can customise those statements. 

That does not just have to be on direct mail. It can be on receipts. It can be at events. You could ask, “How did you find our event?” Given that many of you are arts organisations, you could also use surveys. You could include a tick box asking whether someone is interested in supporting you with a gift in their will, or whether they are not interested. You can collect data and then customise the journey. 

This is more advanced, but you can use some social norming. If you are doing appeals, you might say, “Many supporters just like you have made the generous decision to leave a gift in their will to the Children’s Hospital Foundation. Please tick the box that is relevant to you.” 

If someone says, “I am interested,” and you have not heard back from them or cannot reach them, you can send them a letter or another appeal. You can say, “Thanks, Andrew. You previously let us know you are interested. We have been unable to reach you. Can you let us know the outcome?” Given direct mail is their primary form of communication, based on the benchmark, that can be useful. 

You can even be quite adventurous. Some clients are saying, “Thank you for indicating you have left a gift in your will. That is amazing. You are amazing. We have tried to reach you and have not been able to. It would be lovely to hear what you have done. Have you left a fixed amount, a percentage, or something else?” I am seeing clients collect information this way as well. 

Some surveying you could do is a direct survey that says, “You have previously mentioned that you were generously considering or intending to leave a gift in your will to Blind Low Vision New Zealand. Is this something you are still thinking about?” You can prompt and ask. 

You can also have a broad, generic donor survey about everything, or a services survey about everything. We had more than 20,000 clients at Guide Dogs. Many of them did not fit the suitable donor profile. I do not quite like using the harsh language of target market, but they were not suitable donors, if you will. 

We understood who was suitable in our service delivery, and we asked them generic questions. Many of our clients were thankful that we asked, and they were able to support. That is a passive way of doing it for a client base. 

You can have specific supporter surveys that highlight the importance of gifts in wills. For example, the creative might say, “When our son David was born with cerebral palsy, the Alliance was a lifesaver. Leaving a gift to them was a way to say thank you.” That is social norming and is really pushing the gifts in wills message to your donor base and supporter base. 

You can also have indirect questions. Through the Include a Charity research, and through what we know about major donors, we know that donors who feel financially secure are more likely to leave a gift in their will and are more likely to leave a major gift. That is another score in propensity modelling, generally speaking. 

Happy donors give, and they feel happy. Donors who are concerned with the cost of living would typically receive a low score. Donors who are concerned about their financial future would also receive a low score. These are some of the questions you might want to ask in a donor survey. 

You can even understand whether giving or philanthropy has been passed on through generations. For example, “Giving to charity was important to my parents, therefore it is important to me.” A culture or generation of philanthropy would be more likely to leave a gift in their will than one without that history. 

You can also collect data on your website. For example, you might ask whether someone would like to receive a free reminder service, a free follow-up service, or information about gifts in wills or estate planning. You can collect data through your website as well. 

Depending on how advanced you are, it is worth understanding who has enquired about bequests, who is intending to leave a bequest, and who has confirmed. When I was working with my team, I would ask, “How many enquiries do we have? What work are we doing around enquiries? What is our language there? What are our strategies to move people from asking about it to seriously considering leaving a gift in their will?” We did not have any communication collateral around that, so I could see why it was a problem. I could see why we had lots of enquiries because the puppies brought people in, but I could also see why we had poor conversions. 

Understanding your data helps you know whether you are getting lots of enquiries. If you are not, that is a problem and you need to focus there. If you are getting lots of enquiries but not many confirmations, that needs to be your focus. Understanding the percentages and the flow between these stages will help you know where to focus. 

There are some key metrics you can use. What is the volume of donors coming into enquiry, moving into consideration, and moving into confirmed status? Is that healthy or unhealthy? Are donor volumes increasing or decreasing on our donor base? Is the number of people leaving a gift in their will, as a proportion of our database, increasing or decreasing? 

Do we understand future projected revenue? For example, the average bequest might be $50,000 in your organisation. If we know we have gone from five confirmed to 25 confirmed, then there is a pipeline we can report. How many relationships do we have with estate agents? Do we know how much data we have in the database? Is that increasing in proportion or decreasing? These are some key things we can report on in our gifts in wills program. 

Step three is bequest building. This is one of my favourites because it is a real opportunity to give your best shot to that donor and get them bonded to your organisation. The reason bequest donor building is so important is because of this graph. Second gift rates are declining in our sector rapidly. 

