Why Planned Giving Belongs in Your Fundraising Strategy

If you lead fundraising for a church, a faith-based nonprofit, a religious K12 school or university, the newest Giving USA report contains a message you cannot afford to miss. Total charitable giving in the United States reached $617.20 billion in 2025, up 5.7 percent in current dollars. But the real story for religious organizations is buried in the data on giving by bequest.

Bequests Were the Fastest-Growing Source of Giving in 2025

Of the four sources of charitable giving that Giving USA tracks (individuals, corporations, foundations, and bequests), one stood far above the rest last year. Giving by bequest grew 19.7 percent in current dollars, reaching $62.19 billion. Even after adjusting for inflation, bequest giving grew 16.6 percent. Compare that to individual giving, which grew just 1.4 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, or corporate giving, which was essentially flat at 0.5 percent.

One year does not make a trend, and bequest giving is famously volatile year to year. For example, it declined sharply in 2024 before surging in 2025. But the long-term picture of bequest giving is remarkably steady. Looking at giving in five-year spans across the last four decades (since 1986), bequest giving has never once declined from one five-year period to the next. And in the most recent five-year period, bequests captured 10 percent of all charitable giving, their highest share in forty years.

In other words, roughly one in every ten charitable dollars in America now arrives through someone's estate. The question for your organization is simple: are you positioned to cultivate, solicit, and steward these gifts?

Why This Matters Especially for Religious Organizations

Here is the harder truth in the report. Giving to religion grew 2.4 percent in current dollars in 2025, but adjusted for inflation it actually declined slightly, by 0.2 percent. Religion remains the largest single recipient category at 23 percent of all giving, but that share has been eroding for decades, falling from 55 percent of recipient giving in the late 1980s to 24 percent in the most recent five-year period.

Religious organizations cannot count on annual giving alone to keep pace. The households in your pews and at your school events are aging, and the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history is underway. The people who have loved your ministry for thirty or forty years are making their final stewardship decisions right now, whether you are part of the conversation or not.

There is also a demographic reality worth naming: your most faithful annual givers are often your best planned giving prospects. A church member who has tithed consistently for decades has already told you everything you need to know about their commitment. A bequest is simply the last gift in a lifelong pattern of generosity, and for many families it is the largest gift they will ever make.

Not a Replacement, rather a Multiplier

None of this argues for pulling back on annual stewardship, capital campaigns, or major gifts. Individuals still account for 64 percent of all giving, and when you combine individual giving with bequests, roughly three quarters of American philanthropy flows from personal generosity in life or at death. A healthy fundraising program needs all of it.

But planned giving does something the annual fund cannot. It converts a lifetime of faithfulness into transformational support: endowed scholarships at a religious school, a maintained sanctuary, a permanently funded missions budget. And it costs remarkably little to build. You do not need a planned giving officer or a complicated gift vehicle menu to start. Most bequests are simple: a sentence in a will or a beneficiary designation on a retirement account.

Actionable Next Steps

For a congregation, faith-based nonprofit, or religious school ready to take planned giving seriously, here is where to begin:

1. Say it out loud, regularly. Add one sentence about remembering the organization in your will to your newsletter, giving statements, website, and stewardship materials. The single biggest reason people do not leave a bequest is that no one ever asked.
2. Start with your most loyal givers, not your wealthiest. Pull a list of individuals or households who have given consistently for 10 or more years, at any level. Longevity of giving predicts bequest intent far better than gift size.
3. Create a simple legacy society. Give it a name rooted in your mission or history, invite people to notify you of their intentions, and honor them annually. Recognition builds momentum and surfaces gifts you never knew existed.
4. Equip people with the exact language. Publish sample bequest wording, your legal name, and your EIN on your website. Make it effortless for an attorney or financial advisor to get it right.
5. Promote beneficiary designations. Retirement accounts and life insurance policies can name your organization as a beneficiary with a simple form, no attorney required. For many donors this is the easiest planned gift of all.
6. For schools, connect legacy gifts to endowment. Tuition-dependent religious schools should tie planned giving directly to endowed scholarships and faculty support, the things that secure the mission for the next generation of students.
7. Report on it like it matters. When a bequest arrives, tell the story (with the family's permission) of what that gift made possible. Nothing inspires the next legacy gift like seeing the last one honored well.

The data is clear: bequest giving is growing, it is durable across every economic cycle of the last forty years, and it rewards the organizations that ask. For religious organizations facing flat, if not decreasing, inflation-adjusted giving, planned giving is not a nice-to-have program for someday.

It is one of the most reliable growth strategies available, and the best time to start was a decade ago.

The second-best time is now.

Here's more content to help you lead your organization better: The Donor Who Never Left and More Than a Green Light