Planned Giving Benchmarks: What Good Programs Look Like

Key Takeaways

• Fastest-Growing Revenue: Bequest giving is one of the fastest-growing sources of charitable dollars, driven largely by generational wealth transfer. Bequest giving surged to $62.19 billion in 2025, according to planned giving statistics.
• The Power of Prompting: Prompted, guided donor experiences consistently show higher bequest inclusion rates than passive, unprompted approaches.
• The Identification Gap: The most common gap in planned giving programs is not donor willingness. It's a lack of visibility into who has already included the organization in their estate plans.
• Stewardship Pays Off: Programs that track and steward known legacy donors see meaningfully stronger long-term engagement, including a roughly 75% increase in annual current giving. 

In This Guide

• Why benchmarks matter for planned giving
• Bequest inclusion rate: typical figures
• Average bequest and gift size
• The identification gap most programs face
• What separates growing programs from stalled ones
• Benchmarks by organization size
• How to benchmark your own program
• Frequently asked questions

Why Benchmarks Matter for Planned Giving

Without a reference point, it is hard for a development team to know whether their planned giving program is actually performing well or simply existing. Benchmarks give crucial context. They reveal whether the numbers your organization is seeing are typical, ahead of pace, or a sign that something in the process is creating unnecessary friction for donors.

Tracking these metrics enables organizations to shift from a passive waiting game to proactive legacy fundraising.

Bequest Inclusion Rate: Typical Figures

The bequest inclusion rate (or the share of donors who include a charitable gift in their estate plans) varies significantly based on how donors are prompted.

Unprompted, passive inclusion rates tend to sit in the low single digits. Research shows that less than 6% of the population includes a charitable gift in their will unprompted. Specifically, in digital will creation testing, only 4.9% of users left a gift to charity without a direct prompt to do so.

However, programs that actively and directly prompt donors within a guided estate planning process commonly see notably higher inclusion rates. When users are explicitly asked if they would like to leave money to charity during the will creation workflow, the conversion rate more than doubles to 10.8%.

Furthermore, up to 33% of Americans explicitly state they would consider including a charitable gift if they were simply asked by an organization they support.

Average Bequest and Gift Size

Bequest gifts are frequently larger than a donor's average lifetime annual giving because they draw from the full value of an estate rather than an individual's disposable income at any given time.

The average bequest size through accessible digital estate planning platforms is roughly $48,723. Other industry analyses place the average charitable residual bequest between $47,600 and $78,630. To put this in context, a loyal donor contributing $100 annually would need to maintain that giving level for nearly five centuries to match the value of a single mid-level bequest.

This is part of why planned giving is often described as an outsized opportunity relative to its cost. The investment to prompt and support a bequest is typically far smaller than the eventual value of the gift itself. Legacy giving boasts an incredible return on investment, generating an average return of $56.83 for every dollar invested in fundraising, compared to a mere $8.41 return for regular annual giving. 

The Identification Gap Most Programs Face

This is the benchmark most organizations underestimate. A staggering 64% of legacy pledgers never actively notify the charity that they've been included in their will. This means a massive share of legacy gifts remain entirely unknown to the receiving organization until the gift actually arrives, sometimes decades after the donor's initial decision.

Programs that rely on donors to voluntarily disclose a bequest, with no structured way to capture that information consistently, see lower visibility. Meanwhile, programs built around a guided digital process naturally surface this information. On tech-enabled platforms, 67% of donors opt in to share their contact information and specific gift details with the nonprofit beneficiaries, effectively closing the information gap.   

What Separates Growing Programs from Stalled Ones

Across organizations of different sizes, a consistent pattern shows up. Organizations with growing planned giving programs tend to combine three core elements:

1. Active Prompting (Not waiting for donors to think of it on their own)
2. Low Friction (Providing a simple, free way for donors to act on the intention immediately in just a few minutes)
3. Structured Tracking (Turning a mentioned intention into a documented, stewarded relationship)

Conversely, programs that stall typically lack one or more of these elements. The tracking piece represents the most frequent failure point, quietly limiting everything built on top. But when organizations properly track and steward these donors, the results are immediate: annual giving increases by an average of 75% to 77% after a legacy commitment is formalized.

Benchmarks by Organization Size

How to Benchmark Your Own Planned Giving Program

A useful internal benchmark does not require complex data. Start with three foundational numbers:

• How many donors have started a will or initiated the estate planning process through your organization?
• How many have indicated a bequest intention?
• How many of those are formally tracked and being stewarded?

Comparing these three numbers to each other over time reveals more about where a program is leaking potential than simply comparing your results to external averages alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good bequest inclusion rate to aim for?

This varies by organization and approach, but programs using active, guided prompting typically see notably higher rates than programs relying on donors to think of it unprompted. Prompting can increase the baseline rate from roughly 4.9% to 10.8% or higher.

Why do so many legacy gifts go unknown until they arrive?

Most traditional methods rely on donors to voluntarily disclose a bequest with no structured prompt or place to record it. As a result, the information never reaches the organization until the gift is realized.

Does organization size determine planned giving success?

Not as directly as you might expect. Active prompting and structured tracking matter more than size alone. Smaller organizations with the right approach consistently outperform larger ones without it.

How can a small nonprofit compete with larger organizations on planned giving?

By adopting the same active, guided digital approach that drives results at any scale. The barrier has historically been resourcing rather than donor willingness, and that barrier has lowered significantly with modern tech platforms.

What single metric best predicts a healthy planned giving program?

The share of known bequest intentions that are actively tracked and stewarded. Visibility and ongoing relationships matter far more than raw, untracked gift counts.