What that means is we are so focused on asking for money that we forget about the aftercare. We have become like the car salesperson. We just want to drive the sale and get the money. When we get the money, we do not live up to our promise in the rest of the donor journey. That is clear in the data and in all the research we have been doing as a group. 

What we have developed, and what you can develop, is a plan for how you will treat donors when they come into your organisation and make a first donation. What are we going to do? What is the next thing they should experience? What is the next thing we are best known for? 

If we are known for Guide Dogs, symphony orchestras, the best production in town, or something else, why are we talking about something dramatically different the next time? How do we keep that journey aligned? We might say, “Thank you for supporting the dogs. We know you love dogs, but did you know we also do this with dogs? We also do this, and we do this.” It is about understanding donor care. 

Here is an example of what we used to do. We would get a first donation through direct mail, digital campaigns or events. We would try to get the donor’s phone number by washing the database, which is within the Privacy Act. It used to cost 50 cents to do that, often when donors had not filled in their phone number on the donation form. 

If they gave a certain donation, the CEO, a client, a volunteer or our bequest officer would make a call. Then we would post a welcome book, send an automated SMS, send an email with a video, and then send a range of collateral that would lead to a donor event at the end. This is known as bequest building, or donor engagement, to bond a donor to your organisation. 

Within all of those journeys, the aim was to collect data. Here is Jod. Jod is a client. Jod was paid by Guide Dogs. Her script was, “Thank you so much for donating to our organisation. It is because of wonderful people like you that I am able to gain employment. I am calling to say thank you for helping me and many people like me. I have my guide dog with me here.” 

It is a wonderful call, and I appreciate that not every organisation can do that. But we are starting to do that now with volunteers at many organisations we work with. Jod’s role was to say thank you, make the donor feel bonded, and collect data. Why did you support Guide Dogs? Do you know anybody with a vision impairment? What do you love about our work? What do you love about the arts? What do you love about our organisation? 

Then we would promote some key messages. Did you know that we were the original guide dog provider? Did you know that we are not government funded? You need to think about the key messages you can promote to your donors. 

When we received your mobile number and Jod called, you would then get an SMS. The SMS would be a multi-channel touchpoint, and sometimes we would include a video to say, “Thank you so much. Welcome to Guide Dogs. This is what we do. This is why we do it.” It was also to collect a bit of data. 

Then we would send an email saying, “Thank you for ensuring Alicia never walks alone.” That included an emotional proposition. We would also stack that with key messages and continuity in the journey: “It was nice to chat with you over the phone recently. I thought you would like a little email to show you the types of work we are doing.” Then we would promote some key messaging. 

After that, when they gave a gift and received a phone call, an SMS and an email, my boards would say, “Andrew, aren’t you bombarding them?” I suppose the answer is yes and no. If they are getting a good message, and we are saying thank you, articulating where the money goes and making them feel amazing, then I cannot see the problem with that. In fact, I think it is good donor practice, as shown by our increase in donor engagement and revenue. If we were calling them non-stop asking for money, then I would see that as bombardment. But our role in philanthropy is to go beyond the donation, and that is what we were trying to do here. 

We moved away from a very branded thank you letter into a more traditional not-for-profit letter printed in black. We would say, “This letter was printed in black and produced in-house by volunteers to save costs and ensure that your donation goes exactly where it is needed.” We found that elevated donor engagement. I would write handwritten messages, and the team would write handwritten messages, to make donors feel bonded to our organisation, make them feel special, and go beyond the donation. 

Then we created a thank you booklet. We had the luxury of having a corporate partner pay for this. If you could do that, that would be amazing. I appreciate that is not the case for everybody. I have seen some smaller clients print thank you cards from their in-house printer. Ultimately, you would have a thank you pack with some donor care, and it would promote the work you do. 

You have a great opportunity to succinctly promote all the work you do. For Guide Dogs, that included autism, vision, hearing and the sensory discovery centre. That is what we do on a page, and why we do it. We also had useful materials. The bequest strategy was largely about getting Guide Dogs into people’s homes and into people’s hearts. 

How do we do that? We need to elevate our communication. We need to send people things they will keep on their fridge. We said in our letter, “Here is a magnet. Please put this beautiful picture on your fridge as a reminder of your amazing work.” These are simple and easy things that you can do as well. 

