Since March, The Stelter Company has been polling nonprofits across the country that have established planned giving programs to learn how the pandemic is affecting their efforts. Last week, we released our Planned Giving Pulse Survey #2, which captures the latest impact on nonprofit marketing programs, job stability and planned giving budgets nationwide. The results are both inspiring and sobering.
First, the inspiration
- We are encouraged to learn that the hesitation around marketing planned gifts appears to be waning with 79% of respondents moving forward with planned giving marketing. This is an increase of 13% from our PG Pulse Survey #1 taken at the end of March.
- Donors’ response to PG marketing has been overwhelmingly positive. Only 1% of those surveyed described the interest or feedback around planned giving during the pandemic as “poor.”
- Most of the nonprofits we surveyed (83%) have not experienced furloughs or layoffs. Yet. We plan to keep tabs on this trend.
Some sobering news
- The number of nonprofits whose budgets are unaffected by the pandemic dropped another 10% in the last 30 days to 60% overall. Higher education nonprofits were significantly more likely than other types of nonprofits to suffer cuts.
- Among nonprofits who have tapped the brakes on their PG programs (17%), the impulse to delay has only intensified. The percentage of that group who are uncertain when they will resume their marketing efforts has grown from 21% to 35%.
And just plain, awww
Dozens of nonprofits shared their most successful techniques for engaging with donors in recent weeks. Download the report for details. Reading through the responses truly warmed our hearts. Success is possible! I’ll be sharing one of these success stories in an upcoming blog. Stay tuned!