Legacy forecasting

A unique forecasting application

Introduction

Calculating an accurate long-term forecast of legacy income is crucial to most charities but incredibly challenging to achieve. This model an interactive tool that enables fundraisers to identify the most effective balance of activities over a 30-year period. So whether you are considering increased investment, anticipating different economic outlooks,or optimising the right communications strategy, we equip you to do it quickly and cost effectively. Our tool is complex but not complicated. It is a practical tool for fundraisers who want an immediate answer to any ‘what if’ question you wish to imagine.

An alternative approach

The common approach to forecasting is to take past activity and then extrapolate that performance based on whether you increase or decrease the expenditure.

We rejected the common approach as it limits your ability to factor in adjustments to your legacy activity, such as adding new channels, introducing Free Wills into your proposition mix or changing stewardship communications.

We wanted a tool for legacy fundraisers that would give both a top line income projection while enabling users to understand the impact if they changed every single element of a legacy marketing plan, as well as factoring in the vital external factors such as shifts in demographic changes and economic conditions.

Key Benefits

  1. Designed for flexible 'what-if' scenario forecasting
  2. Provides a 40 year forecast at a monthly basis
  3. Create and compare multiple scenarios
  4. Separate income lines for legacy supporters, non-legacy supporters and legacies from the general public.
  5. Offers many unique functions designed for the needs of legacy fundraisers
  6. Apply trends and 'what-if' questions easily and see the impact in real-time
  7. Doesn't require actual data to provide the forecasts
  8. Outputs volumes and values for residual and pecuniary legacies
  9. Fully supported

Optimising the present

Optimising the present
  • Should we focus on recruiting legacy prospects from the general public, or through the existing supporter base ?
  • Can I increase investment without diminishing performance effectiveness?
  • What are the long term implications of targeting a younger audience/
  • What is the optimal balance between acquisition reach and better targeting?
  • Where in the programme can I make the biggest gains?
  • Which channels should I invest in?

Anticipating the future

Anticipating the future
  • What if we have another economic shock or recession?
  • How reliant are we upon our supporter base?
  • What's the impact of slowing property inflation?
  • What if pecuniary legacies continue to outgrow residual volumes?
  • What happens if our category becomes less attractive?
  • Does our brand make a difference to legacy income?

Common Questions

Most forecasts extrapolate the future from what’s happened in the past. This is great when the legacy marketing activity and it’s performance remains relative stable – but what if you want to double your expenditure, or target a new audience segment, or you want to anticipate a slow down in house prices.

You can define up to twenty recruitment channels, but they can be as specific as you wish – for instance you could compare digital recruits verses direct mail recruits, while also comparing digital programmatic verses social media verses search. And you don’t need to have used those channels before, the tool allows you to quantify the long term income generated for a new channel based on expected performance.

Not at all. the ‘activity window’ is for ten years, allowing you to enter upto ten years worth of planned activity defining the mix audiences you’re marketing to (general public or supporters), the channel you’re using to reach them and the level of planned expenditure.

Yes – we know how important stewardship is to the success of your legacy programme, so have built the tool to reflect how stewardship builds value. And we take it one step further by enabling you to factor in that becoming a legacy prospect can increase a supporters non-legacy giving behaviour.

Yes, the tool can offer some real advantages when exploring the potential long term value of investing in legacy rather than other forms of giving. Even if you don’t have any past performance results we can apply market averages to start

Not at the moment., although it is something we’re considering adding.

We’ve found there are real benefits to the user when Adroit supporters the creation of multiple scenarios – it typically takes far less time to produce the outputs.

No, we never share the plans of other charities, and you can trust us not to share your data with others either.

Having a blended average allows you to get valuable insights about future legacy income values. The advantage of having values by recruitment source is so it enables you to get a far richer understanding of how best to optimise your recruitment expenditure and balance your media and audience mix in the most advantageous way.

A Five Stage process

1. Audience

Firstly we define how many legacy supporters you all ready, their legacy status and their approximate demographic profile. We then help you define your target audiences (both warm and cold) that will generate new legacy supporters. You can define up to twenty audiences for each scenario.

2. Performance

Step 2 is defining the expected performance of each audience. This includes their initial recruitment performance, how they are expected to react to stewardship journeys and, most importantly, what proportion may leave you a legacy gift when they pass away, the type of legacy gift and the expected value.   

3. Activity

For step 3 we work with you to produce an annual activity expenditure plan for each audience.  The plan is for up to ten years and each year can be entirely different or replicate previous years – it’s as flexible as you need it to be.   

4. What-if’s

By now we will have generated all the information necessary to create a baseline scenario. Step 4 is where we apply ‘what-if’ functions that help generate immediate answers to some of the questions you may have such as – what if residual values increase year on year, what if we improve supporter satisfaction, what if there’s an improvement to life longevity, and many others.

5. Reporting

Reporting delivers both the data files and summary presentation slides that cover key legacy KPI metrics, together with our commentary on the relative performance of the scenarios. In-addition we include a meeting with the analyst and a fundraising strategist which offer the opportunity to discuss the findings in greater depth.