Why Small Shops Might Miss the Great Wealth Transfer (And How One Week Can Fix That)

Why Small Shops Might Miss the Great Wealth Transfer (And How One Week Can Fix That)

Early in my career, I was the “gal Friday” of a fundraising shop at The University of Southern Mississippi. That title meant I got handed the problems nobody else had time for, and one of mine was planned giving.

My boss wanted what he called "planned giving in a can" – by which he meant a marketing firm that could build us a planned giving program without hiring a staff attorney with a JD. I found one. We worked together for years, and it worked exactly like it sounds: professional materials, steady messaging, a program running quietly in the background while the rest of us focused on annual gifts and events.

Then I moved to a small seminary. One fundraiser – me. No other staff. No budget for a can of anything, planned giving included.

I knew if I let planned giving slide, it would slide forever. So I built my own version. I made templates I could reuse. I picked logical spots on our content calendar and put planned giving education front and center in our messaging on a set schedule.

One round through that system, and a donor came forward wanting to name the school in her retirement account. Over half a million dollars, from a monthly donor nobody had flagged as a major prospect. (Over several years that gift ended up being transferred to us via an IRA rollover, so the organization got to use it right away!)

That's the whole case for what you're about to read. You don't need the can or a staff attorney. You just need the system.

Somewhere around $84 trillion is set to change hands in America over the next two decades. Roughly $12 trillion of that is expected to come to charities. Economists call it the Great Wealth Transfer. Fundraisers should call it the biggest opportunity of our careers.

And most small nonprofits are about to miss it.

Not because the money isn't there. It's already showing up in the numbers. Bequest giving rose almost 20% in 2025, the largest increase of any source of charitable giving that year, according to the newest Giving USA report. It's the third time in four years bequests have grown 20% or more.

​That's not a fluke. That's the wealth transfer arriving, one will at a time.

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"We're too small for this"

I hear this constantly from small nonprofit leaders, and I understand exactly where it comes from. Planned giving sounds like something for universities with prospect research teams and hospitals with named buildings. It sounds like a program you build once you already have major donors, endowments, and a gift officer whose entire job is legacy giving.

Here's what I want you to sit with instead: planned giving is not about who's wealthy today. It's about who's loyal for decades.

The donor who gives you $25 a year for fifteen years straight, never misses a renewal, opens every email, shows up to your small events? That donor is a better planned giving prospect than someone who wrote you one $10,000 check and disappeared. Planned gifts come from assets, not income. A donor doesn't need deep pockets right now to leave you something significant later. They need a relationship with your mission that's lasted long enough to matter.

That's the one resource small nonprofits actually have in abundance: donors who've stuck around.

The math that makes this worth your time

I know time is the real objection under "we're too small," so let's talk about return.

Research from AskRight puts the average return on bequest fundraising at $56.83 for every dollar spent, the highest of any fundraising activity, well above major gifts or annual giving. And the gifts themselves aren't small. Planned gifts typically run 200 to 300 times larger than a donor's average annual gift.

​Worried this will pull focus from your annual fund? The data says the opposite. Research from Dr. Russell James found that donors who name a charity in their estate plans increase their annual giving by about 77% in the years that follow. Naming your organization in a will doesn't replace the relationship. It deepens it.

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The one week built for exactly this

National Estate Planning Awareness Week happens every October, and it exists for precisely the reason this article exists: to give ordinary people, not just estate attorneys and wealth managers, a nudge to think about what happens to what they've built.

You don't need a full-blown planned giving program or have a planned giving officer with a JD on staff to use this week well. You need five things:

1. A landing page that explains bequests and beneficiary designations in plain language
2. A way for donors to tell you, privately, that they've already included you in their plans or that they are thinking about it
3. Sample bequest language their attorney can drop straight into a will
4. A week of social and email content that keeps the conversation visible
5. A constituency that already trusts you, which, if you're reading this, you likely already have

​That's it. That's the whole on-ramp. You don't need a major gifts officer. You need one focused week, pointed at donors who already love what you do.

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where to start

If you've read this far and you're thinking "I still don't have time to write all of that from scratch," I built something for exactly this moment. The National Estate Planning Awareness Week Bundle gives you all five pieces above, ready to customize: landing page copy, a letter of intent template, sample bequest language, a full week of social and email content mapped out day by day. It's built to go from blank page to ready-to-post in an afternoon, not three weeks.

DOWNLOAD THE BUNDLE NOW

And if even an afternoon feels like too much on top of everything else on your plate right now, I also offer a done-for-you version of the same package. Send me your organization's details, and I'll write the entire campaign for you, customized and ready to post, delivered within two weeks.

I'D LIKE MINE DONE FOR ME

Both are available now, but only through 9/15. After that, I'm heads-down writing the done-for-you packages for the organizations who've already booked, so both go back in the vault until the next opening.

The wealth transfer is happening whether small nonprofits participate or not. The only question is whether the donors who've spent years loving your mission get an easy way to include you in what comes next. This week, you get to make that easy.

​Cheers,

P.S. Want more content on planned giving and sustainable revenue growth? Subscribe to the blog and get new posts delivered straight to your inbox.

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P.P.S. If you're a nonprofit CEO or development lead who's tired of carrying the fundraising weight alone, a free discovery call is for you. Let’s chat.

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If you liked this…

• Leveraging National Estate Planning Awareness Week for Planned Giving Success
• Cut Through the Clutter: Focus on the Two Planned Giving Options That Really Work
• Planned Giving Leads Don’t Generate Themselves – But They Can Be Sparked
• Spring Cleaning for Fundraisers: Organizing Planned Giving Documentation
• Why Nonprofits Can't Afford to Sleep on IRA Rollover Gifts