Marketing bequest club membership: An exploratory study of legacy pledgers

Sargeant, Adrian; Wymer, Walter; Hilton, Toni

Abstract

Although bequest income accounts for 9% of overall giving in the United States many nonprofits continue to focus their solicitation efforts on the very wealthy, ignoring the bulk of the fund-raising database. In this study the authors work with three large nonprofits operating bequest societies and using direct marketing to solicit gifts from across their fund-raising database. They compare the profiles of their bequest pledgers with nonpledgers to determine whether individuals willing to offer a bequest may be demographically or attitudinally distinct. Developing a discriminant function they correctly classify 77.1% of 624 respondents to a postal survey of 3,000 donors and/or pledgers. Legacy pledgers appear significantly more likely to be seeking a means of reciprocation, are more concerned that the organization be performing well, and are more concerned with the quality of communications they receive. The fund-raising implications of their analysis are explored. © 2006 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2006
• Journal: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 0899-7640
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 384-404
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764006290788
• Keywords: fund-raising, legacy, bequest, donor relationships
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1045312
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0899764006290788