Bequest Marketing Campaigns · Lesson 3
The Audience Is Not Everyone Over 65
This lesson gives learners a practical audience-selection method for bequest campaigns, replacing blunt age targeting with connection, values fit, will-making relevance and risk judgement.
The easiest bequest audience to build is also one of the weakest: everyone over a certain age.
Age is a clue, not a campaign strategy
Age matters because wills, retirement, assets, health, family responsibilities and estate decisions are not randomly distributed across the supporter base. But age alone does not tell you whether the donor trusts the organisation, sees the cause as part of their life story, wants information, has permission to be contacted, or would experience the campaign as respectful.
A campaign sent to “everyone over 65” often creates three problems.
It wastes attention on people with no meaningful connection to the organisation. It misses younger supporters who have deep loyalty, no children, a tribute connection, a major life transition or a will-making trigger. It also increases risk because the campaign may reach older supporters with a message that feels age-targeted rather than values-led.
Include a Charity’s 2023 analysis of realised bequests from participating Australian charities found that about 61% of bequestors were already known to the charity. That does not mean cold audiences never matter. It means the warm base deserves first discipline.
The same analysis found about 70% of bequests came from people without children, about 64% were left by women and about 81% came from people in urban or semi-urban areas. Those findings should inform strategy, not create crude targeting. A fundraiser should not infer a donor’s family structure, vulnerability or estate plans from demographic data. Use what the donor has voluntarily disclosed and what the relationship actually shows.
The audience question is not “Who is old enough?”
The better question is: “Who has enough connection, relevance and safety for this campaign to be a respectful invitation rather than a strange intrusion?”
01Known relationship⌄
The supporter has an identifiable connection with the organisation before the campaign arrives. This may be giving history, volunteering, event attendance, advocacy, lived experience, a tribute gift, regular communication, a survey response, or a prior enquiry.
02Values and continuity evidence⌄
The supporter has shown that the cause is not only a transaction. They connect it to memory, identity, place, family experience, profession, faith, community or the future.
03Will-making relevance⌄
The supporter may have a practical reason to review or make a will. This can include age, retirement, home ownership, marriage, separation, bereavement, caring responsibilities, a will-writing event, or a donor asking for information about long-term planning.
04Channel permission and data confidence⌄
The organisation has enough permission, data quality and channel history to contact the supporter appropriately.
05Sensitivity and exclusion risk⌄
There is a reason not to send the campaign now, or not to send it in the standard form. This includes recent bereavement, known serious illness, cognitive vulnerability, a complaint about pressure, a family dispute, a request not to discuss bequests, or any note suggesting the donor may experience the campaign as intrusive.
Use five filters before deciding who receives the campaign. A supporter does not need to pass every filter perfectly, but the strongest campaign audiences have evidence in several.
The communications manager wants to mail all of them because “bequests are a numbers game.” The CEO wants the campaign to prioritise major donors because “they have the estates worth asking for.” The bequest officer is uneasy because the list includes donors with recent bereavement notes, inactive supporters who have not heard from the charity in years, and people whose only contact was a raffle ticket purchase.
Karin cuts the first list into four groups.
Group A contains 3,900 supporters with five or more years of giving, clean contact permissions, recent engagement and no sensitivity flags.
Group B contains 1,200 supporters with a strong values signal: tribute donors, volunteers, lived-experience survey respondents, event attendees and people who have used future-focused language in notes or calls.
Group C contains 640 supporters who have shown will-making relevance: estate-planning webinar registrations, downloads of the will information page, or requests for the charity’s legal details.
Group D contains 2,300 supporters who are over 65 but have weak relationship evidence, unclear permissions, recent complaints, bereavement flags, or stale records.
Karin decides that Groups A, B and C will receive the campaign, but not the same version. Group A receives the main postal campaign. Group B receives a version that begins with values and continuity. Group C receives a practical information follow-up with legal details and a solicitor prompt. Group D is held out until data is cleaned or reviewed.
The campaign gets smaller.
It also gets safer and more serious.
The best bequest campaign audience is not the oldest list. It is the warmest safe list with the clearest evidence of connection, relevance and permission.
What this lesson changes
- A bequest campaign should not begin with a blanket age extract.
- Age may help identify people more likely to be near will-making or estate-planning decisions, but it cannot carry the campaign. Relationship, values evidence, will-making relevance, permission quality and sensitivity risk are stronger selectors.
- The warm base matters because realised bequests often come from people already known to the charity. But warm does not mean automatic. Some supporters should receive a tailored version, some should be reviewed manually, and some should be held out.
- The campaign gets stronger when the audience gets more deliberate.