If they gave a second donation, we would write more feel-good material. After a third donation, we would say, “You have been supporting us for a while now. Here are some outcomes. Eiffel has become a guide dog. York has become a guide dog. Hero has become a guide dog. This is all possible thanks to you.” This was the outcomes piece after someone had given three times. 

The fourth time someone gave on our database, we would have a code at the bottom of the letter. Volunteers internally would know which pamphlet needed to go with which letter. It was their fourth donation, and that was the journey. We would create emotive material: together we will create bonds, together we will offer comfort, together we will create lasting memories, and together we will create new beginnings. 

There is no rational content in this donor engagement journey. That is not to say there should not be. There absolutely should be. But in this case, the beauty of not-for-profits is that we get to dial up the emotion. 

If a donor gave five gifts, that could happen in a year, five years or three years. Once they reached the five-donation mark on our database, we would get a list of donors and invite them to an event when we felt the numbers were stacking up. 

This is what that event looked like. You all have wonderful platforms for your events. In doing my research, I looked at many of your websites and saw that you have beautiful platforms to invite donors to events. Whether they pay for those tickets or not is up to you. In this case, we showcased the work we did and where the money went. 

We also had our bequest officer at those events. I would stand up and say, “Thank you so much for supporting our event, lottery, direct mail or online activity, whatever it was. You are all part of this amazing community. I want to introduce you to Ally Shields. She leads our gifts in wills and bequest program. That is the single most important way you can support Guide Dogs. One in every five guide dogs is supported by a gift in a will, and in fact this building was funded by a gift in a will. I deeply encourage you to consider leaving a gift in your will.” 

At the back was Brent. Brent led our major donor campaign. If you were interested in supporting with gifts of $5,000 and above, Brent was the person to see for our breeding program. We talked about a new proposition there. 

Being a bit of a fundraising geek, I measure everything. I know that second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth gift rates, through the introduction of donor care or bequest building materials, will be higher than the cohort of donors that did not receive that material. That is a no-brainer for me and probably does not even need to be measured. 

I had the revenue figures on here, but they probably have not come through on the slide. I think we asked for a certain amount of money to print the materials and work with an advertising agency to develop what I showed you. We proved that with an investment of $20,000, because of the blue line, we were able to make a net difference of about $70,000 for the donors on our database that we split. Five thousand received the thank you journey and 5,000 did not. This is the result for the 5,000 who did. 

It does not need to look as polished as that. It can be as simple as messages, phone calls with compliment slips, photos, or whatever you have available. 

Best practice impact newsletters are critical for donor loyalty and bequest building. In donor psychology, I give money, and you need to prove to me where it goes. I have seen an outcome. Our industry is poor at understanding how to best show outcomes. 

I have 114 clients at Donor Republic, and I could categorically say that before working with us, none of them had a good donor newsletter. None of them. We work with the big, the small and the medium. They all talked about themselves and did not talk about where the money went and what the outcomes were. 

This is really basic. “You are supporting families in need.” “Your money is helping.” Donor psychology or consumer behaviour will tell you: I have invested in something, I have seen an outcome, and I am satisfied. “Riley is alive thanks to your support.” “Thank you for bringing joy to the family.” “You helped Aaron start school with confidence.” These are all donor outcomes from donor donations. 

You have the ability to do that, whether it is your youth programs, young artist programs, painting programs or something else. Show donor outcomes in donor newsletters. 

In bequest building and donor engagement, it is also important to normalise bequests. In your donor newsletters, feel free to promote gifts in wills. You can have generic newsletters that promote gifts in wills, or if you have a gifts in wills society, you can have a dedicated gifts in wills newsletter. That is much more advanced and depends on where you are at. It can talk about everything and anything involved with the bequest society. 

We understand who our donors are who leave gifts in wills. Step one: we are collecting, and we have a culture and system that collects the data that helps support us with a donor pool we can approach. We have built donor loyalty and made donors feel good about our organisation. They understand where their money is going, and we have made them feel good, rather than making them feel we are asking for money all the time. 

Step four is: what do we actually say? How do we ask them to leave a gift in their will? You need an acquisition or conversion pack. You need an ask pack. If you need to mail something, phone someone or organise a sit-down conversation, there are many ways you can ask. Understanding that direct mail is the strongest driver, and suits the cohort of donors who leave gifts in wills, the direct mail conversion pack will be one of your strongest tools. 

