If you’re yet to integrate online wills into your wider bequest strategy, what’s holding you back? For some charities and NFPs, the barrier is cost. Or, more accurately, perceived cost.

Many technology advancements are expensive to introduce and time-consuming to truly master, leading organisations to delay uptake until they find the ‘perfect’ time.

But the same simply isn’t true for online wills. Or, more specifically, free online wills.

Building free online wills into a wider bequest strategy doesn’t require a big investment. Technically, it doesn’t demand any financial investment at all.

A basic partnership with Gathered Here is completely free of charge, yet it gives charities and NFPs a custom landing page and online will platform that can be shared with supporters.

Yes, there are paid options which offer more advanced benefits – primarily around in-depth tracking and reporting. But, for those that are concerned about cost, the free option is an important first step in the right direction.

Even more importantly, anyone who uses Gathered Here to write their will can do so for free. They’re encouraged to pledge a gift, but there’s no obligation and the service is free regardless.

So, it’s that simple. A basic, but undeniably effective, online will program can be implemented for free whenever you’re ready.

But, there’s more to the picture.

Integrating online wills can not only be done for free, it can be done with limited labour resources – a rare combination that makes them the perfect budget-friendly fundraising tool.

Setting up the aforementioned landing page and online will platform can be done in a matter of hours, allowing even the most stretched teams to try free online wills for their organisation.

Moving beyond integration

Of course, integration is different to outreach. So, let’s consider the investment required to run an online will campaign.

Gathered Here data shows the most effective digital bequest campaigns are a series of dedicated EDMs, offering a free online will to a broad group of donors and supporters.

The audience could include active donors, regular givers, lapsed donors, event attendees, peer-to-peer donors, volunteers and staff.

Once again, this doesn’t have to cost a cent but the impact on future income can be dramatic.

For example, a small animal sanctuary ran a two-part EDM series last year, asking its supporter base of around 35,000 people if they’d consider pledging a gift in their will via Gathered Here.

The campaign generated over a million dollars in estimated revenue, just from two simple EDMs to their own supporter base.

The same charity included a link to their branded version of the wills platform in each of their monthly e-newsletters. Across three months, they saw five gifts pledged, worth an estimated $60,000.

So, the short answer is: no, it isn’t expensive to integrate online wills and there’s never a better time to do it than now.

If you’d like to learn more about integrating online wills into your bequest program, visit Gathered Here.