Donor economics
Legacy Gift Economics: The Largest Gift Most Donors Ever Make
The donors most likely to leave one are already on your file, and they are not the wealthiest names.
By Donor Insights · Published September 23, 2026 · Updated September 7, 2026 · 8 min read
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Key takeaways
- Bequests reached $62.19 billion in 2025, up 19.7% year over year, the largest increase of any of the four sources of American giving (Giving USA 2026).
- The best legacy prospects are loyal, long-tenured donors, not the wealthiest names on the file. Russell James's research ties bequest decisions to a donor's life story with the organization, not to net worth.
- A legacy gift is usually the largest gift a donor ever makes, often several times their lifetime giving.
- Wording matters: donors respond to a plain phrase like a gift in your will, while formal terms like bequest read as something only wealthy people do.
- A small organization can start with one sentence in its receipts and newsletter, a loyalty-sorted prospect list, and one person ready to take the call.
A legacy gift is usually the largest gift a donor ever makes, and the sector's newest numbers say it is the fastest-growing kind of giving in America. Charitable bequests reached $62.19 billion in 2025, up 19.7% over the prior year, the largest increase of any of the four sources of giving, according to Giving USA 2026. The economics are unusual: the donors most likely to leave one are already on your file, they are rarely the wealthiest names, and the program that reaches them costs sentences, not staff.
How big is legacy giving?
Large, and growing faster than everything else. Of the $617.20 billion Americans gave in 2025, bequests supplied $62.19 billion, about a tenth of the total. Bequest giving rose 19.7% in current dollars and 16.6% after inflation, while total giving rose 5.7%. Counted together, living individuals and estates supplied 74% of all giving, a reminder that the sector runs on people rather than institutions.
| Measure | 2025 amount | Change, current dollars |
|---|---|---|
| Charitable bequests | $62.19 billion | Up 19.7% |
| Total giving, all sources | $617.20 billion | Up 5.7% |
For an individual organization the numbers are lumpy. Bequests arrive irregularly, they are large when they arrive, and the decision that produced them was made years earlier, quietly, by a donor the organization may never have identified as a prospect. That is what makes legacy giving an economics question rather than a campaign question: the work is identifying and stewarding the right donors long before any money moves.
Who actually leaves a legacy gift?
Loyal donors, not rich ones. Russell James, the researcher who has studied charitable estate decisions most closely, ties the bequest decision to a donor's visualized life story: people put organizations in their wills when the cause is woven into how they remember their own life, which is a function of years of connection rather than of net worth. His open-access research on bequest decision-making is collected at EncourageGenerosity.com. Adrian Sargeant's retention economics point the same direction: his 2001 lifetime-value research names bequests as one of the ways a retained donor's value compounds, alongside upgrades and referrals.
That means the legacy prospect list is a loyalty list. The donors most likely to include an organization in their will look like the top of the retention curve: monthly givers, and donors with ten or fifteen years of unbroken small gifts. The sector data shows how distinct that group is. Donors who gave seven or more times in a year were retained at 87.4% in 2025, against 18.9% for first-time donors, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. The band of donors who almost never leave is the band that leaves legacies.
What is a legacy pledge worth while the donor is living?
More than the eventual check. James's longitudinal work found that donors who added a charity to their estate plans tended to increase their annual giving afterward rather than reduce it, which fits the identity logic: writing an organization into a will deepens the donor's sense that this cause is part of who they are. A legacy pledge is not future money at the expense of present money. It is a marker of the strongest commitment on the file, and the pledger deserves the warmest stewardship the organization can offer.
The scale of the eventual gift needs no exaggeration. Picture a fictional organization, Harbor Light Shelter, and a donor named Ruth who has given $25 a month for eighteen years. The numbers below are illustrative, chosen to show the pattern rather than to stand as a benchmark.
| Gift | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lifetime of monthly gifts ($25 x 12 x 18 years) | $5,400 |
| 5% of a $350,000 estate, left in her will | $17,500 |
Ruth's legacy gift is more than three times everything she gave while living, and it required no wealth, only a will and a sentence in it. Multiply that pattern across the loyalty band of a file and the arithmetic explains why bequests are a tenth of American giving despite coming from ordinary households. It also explains why donor lifetime value calculations that ignore legacy potential undervalue the longest-tenured donors most.