That is a general statement, but one that is backed up by evidence. We are doing lots of digital gifts in wills work. We are doing lots of personalised one-to-one asks, but as the core foundation of any program, you need a pack. 

The ask pack and the conversion pack are slightly different to the inquiry pack. I will talk about that a bit later. One is probably where you would spend a bit more effort talking about the donor, the organisation, and why you need a gift in their will. It is a bit more of a sell, if you will. The inquiry pack is more like, “I am thinking of leaving a gift in my will. Can you send me some information?” You probably do not need as strong a proposition or as much material to support that. Many organisations, however, send the same pack, and that is completely fine. 

You are going to need a thank you pack and a thank you process. You will also need some multi-channel setup. You need a digital approach, a website approach, phone scripts and event materials. You need that proposition and those materials to shine. 

The thing I love about gifts in wills is where the proposition lands. It encompasses everything we love about philanthropy. It should talk about the donor. It should talk about the history of our organisation. It should talk about the future of our organisation. It should talk about our raison d’être, our purpose, and why we are here. In the middle of that is where the gifts in wills proposition should land. 

I might wait until I show the material to give you some examples. Guide Dogs’ history was not coming through anywhere. We had no collateral. Remember the target market: born in a certain era and connecting with nostalgia at a certain point. What was our movement? Why did we exist? Who was the person who did it? 

Frank Beauchamp was a man whose colleague was blind after the war and had no support. He had learned about the movement in Germany. The movement in Germany happened after World War I, where soldiers who had been subject to explosive bombs had lost their vision. They were in hospital beds, and one of the doctors had a pet German shepherd. What he noticed was that his German shepherd was taking the soldiers out to go to the bathroom and leading them back to their bed. He thought there was something in this. He started understanding dog training. 

After the war, the English did not want the dogs to be known as German shepherds. They wanted their own dogs, the Labradors. So it moved away from German shepherds into Labradors. We did not talk about any of this in our collateral. We had so much beautiful storytelling. 

The first ever guide dog in Australia was called Buddy, and Frank’s nickname was Buddy. We thought there was something in that. In bequest proposition development, we need to understand the donor proposition, their beliefs and their values. I know you support us because of this. We need to understand that. We need to understand that family comes first. 

You need to segment. If I have a family of four, I am going to look after my kids first, pending any family crisis. If I know that Andrew has four kids, I would say, “Thank you for supporting Guide Dogs for 25 years. We would love to invite you into our gifts in wills program. We appreciate that you need to be responsible for your family first, but if you could consider a small portion of your estate for us, that would be amazing.” The language changes. 

Then we have an opportunity to promote our organisational history, our vision, mission, values, brand and why we exist. Then we can get into the traditional fundraising space: the problem, the need, the urgency, the tangibility, the storytelling and all the things we spend much of our time in as fundraisers. What is the need? How do we solve it? 

What bequest propositions allow you to do is talk about benefits, future-oriented positive impact and strategy. The organisation is moving in this direction because it has had a foundation in the past. We need you to help us get there. 

One of the key things you could do internally, and you do not need an agency for this, is understand your brand and then sell that brand in your best proposition ever, which is your gifts in wills proposition. What is your heritage and equity? Where did you come from? For us, it was Frank Beauchamp, and it was that we were the original provider of guide dogs for 60 years. We had people trying to come into our space saying they were guide dog schools, but they did not have what we had. 

What was our reason for being? Our reason for being was to give people their life back. That was our purpose. What was our vision? Our vision was that it should not matter if you had vision impairment or hearing impairment. There should be no barriers to your life. 

Our brand attributes were rational and emotional. The rational part was that a guide dog or white cane offers independence and mobility. The emotional part is that it offers companionship and a bond. The personality traits of our brand were that Guide Dogs feels safe, cosy and like your best friend. Our essence was the majestic relationship a dog has with its handler or owner. Imagine the relationship you have with your pets. Imagine what it would be like if you were blind. It is such a special thing. 

None of that was coming through in any of our communication strategies, so we were not giving it our best foot forward. I encourage you to go through this process. Do not forget the power of a name in your gifts in wills program. There is a lot of research around naming a program. I am a big believer in naming the program. 

Internally, it brings it to life and creates a culture. Externally, it gives a donor a sense of belonging. It also allows you to connect with something more easily. 

