The desperate, determined search for legacy
File under: Age matters
The search for legacy
Make your charity a means to something special
Why is knowing the average age of your donors keenly important?
Because 75-year-olds don’t jump online for the latest Teen Vogue.
We change throughout our lives. Our interests change. Age definitely matters. Your fiercely-held identity as a 20-something is different from you as a 40-something ... is different from you as a 60-something ... is different from you as an 80-something.
And not just different physically, but different emotionally.
Geriatric specialist, David Solie, author of How to Say It to Seniors, points out that as people age into their 70s, two issues become paramount: (1) the fight for control and (2) the search for legacy.
“To maintain control is a primary driver for the elderly,” he writes, “because each day, they feel losses — of strength, health, peers, and authority — that are staggering.”
But there’s something “equally compelling ... on the old-age agenda — the search for a legacy.”
Be aware: “Every day, every hour, whether they mention it or not, the seventy-plus age group is reviewing their lives.”
This intense internal life review has important implications for fundraising. Ultimately, seniors who successfully complete their life review will want, says Solie, “to be remembered for the things [they] valued most.”
Your charity can help with that existential quest.
Above: an ad from a small-town library's donor newsletter
Re: permanently endowed funds
A permanently endowed fund at your local community foundation is as close as most of us can come to immortality.
Endowed funds just purr on and on ... forever.
The oldest endowed fund I know personally is parked at Oxford University. A gift in William of Durham’s will, combined with instructions on how it was to be handled, established the endowment in 1249.
Today, William’s fund (he was a childless priest) still makes scholarships possible for bright minds from poor families ... more than 770 years later.
Sure, technically, that stretch of time isn’t “forever.” For most of us, it’s close enough.
Below: The Hampton Roads Community Foundation ran this ad in its print newsletter, early in a promotional campaign. Within a decade, $78 million in bequests were banked.
A will can do more than provide a set of instructions for distributing a person’s postmortem assets. As this ad in the donor newsletter reminds the “legacy-oriented,” a will can say a lot about one’s identity and life-long values.
[Today's article was adapted from the 3rd edition of Tom Ahern's Making More Money with Donor Newsletters, due for release early in 2025 from Hilborn. Also upcoming, on March 27: the updated 2025 edition of Tom Ahern's acclaimed mega-webinar, Retention's Best Friend: donor newsletters and other irresistible thank-yous.]
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