The Planned Giving Donors Already in Your Database (And How to Find Them)
You do not need a major gifts team or a dedicated planned giving officer to start building a legacy program. You need a database that helps you find your data.
That is the finding that tends to stop fundraisers in their tracks: a study of 17 nonprofits uncovered more than 1,800 undiscovered bequests sitting in existing donor databases, with an estimated value between $72 million and $127 million. On top of that, over 3,400 individuals in those same databases were identified as ready to be cultivated for planned giving, representing a potential $123 million to $215 million in future gifts.
None of those donors had been asked. Most of them had not even been identified.
If your nonprofit has been collecting donor data for any length of time, there is a strong chance your best planned giving prospects are already in your system. The question is whether you know where to look.
Why Wealth Screening Alone Will Not Find Them
Most organizations will run a wealth screen and let the ratings do the work. For major gifts, that approach makes sense. For planned giving, it misses the point.
Planned giving donors are not necessarily wealthy. Many are people of average to moderate means who have given consistently for years and feel a deep connection to your mission. They want to leave a legacy that reflects who they are, and a bequest lets them do that regardless of their net worth. The average realized bequest is often in the five-figure range, but it comes from donors who might have never appeared at the top of a capacity rating.
The indicators that predict planned giving potential are behavioral, not financial. They are factors such as long-term giving history, volunteer status, consistent engagement across multiple touchpoints, monthly giving, and mid-level loyalty. These signals live inside your CRM, and most organizations are not running searches on them specifically for legacy identification.
The Donor Segments Worth Looking at First
If you are not sure where to start, these are the segments most likely to find planned giving candidates.
Monthly donors are the most overlooked and are seven times more likely to leave a bequest than one-time or lapsed donors. They have already made a sustained, structural commitment to your mission. They are not just giving because of a campaign. They believe in the work, and they have built it into their lives. In our earlier post on uncovering hidden donors in your database, we noted that monthly donors represent some of the highest-value hidden prospects across multiple categories, and planned giving is no exception.
Long-term annual donors. Donors who have given consistently for five, ten, or fifteen years are telling you something important about how they feel about your organization. Loyalty is the single strongest predictor of planned giving interest. A donor who has renewed their gift for twelve years in is far more likely to include your organization in their estate than someone who gave twice and dropped off.
Mid-level donors. Mid-level donors, typically giving between $1,000 and $10,000 annually, are already invested enough to give at a meaningful level but may not have the immediate resources for a major gift. A bequest lets them make the transformational gift they want to make without affecting their current financial picture. As we covered in our hidden donors series, mid-level donors make up a small percentage of most files but contribute a disproportionate share of revenue. Their planned giving potential mirrors that dynamic.
Multi-engagement supporters. Donors who give and volunteer, who attend events and advocate for your cause, or have a relationship with your organization that goes beyond transactional. A depth of connection is a strong signal they want to include your organization in their legacy. When someone is integrated into your mission in multiple ways, they are thinking about your work as part of their life, not just as a line item in their budget.
Older donors with no lapse history. Donors in their sixties, seventies, and beyond who have given steadily and never lapsed are in their prime planned giving years. They are likely thinking about their estate plans. They may have already included you and not told you. The majority of planned giving donors do notify their organizations, but almost 10% never do. Gentle outreach to this segment is almost always worth the investment.
What to Look for in Your CRM
You do not need a sophisticated analytics platform to do this work. You need to run the right searches on data you already have.
In Julep, you can segment your donor file using a combination of filters: giving frequency, giving tenure, engagement history, event attendance, and volunteer activity. The goal is to build a list of donors who show multiple signals at once. Someone who has given every year for a decade, attends your annual event, and made the switch to monthly giving two years ago is not just a good annual fund donor. They are a planned giving prospect who has not been approached yet.
A few specific filters to consider combining:
Giving tenure of five or more years. This filter narrows your file to your most loyal supporters and gives you a strong starting list.
Monthly giving status. Cross-reference your tenure segment with monthly giving enrollment to find donors who have already made a structural commitment.
Engagement codes or activity flags. If your organization tracks volunteer hours, advocacy actions, or event attendance in your CRM, flag donors who show up in more than one category. Multi-engagement behavior correlates strongly with planned giving interest.
No lapse in the last three to five years. Donors who have not skipped a year, even during economic downturns, are telling you they are committed. Filter out anyone with a significant gap to keep your list focused.
Mid-level gift range. Pull donors giving $500 to $5,000 each year who also meet the tenure and engagement criteria above. These are high-value prospects.
Once you have that combined list, you are not looking at thousands of names. You are looking at a manageable cohort of donors who have already demonstrated their commitment before starting a legacy conversation.
Starting the Conversation
One of the most useful pieces of data from the planned giving field is this: donors who are simply asked about including a charitable gift in their will are 17 times more likely to follow through than donors who are never asked. The gap is not in donor interest. It is in outreach.
The conversation does not have to be about death or wills. It can start with gratitude. A personal phone call or handwritten note thanking a longtime donor for their years of support, followed by a soft mention that your organization has a legacy giving program for donors who want to extend their impact, is often enough to open the door.
In your CRM, you can use Moves Management to track where each prospective planned giving donor stands in that cultivation process: who has been contacted, who expressed interest, who asked for more information, and who is ready for a formal conversation with your development team. This keeps planned giving integrated into your broader donor cultivation workflow rather than living in a spreadsheet somewhere outside your main system.
What This Looks Like Over Time
Legacy giving is a long game. The donors you identify today may not disclose a gift this year or even in the next five years. But the value of that pipeline is real, and the compounding effect on your annual fundraising is documented. When a donor makes a planned gift commitment and is properly stewarded, their current annual giving tends to increase as well. The act of formalizing a bequest deepens a donor's sense of connection to your mission.
Building a planned giving identification process into your regular database work, even quarterly or twice a year, means your pipeline grows steadily without requiring a dedicated staff member to manage it. The infrastructure is your CRM. The signals are already there.
A Practical Starting Point
If this feels overwhelming, start with one filter. Pull every donor who has given for eight or more consecutive years and has not lapsed. That list alone will surface some of your strongest planned giving candidates. Reach out to ten of them in the next month with a personal touchpoint, nothing transactional, just genuine gratitude and an invitation to stay connected.
You will be surprised how many of those conversations reveal that someone has already thought about including your organization in their plans. They were waiting for you to bring it up.
The donors are already there. Your CRM is how you find them.
Interested in learning more about how Julep CRM can help you identify and cultivate your planned giving prospects? Schedule a demo and we'll show you how it works with your existing data.