Using the brand pyramid, our history, our equity, our characteristics, our traits and what we stand for, we were able to form the Buddy for Life program. Buddy was the first ever guide dog. Buddy was Frank’s nickname. We needed donors to be our buddy for life in this journey. We really emphasised the bond, the majestic bond that dogs had with their owners. That was done through art direction. The shots had to encapsulate that bond. 

I am going to show you an example from a client, the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This is what they came to Donor Republic with before going through this exercise. “Will you become our newest alliance member?” I do not know what that actually means. There were different treatments all over the pack. You can see the proposition was about becoming an alliance member, and they were also talking about disaster recovery. That is not what they do. This had not gone through the proposition pyramid. 

When we went through the proposition pyramid with them and understood what they stood for, why they stood for it, their characteristics, and their heritage, they had lost a really important part of what donors said in this exercise. That was Reverend John Flynn, the man who founded the movement and the reason many donors born between 1920 and 1945 gave. They gave because of this man and what he stood for. That was not coming through at all. 

What we knew about Reverend John Flynn was that he was a maverick. He was a man who went further. He was a man who did not say no. He launched the movement on a camel. He believed fundamentally that, no matter where you were in this world, everybody deserved the same level of treatment, given his medical and aeromedical background. 

We thought it should start with a legend who went further than anyone else. Ninety years later, here is further evidence of how we are a lifeline to so many. These words can help you go further. Through the research, we realised Reverend John Flynn was a man who went above and beyond the call of duty. He literally went above and beyond. 

So we called the program Above and Beyond. That also resonates with what they do: flying planes and going above and beyond. We asked people to go further with a gift in their will. By going through a basic exercise, you can turn something that looks like a bit of a mishmash into something that is easy to digest and articulate. 

Then you can roll that out to different channels. This is what the bequest pack looked like: a four-page letter showcasing the stories and asking donors to leave a gift in their will. It also included a bequest booklet and showed donors where their money had gone. 

Another example is Hobart City Mission. They took a little A4 page into a proposition built around being the oldest charity in Australia, established in 1852. No matter what has happened in the world, they have always been there for the people of Tasmania. The booklet shows that clearly. 

They are asking for 1%. This is a key statement and some language we have learned from the UK, from Richard Radcliffe, who is a gifts in wills expert. His research showed that donors were twice as likely to leave a gift in their will if they were asked to leave 1% of their estate. 

In the UK, and what we are seeing with our clients now, is the launch of the idea that even 1% can make a significant difference. You need to understand your donor first before you do that. That is another general statement. 

That was the research I was talking about. If anyone does not know Richard Radcliffe, it is worth researching him because he is a guru in this space. In his research, and in More Strategic’s research, donors are more likely to tick that box if we ask in a donor survey, or in any forms we use, whether they are interested in leaving 1% of their estate. 

You can say, “Many people choose to support charities they care about by leaving a gift in their will. Would you consider even 1%?” This had an amazing response, and they are following up on that. 

As I said, you have the target market, you have collected the data, you have earned the right to ask for a bequest, and you have developed the propositions, themes and messaging. Now you need to ask. The best way to ask is through the conversion pack: history, future, bequest brochure, and then a clear, easy-to-understand A4 response form that makes it easy for that donor demographic to respond. 

That pack was sent to 5,000 donors. It had a strong response rate, and we received confirmed gifts. It is important to explain to board members and CEOs who might not understand philanthropy why you would bother. Some people said to me, “Why would you bother at that response rate? That is one of the worst response rates I have ever seen.” They were right in one sense. But when the average gift is $50,000, or in this case was $30,000 when I did it five years ago, it is actually a healthy return. 

Do your mailing to your donor base once you have earned the right to do that, and once you have developed the collateral and material. If you do not have the budget to do that, you might want to talk it through with a donor. You might write it on a page, as some of my clients have done, and speak it through with a donor. 

It can be refreshing when a client says, “I do not have any money to promote this. I am the promotion. I am talking to you about my gifts in wills program, and here is what I want to talk to you about today.” 

Let us say, hypothetically, that you send that pack to someone, or you ask them to leave a gift in their will, and they say, “Send me more information.” That was the case with us, and we realised we did not have any more information to send. We had to create another letter that said a little more about moving them from considering to why they should give. The “why they should give” was largely a message from a volunteer who had converted, or a client who had converted, to gifts in wills. You need to consider that if someone says, “Send me more information,” what will you send them? Do not be caught out like we were at the time. 

