Tracking Planned Gifts in Humanitru

A planned gift, also called a legacy gift, is a contribution a donor arranges today that is typically realized later, often through a will, trust, or beneficiary designation. Unlike a check you receive this week or a pledge with a firm payment schedule, planned gifts can take years or decades to convert. Depending on the vehicle, a planned gift may remain fully revocable, meaning the donor can change or cancel it at any time, or it may become irrevocable once established, even though the actual payout is still years away.

Bequests are where most planned giving programs start. Notably, by some estimates, an organization first learns about roughly half of all bequests only after the donor has already passed away, when an executor or attorney reaches out. This article's tracking recommendations account for that scenario.

• Charitable Bequest: made through a will, trust, or estate plan.
• Charitable Gift Annuity (CGA): the donor gives a lump sum in exchange for fixed lifetime income; your organization keeps the remainder.
• Charitable Remainder Trust (CRT): a trust pays income for a term of years or a lifetime; your organization receives what remains.
• Life Insurance: your organization is named as a policy beneficiary.
• Retirement Fund (IRA, 401(k), etc.): your organization is named as an account beneficiary.
• Retained Life Estate: the donor deeds real estate now but keeps the right to live there; your organization takes ownership later.
• Non-Probate Transfer (e.g., Transfer-on-Death deed): bypasses probate; behaves like a beneficiary designation.

Humanitru is intentionally flexible in configuration, and there is more than one way to set this up. Two common approaches are described below, and they can also be combined. Talk with your Customer Success Manager about which approach fits your organization's size, staffing, and reporting needs.

This is the fullest approach, best suited to organizations actively cultivating a pipeline of planned giving prospects and wanting a rollup view of where each one stands.

• Pipeline: holds the stages and goals for your planned giving program and gives you a rollup view of progress toward them.
• Opportunity: sits under the Pipeline, one per constituent, tracking a specific ask. This is the record that actually moves through the Pipeline's stages.
• Action: linked to the Opportunity. Meetings, calls, emails, and Donations are all Actions.

Create a dedicated Pipeline (for example, "Planned Giving") with stages that follow a gift's natural progression: Prospect Identified, Cultivating, Ask Made, Intent Recorded (for a bequest, often called a bequest intention: a notice of future intent, not a binding commitment), Expectancy Recorded (an estimated value is established for forecasting), and Realized.

Every Pipeline also includes two built-in stages worth using here. Use Stewardship to track ongoing cultivation and recognition, both while waiting for a gift to convert and for years afterward. Use Declined when a prospect doesn't move forward, or a donor revokes a previously recorded intention, since some vehicles remain revocable until they convert.

For organizations that don't need stage-based cultivation tracking or goal rollups, planned gifts can be tracked more simply: log Actions (meetings, calls, emails, and eventually a Donation) directly on the constituent's record, and tag each one with the same Campaign convention described below to identify the gift vehicle. Use the Status key (also described below) to note where things stand, intention, expectancy, or notification, in place of a Pipeline stage. This approach trades the rollup, goal-tracking view of a Pipeline for a lighter setup, and can work well for smaller planned giving programs or organizations just getting started.

Humanitru doesn't have a built-in "gift vehicle" field, so whichever approach you use, tag the Opportunity, or the Action itself if you're using Actions and Campaigns only, with a Campaign that identifies the vehicle. This lets you report on planned giving activity by vehicle type.

Key Value Pairs are standardized prefixes you type into a Notes field, such as "Gift Vehicle: Charitable Bequest," which lets a plain-text Notes field function like an unlimited set of custom fields once the data is pulled back out. Because a Donation is itself a type of Action, this works the same way on an unverified Donation as on any other Action, whichever configuration you use. Set up an Action Blueprint so gift officers enter these prefixes consistently:

Once a donor shares their intent, record an unverified, future-dated Donation: an Action linked to the Opportunity, or to the constituent's record directly if you're tracking with Actions and Campaigns only. Because it's unverified, none of this counts toward your actual revenue, but it gives you a real amount and date to build forecasting and expectancy reporting from.

Planned gifts vary widely in how confidently you can predict when they'll convert. Gift vehicles fall into two groups:

Use a Date Confidence key (Firm or Estimated) so your reports never treat a rough guess the same as a locked-in date.

Not every bequest starts with a conversation. When an executor or attorney reaches out about a bequest you never knew existed, if you're using Pipelines and Opportunities, create the Opportunity at that point instead of starting from Prospect Identified, and set its stage to Expectancy Recorded if the final amount is still being settled through probate, or Realized if the funds have already been received. If you're tracking with Actions and Campaigns only, simply log the notification as an Action tagged with the relevant Campaign. Either way, leave Ask / Commitment Date as "Not applicable - no prior notice," and use Status: Notification to flag how the gift was discovered.

When your organization actually receives the gift, update the unverified Donation you already created to verified, with the real amount and date. There's no need to create a new record: the Donation you started at intent (or at notification) becomes the realized gift. If you're using Pipelines and Opportunities, update the Opportunity's stage to Realized, or to Stewardship if that's where you track ongoing legacy recognition, and don't remove it from the Pipeline; keeping it in place preserves a full history of how the relationship progressed. If you're tracking with Actions and Campaigns only, update the Status key on the Donation to reflect that the gift has been realized.

Pipelines/Opportunities and Actions/Campaigns are two common configurations, not the only ones. Because Humanitru is built to be configured to fit how your organization works, talk with your Customer Success Manager for guidance and recommendations based on your specific needs.