Bequest Administration for NFPs

Donations are the lifeblood of every not-for-profit organization. Many of those donations come in the form of bequests.

At larger NFPs with more than $100 million in annual donations entire departments staffed with trained legal professionals administer those bequests.

But for NFPs with annual donations between $5 million and $100 million, bequest administration can pose enormous logistical challenges and overburden limited staffs. Those challenges have become more acute in the wake of Covid, with many NFPs having transitioned permanently to remote workforces.

EstateWorks' proprietary software can streamline workflow and ease the strain on your NFP’s staff in ways that CRM software and homegrown spreadsheets can’t. Here’s how it works.

Simplicity is Key

Once a phone call or letter arrives announcing a bequest, collecting and processing the gift begins. The software is designed to follow the organization’s protocol and meet its reporting requirements. These are some of the key functions:

      •   The baseline setup of EstateWorks features the fields that need to be tracked, along with reports to monitor things like the number of open cases, how much revenue came in and how much revenue could be expected in the next reporting period.

      •   Individual bequests are tracked using a checklist of standard tasks with deadlines calculated based on triggering events or the completion of other tasks.

      •   Tasks are assigned to specific individuals who receive reminders as deadlines approach.

      •   Workflow can be tracked across gifts to view overdue tasks across the organization.

      •   Standard templates can be created so that documents such as thank-you letters or instructions can be generated consistently and easily, using information from the bequest file.

      •   Donation receipt tracking enables individual payments to be registered against the anticipated total amount, with periodic reporting available to improve cash flow management, accounting and forecasting.

Although designed originally for trust and estate practices within law firms and financial institutions, EstateWorks can be configured and customized very cost-effectively to meet the needs of NFPs looking for a more bespoke way to manage their workflow.

Results Speak for Themselves

The following testimonials are from NFP administrators who have implemented EstateWorks:

	"Workflow actually flows now. I can now delegate many of the tasks to my support staff."
	"The Open Tasks Report automatically flags any missed deadlines — a huge improvement over Excel, which required a line-by-line search of the spreadsheet to check when open tasks were due."
	"When each step in the process is complete, EstateWorks flags the next step. If a step isn’t required for a particular case, the team just marks it ‘not applicable’ and EstateWorks automatically moves on to the next step — without the redundancy and extraneous steps that other software applications require."
	"Streamlined workflow not only relieves the burden on the staff, but it also allows the organization to more quickly realize the benefits of our bequests."
	"EstateWorks has saved me about 20 hours per month, allowing me to focus more energy on continuing our organization’s remarkable growth."

One More Thing

If you would like to explore how EstateWorks could help you take your bequest management process to the next level, please get in touch.

Schedule a Demo

Streamlining NFP Bequest Administration

Simplicity is Key

Results Speak for Themselves

One More Thing

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