In this case, we had Bev promoting why someone should give. We had a series of “why” messages as well. Once someone leaves a gift in their will, you should call them. You should thank them and potentially invite them to a bequest event. You should also send them a thank you pack. 

We repurposed the information we sent in bequest building. We put our history on there and said, “Thank you for becoming a buddy for life. It is because of wonderful people like you that you are doing an amazing job.” That can be emailed, printed or simply spoken through, depending on your budget. 

One of the key things to consider with the emergence of our digital framework is how prepared you are digitally for gifts in wills. What are you doing on SMS? What are you doing on the phone? What are you doing on your website? How are you approaching multi-channel donor engagement? 

If you are not part of Include a Charity, it is worth searching for Include a Charity or speaking to the Fundraising Institute of Australia to understand what you can do to be involved. That gives you a way to promote your cause at a time when the industry is promoting gifts in wills. 

You need to understand what you are doing online and digitally. Do you have a presence, knowing that many donors research you online? Is there someone I can contact who is a real person? Do we want to change “bequests” to Carol’s name? Do we want to personalise that? Do we have videos and downloads? What do we have on our website? Can I click on a form and create a brochure? What sort of emotional pull do we have? 

I have included a link here that is a 10-minute video to help get you over the line, or create the reasons why gifts in wills are so important. Social media, if you are advanced, is a great way to do this. If you do not have much money to spend on printed material, you might want to do a social media campaign. It is not as effective as direct mail in my opinion, based on the results we are seeing, but it can be effective depending on your budget. 

Thank you to WASO, who have allowed me to review and look at their program. I will not be brutal here, as I normally am, but I would say they have a good online presence for their bequest and endowment fund. It is clear that they have a digital presence. They have a bequest booklet, Compose Your Legacy. It feels as though there has been some thought and consideration put into this booklet, and there is some creative expression, which is lovely. 

I think The Will of Music is good. That is nice. It is quite emotional. There is an emotional pull there. I think it is a nice introduction. When we move into the next page, Estate Planning is for Everyone, I would probably tweak that slightly and make it more donor-focused, more about you, which they do later in the book. 

There may be an opportunity here, rather than getting straight into it and introducing WASO and then saying estate planning is for everyone, to speak about your history, connect to nostalgia and use the principles I talked about with some historic photos. What was happening in the donor’s era? 

I would also expand on tangibility. You talk about young artists, regional tours, new musicals and award-winning education. I would probably have a page on each of those so I understand where my gift in will is going. 

The case studies are strong. They create a powerful connection to the cause. Getting into the detail, the design treatment could come across more. The gold and imagery from this material could probably come across, although that is probably my creative agency side talking. I wonder whether you could have a pull-out quote or a call to action, such as, “Did you know just 1% could…” or “Did you know government does not fund us?” You could include a soft statement to make the donor think, “I did not know that. That is a better reason why I should leave a gift in my will.” 

There is strong donor-focused language here: “A lasting statement about what matters to you.” I know the donor is being spoken to. There is an opportunity to segment the 1% ask for people with children. If your donor base has children, consider a different way to ask them for a gift in their will compared with those who do not. 

This is a really beautiful page: “If WASO has played an important role in your past, we invite you to play a role in its future.” That is lovely. Clearly the strategy is about proximity. I need to be involved in this community, and the music will play on through your bequest. Thank you so much for allowing us to showcase that. 

I think the only thing we could do there is develop that acquisition or conversion pack. The letter at the moment inviting a donor to consider a gift in their will could probably be stronger. You could talk about your history, your vision, your purpose, your mission, the donor and where the money is going, and really elevate that ask. 

Sorry, that was my dog vomiting right next to me. Elevating the bequest brochure and having a clear response mechanism would probably have elevated that into a more active ask. At the moment, this is a gentle ask, which is fine. There is nothing wrong with that, but it could dial up the principles more. Thank you again for allowing us to share. 

Step five is get on the phone. Call the donors. Find out if they have received your information. Find out what they liked about the pack and what they did not like. Have conversations and do that regularly. Do not be afraid to ask on the phone. 

You could say, “Having received the material and discussed it with your loved one, would you like to leave a gift in your will?” It is a simple question and it can have a big impact. If the answer is no, you could ask, “Is that no forever, or is that no for now? I thought I might follow up in a year’s time.” You might be surprised by what you get when you ask. 