How do you open the conversation?
With plain words and no pressure. James's research on wording found that donors respond to everyday phrases like a gift in your will, while formal terms like bequest or estate gift read as instruments for the wealthy and push ordinary donors to count themselves out. The conversation is stewardship, not solicitation, and the openers that work sound like it:
- One standing sentence in receipts and the newsletter: many of our longest-standing supporters choose to include a gift in their will. No form, no urgency, present every month.
- A gratitude visit or call with a listening question, not an ask: what has kept you giving all these years?
- A simple response path: one named person who takes the call when a donor raises it, and a one-page sheet with the organization's legal name and details a lawyer needs.
- Immediate, warm recognition when someone tells you they have made the pledge, and stewardship from that day on. The pledge is revocable, and the relationship is what keeps it.
Where should a small organization start?
No planned-giving department is required. The starting program is five moves:
- 1.Pull the loyalty list: monthly donors, and donors with ten or more years of giving, regardless of gift size.
- 2.Add the one standing sentence about gifts in wills to receipts, the newsletter, and the website.
- 3.Name one person to take the conversation, and prepare the one-page details sheet.
- 4.Record every known pledge in the donor file, and steward pledgers as the most committed donors you have.
- 5.Review the loyalty list and known pledges once a year, the same way you review the major gift pipeline.
The raw material for all of this is tenure, and tenure lives in the gift file. Donor Insights reads your giving records and surfaces the loyalty band directly: who has given longest, who gives monthly, whose giving has never broken. The methodology starts from your own gifts and contacts, so the legacy prospect list is a query of your history rather than a guess about wealth.
Frequently asked questions
- How much of American giving comes from bequests?
- About a tenth. Bequests supplied $62.19 billion of the $617.20 billion Americans gave in 2025, and grew 19.7% year over year, the largest increase of any giving source (Giving USA 2026).
- Who is the best legacy gift prospect?
- Your most loyal donors, regardless of gift size: monthly givers and donors with ten or more years of unbroken giving. Research by Russell James ties the will decision to the length and depth of the relationship, not to wealth.
- Does a legacy pledge reduce a donor's annual giving?
- The research points the other way. Russell James's longitudinal work found donors who added a charity to their estate plans tended to increase their annual giving afterward, consistent with the pledge deepening the donor's identification with the cause.
- Do we need a planned-giving officer or lawyer to start?
- No. A starting program is one standing sentence in receipts and newsletters, a loyalty-sorted prospect list, one named person to take the conversation, and a one-page sheet with the organization's legal details. The donor's own lawyer handles the will.
- What words should we use when raising legacy giving?
- Plain ones. Donors respond to a gift in your will, while formal terms like bequest or estate gift read as something only wealthy people do and push ordinary donors to count themselves out.
Sources
- Giving USA 2026 press release: charitable giving rose to $617.20 billion in 2025
- IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Giving USA 2026 announcement
- Russell James, EncourageGenerosity (open-access bequest decision research)
- Bloomerang, Donor Retention Math Made Simple (Adrian Sargeant, 2001)
- Fundraising Effectiveness Project, Q4 2025 report (AFP)
Related articles
How to Calculate Donor Lifetime Value (and Why the Simple Formula Lies)
The three-number formula is easy. It also overstates what a donor is worth, because it assumes retention never changes.
The Major-Gift Pipeline: Moves Management, Start to Finish
Major gifts do not close by luck. They move through stages, one relationship at a time.
How to Calculate Donor Retention Rate (Formula, Example, Benchmarks)
The formula takes two minutes. Reading it well is where the money is.
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