Bequest Marketing Campaigns · Lesson 2
Why the Campaign Deserves Investment
This lesson builds the evidence-based case for bequest campaign investment using Australian inheritance data, the intention-action gap and asking evidence — without treating forecasts as income or opportunity as entitlement.
A weak case for bequest marketing sounds like this:
“A huge amount of wealth will transfer between generations, so we should get our share.”
That is not a strategy. It is wishful arithmetic.
The serious case is sharper: charitable gifts in wills are a large, underdeveloped and behaviourally influenced income stream. Donors will not always raise the option themselves. A disciplined campaign can make the option visible, normal and safe to consider among supporters who already have some reason to care.
Use the evidence in that order.
01The opportunity is real⌄
First, the opportunity is real. Research for the JBWere Bequest Report estimates that about $150 billion passes through inheritances in Australia each year, but only about $1.3 billion — roughly 1% — goes to charity. The Productivity Commission estimated that about $3.5 trillion in assets will change hands by 2050, with annual inheritance flows rising from about $120 billion toward $500 billion over the next 25 years.
02Australia has headroom⌄
Second, Australia appears to have headroom. JBWere compares Australia’s roughly 1% inheritance-to-charity share with the United Kingdom at 3.7% and the United States at 4.4%. It also cites Australia at about 6.5% of wills containing a charitable gift, compared with higher will-inclusion rates in comparable markets.
03The gap is behavioural⌄
Third, the gap is not mainly a generosity gap. Include a Charity / FIA research indicates roughly one-third of Australians would consider leaving a gift to charity in their will, while only around 6.5–8% of wills actually contain one. A bequest campaign works inside that gap. Its role is not to persuade every supporter. Its role is to help more of the already-open supporters move from vague goodwill to informed consideration.
04Asking changes behaviour⌄
Fourth, asking changes behaviour. The strongest experimental evidence comes from the UK, not Australia, and must be labelled that way. In the UK Behavioural Insights Team / Remember A Charity / Co-operative Legal Services trial, when solicitors said nothing, about 4.9% of clients left a charitable gift. When solicitors asked every client whether they would like to consider a charitable gift, the rate rose to about 10.8%. Normalising language lifted results further.
05The return is long-term⌄
Fifth, the return can be substantial, but the time horizon is long. Include a Charity and sector sources commonly cite about $28 returned for every $1 invested in gifts-in-wills fundraising over the long term. Treat that as a long-range sector indicator, not a promise. Bequest income is delayed, lumpy and uncertain. It should strengthen organisational resilience, not patch next year’s budget hole.
Those figures do not mean a charity is owed a share. They mean the decision environment is large enough to deserve organised attention.
That does not prove an individual organisation can triple its bequest income by sending a better letter. It does show that low charitable inclusion is not inevitable.
That evidence does not mean fundraisers should copy a solicitor script or pressure donors. It means silence has a measurable cost.
The case for bequest campaign investment is not “the wealth is coming.” It is “the charitable option stays invisible unless we make it normal to consider.”
What a board or executive team needs to hear
A bequest campaign usually competes with work that produces faster numbers: acquisition, appeals, regular giving, events, grants, major donor cultivation. To win support, the case has to be precise about what the campaign can and cannot deliver.
It can deliver reach into a strategically important decision. Many Australians have no valid will, and those who do may never have been asked to consider a charitable gift. A campaign gives connected supporters a legitimate prompt before or during will-making.
It can deliver better bequest literacy in the donor base. Supporters learn the charity’s correct legal name, ABN, DGR status, common gift types and the need to seek qualified legal advice. That reduces confusion and improves the chance that future intentions are documented properly.
It can deliver more visible interest. Information requests, web form completions, event questions, phone responses and private enquiries are meaningful signals. They are not income, but they tell the organisation who may need careful follow-up.
It can deliver organisational discipline. A campaign forces the charity to decide who it will contact, what it will say, what it will not say, how it will respond, what materials it will send, who will hold the relationship, and how results will be reported.
It can deliver long-term resilience. Bequests are often large relative to lifetime gifts because they come from accumulated assets, not disposable income. Dr Russell James’s work notes that estate gifts are frequently 10 times to 100 times a donor’s typical annual gift. That is why modest lifetime donors cannot be ignored in legacy strategy.
What the campaign cannot honestly promise is immediate cash. A supporter may request information this year, update a will five years from now, change it later, or never include the charity. Estate values can shift. Family situations can change. A campaign case that hides that uncertainty will damage trust internally before the donor ever sees a message.
A strong internal case sounds like this:
“We are not proposing this campaign as a short-term income fix. We are proposing it because Australian charitable bequest inclusion remains low despite substantial openness to the idea. Our campaign will normalise the option among connected supporters, provide legally safe information, identify people who want a next step, and build a long-term pipeline we can steward responsibly.”
Turning opportunity data into an entitlement claim.
Large inheritance figures are tempting. They make bequest marketing look like an obvious growth lever, especially when budgets are tight. The team starts with the size of the wealth transfer and then slides into language that sounds as though the charity only needs to claim money already waiting for it.
The weak board-paper version looks like this:
That argument is brittle.
It treats projected inheritance as available charity income. It implies competition for donor estates rather than service to donor intention. It invites impatient reporting because the board has been sold on a return, not a decision pathway. It also risks pushing the fundraising team toward more aggressive campaign language when early results are slow.
Better practice
The better case is disciplined about opportunity, behaviour and uncertainty.
A stronger board-paper paragraph would read:
That version still makes a commercial case. It does not shrink the opportunity. It protects the organisation from promising the wrong result.
What the strategic case must hold
The case for a bequest marketing campaign rests on three facts working together.
- There is a large Australian inheritance flow, and charity currently receives only a small share of it.
- There is a clear intention-action gap: many more Australians would consider a charitable gift in their will than actually include one.
- There is evidence, strongest from UK solicitor trials and applied cautiously in Australia, that asking and normalising the option can change behaviour.
Those facts justify investment. They do not justify pressure, entitlement or short-term income claims. The disciplined case is that bequest marketing earns attention because it makes a hidden, values-based option visible to supporters who may otherwise never consider it.