I will not bore you with all the statistics, but I will show the outcomes and efficacy of investing $5,000 into a telemarketing agency to call our best prospects and allow them to convert to a gift in their will after they received the direct mail pack. Step one: send them a direct mail pack. Step two: call them and follow up. There was a strong return here for a minimal investment. That is how you saw those numbers grow in the slides at the start of the presentation. 

I am going to race through the next bit. Step six is events. Make sure you are integrating gifts in wills into your events, talking about it culturally and explaining how important gifts in wills are for you. 

Step seven is understand what you can offer through your relationships. In our case, we offered the dog. What can you offer? Let that offering shine to build the relationship. It could be a message from a client or key stakeholder. You can go to someone’s house. You can check their will and say, “We have a lot of issues with contested wills. It would be useful if I could verify and check that for our own wellbeing, because we would not want your wishes to be caught up in the court system.” 

You can even upgrade bequests. We did that successfully. For donors who had left us $50,000, $5,000 or $500,000, we would say thank you. Part of our engagement strategy was to say, “You have given half a million dollars to the dog program. That is amazing. Here is another thing we are funding. This one requires significant donations of $10 million and above, $1 million and above, or $1,000 and above.” It is your script. We would say, “We are also looking for people to leave a generous gift in their will.” That is a passive statement. 

We had many donors say, “Thank you so much, Andrew, for showing me that amazing thing you were doing at Guide Dogs. I have decided to increase my gift in my will.” Do not be afraid to do that. 

Step eight is middle and major donor integration. The data suggests this is the strongest cohort to leave a gift in their will. If you have donors giving $1,000 plus, which many arts not-for-profit organisations do, consider how you are integrating gifts in wills. 

This is typically a major donor setting. That is my old CEO, and that is Brent, the philanthropy manager I mentioned earlier. We would invite donors in to talk about our major gift program. In that conversation, we would also ask donors to leave a gift in their will. That should be front and centre in what we are promoting at the moment. 

I am going to skip this video. The slides will be shared because I am running out of time. This shows how I asked a major donor for a significant gift. I think it was $300,000. It also shows how I integrated the gifts in wills program. 

Finally, make sure you have some collateral for your estate agents, and some collateral around who you are partnering with, to make that process as easy as possible for the donor. They are my three pillars and my nine steps to success around gifts in wills. Thank you so much, everyone. 

I have some bonus material if anyone is interested in that. I can talk you through it. You will have my email there and on the slides, but that is for another day. I will hand over to you, James. 

Andrew, thank you very much. That was a tremendous amount of information and some important statistics, and I think the arts can draw a lot out of that. 

You have given us a very clear window into how a well-resourced organisation can do bequests in a professional manner. But I know that our audience will be thinking, “Do we have a hope?” Many arts organisations have very limited resources. We used WASO, which is a major company, as an example, but many arts organisations do not have dedicated development managers or fundraisers. 

Without even reading the chat, the big question is this, and perhaps it might take another session. If we get feedback from our audience today that we should get Andrew back and brainstorm how smaller arts organisations can address bequests with very few resources, then we will do that. 

A couple of things jumped out at me, and I want you to expand on them. You talked about trying to have a target, perhaps 1% of your donor base converting to a bequest. You talked about being very targeted in your communications. You also stressed that anyone giving more than $200 or $250, and perhaps aged 50 or 55 and above, could be a focus. You talked about using direct mail and having some sort of printed ask. What are the three things you would say a very under-resourced charity in the arts could do? Perhaps even something you could pass to a board member, someone who is not a professional fundraiser, and ask them to run with it. 

The first thing I would do is this: you cannot have a bequest program without a database. You just cannot. Otherwise, you are asking nobody. Step one is really navigating a board through who leaves gifts in wills, the types of donors who have been leaving gifts in wills, and why. Understanding who allows you to direct your energy towards that target market. 

Number one is to work on understanding your donors, understanding data and collecting data. That would be my number one focus, because there is no point having the best bequest brochure in the world if you have no one to ask. Understand your donor. Get your target market. Get your data based on what I have told you today. Build your database for that, both in general and for gifts in wills. 

The second thing I would focus on is giving it your best shot. What I mean by that is building the proposition or the ask by encapsulating everything I have talked about today. Start with your history. Connect the donor to your history and your reason for being. It is likely they are connected to that. Of the 100 clients, I would say almost none of them included their history. 

