The action of creating or updating a Will can often span over years at a time. While a large percentage of individuals and couples intend on having an up-to-date Will, only 56% of Canadians have a Will according to research conducted by the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP).
While hiring a lawyer has traditionally been the most popular way of creating a Will, online solutions have recently been able to serve a large portion of the population with simple Wills while offering large cost savings. With the recent pandemic, online options have become a go-to option for a quick, secure and socially distanced way to create or update a Will.
As a free alternative to hiring a lawyer or using a paid online Will provider, Willfora’s free service was created in an effort to prompt Canadians to consider leaving a charitable gift to a cause that’s important to them. Willfora also offers free and unlimited updates, and easy instructions on how to sign off and store an up-to-date Will.
Our message to Will-creators is that it’s your Will, but it’s also your legacy that matters to future generations to come. In 2021, we hope to achieve a run rate of facilitating $100M in donations to charities from Canadians creating Wills on Willfora.com.
Every Canadian charity is listed in our database.
Charities can benefit from Willfora.com in a few different ways. All charities registered in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will be listed and searchable to anyone creating a Will using the service. Since the service is completely free, we recommend that charities consider including Willfora.com alongside other planned giving resources, such as sample bequest language, to potentially save donors thousands of dollars in their journey of creating a Will.
Tools to digitize your planned giving
Willfora is on a mission to help charities modernize planned giving for a digital world. For legacy giving leaders who are prioritizing digital, Willfora has two optional services that help you increase real gifts in Wills and visibility to legators and expectancies.
The first allows charities to have a landing page for their charity at Willfora.com. Campaign Landing Pages are for charities that have identified a group of their donors who would likely be interested in leaving a legacy gift to the organization, and can be used to share more information with supporters about the free Willfora service. Any visitors that originate from a charity’s landing page will see a personalized Will creation experience with a unique prompt in the charitable giving section of their Will.
Charities are also able to integrate landing pages into their digital marketing activities to tag loyal donors as they go through the experience of creating their Will. Now charities can finally link their marketing activities to actual gifts in Wills.
The second solution allows charities to be featured as Sponsored Listings to anyone coming to Willfora.com by way of our own marketing activities. Sponsored Listings are best suited for organizations who have strong brand awareness or want to gain higher brand recognition in a crowded cause category.
A Sponsored Listing allows charities to position themselves front-and-centre to Will-creators in a carousel of charities that appear above the charity search box. Over the course of two month-long pilots, the Sponsored Listing carousel raised over $18M for charities, with multiple six-figure gifts included.
Real-Time Insights
Charities can also gain access to valuable data and unparalleled insights into future income. Our Insights Dashboard allows charities to see in real-time when a gift has been left to their organization, and to inform their stewardship strategies after gifts have been left. Aggregate reports on giving trends and gift data will also be available on a quarterly basis.
If you are a charity that wants to superpower your legacy giving program through a Charity Page or Sponsored Charity listing, please get in touch to book a demo with us.