You can see that WASO skipped a beat there with history. It is a beautiful book and amazing, but it could have had history in there and could have articulated better where the money goes. So, proposition development. What they were fantastic at was the emotional proposition. That was brilliant. Step two would be: know how to give it your best ask. Know how to give it the best story and give it the most justice. This is probably one of the most important asks you will ever make, given the benchmark says it is the highest gift, generally speaking. I know a lot of major gifts go into the millions and tens of millions, and grants can be at that level too, but generally speaking this is one of the most significant asks you will make. 

The third thing I would do is not be the greedy salesperson who only focuses on asking for money. Include that donor in your organisation and your not-for-profit. Make them feel part of the fabric. Make sure they know where their money has gone in the past, or where it will go if they leave a gift in their will. Be as transparent, authentic and open as possible. That is probably my advice. Those are the three things I would articulate. 

Do you think you need an organisation with history to be successful in this space? 

Every organisation has history. It is just about how big it is or how deep it is. In the essence of history, it is probably about the movement. I worked with the Childhood Cancer Association, formed in 2013. They said, “We have no history.” I said, “Talk me through why you began.” 

They said, “We saw an opportunity in the market where children coming from regional and remote areas for cancer treatments had no place to stay. Their family had no place to stay. No one was accounting for this, and the government was not giving us any money. Parents were feeling vulnerable being away from their children, and children were vulnerable too.” I said, “That is not coming through in any of your literature.” 

They gave us a photo of what was initially a parents’ bereavement group that came up with the idea. I asked for permission to share the photos from that group. We are talking about a 2013 organisation, so a seven or eight-year-old organisation with no history. Let us start with that. Let us get donors connected to your starting point. 

I do have a few questions, but we have not got a great deal of time left. I am thinking there may be questions that come out of today’s presentation because there was so much information, and most arts companies taking part this morning will be thinking about which information is most relevant for them and what they can do in their particular setting. 

I invite those taking part in today’s webinar to email me. If you have any questions, email me and I will contact Andrew. We will try to respond to those questions because we went a little over time in the presentation. We are getting some great feedback on the content, which is terrific. We just need to pull out what we think we can do. It was wonderful to have a window into how the professionals do it and how the arts might use some of that information in their particular setting. 

Are there any final remarks on your part, Andrew? 

There are a couple. Firstly, sorry, because you told me I would run over time. I can talk about fundraising and gifts in wills underwater, clearly. So that is the first thing. The second thing is thank you to everybody. I can see your chat comments. You are a kind bunch, and I deeply appreciate your kind comments. Thank you. 

As James said, feel free to reach out to him or to me. I am not fussed. I am always happy to talk about fundraising. The third thing is that you would not believe the number of causes or not-for-profits that tell me they are different, special and not like every other cause. I hear that every day. While there is an element of truth in that, I am a big believer that the principles remain the same. 

What I want to leave you with is this. Yes, the arts is different. Categorically, it is different. We have a few arts clients and they do things differently. I know that. But be comforted by the fact that there are some core steps and principles you can follow to create a solid foundation for growth. Where you are today and where you are in 12 months’ time may be different, and that is completely okay. Thank you so much for allowing me to chat to the group. Thank you everybody for your kind comments, and again, James, I am sincerely apologetic for running over time. 

That is okay. You owe me a little bit of time if I get some. I would like to add a couple of things you said before we end. One is the importance of talking about bequests. I loved the point you made about the policy at Guide Dogs for staff and leaders to talk about bequests, and the importance of normalising the idea. I would like to remind everybody of that key point. 

I would also like to go back to the strategy tree slide, because almost everything is in that strategy tree. I think the arts organisations taking part today can look at the gifts in wills strategy tree slide and identify what they can do in particular. 

Thank you again, Andrew. I appreciate your time. Thank you to Lisa at WASO for letting us examine WASO’s strategies. It was a good session. I sense we need to do a second session on bequests to try to hone this down a little, so we will give that some consideration at CPA. 

The next Knowledge Series webinar will take place on Thursday 18 March and feature Elaine Verner of Steople. She will be offering senior development managers coaching and mentoring strategies to help build stronger and more effective development teams. Please spread the word to others you think may be interested in joining us. 

Thank you for your participation today. I invite you to send questions to me and I will forward them to Andrew. Please enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you all.