How the Entertainment Community Fund raised $2.5M by providing their community with free wills

The Challenge

The Entertainment Community Fund, which provides critical help to those in the entertainment industry, has a strong development team. However, they faced two challenges with fundraising planned gifts: 1) Only one staff member worked on planned giving, leaving them strapped for time and resources to cultivate, steward, and manage legacy gifts. And 2) While they had a large community of people they’ve served over the years, they had no way to fundraise from them. They reserved direct fundraising asks for donors, and only engaged their clients with helpful resources, such as will-writing workshops.

FreeWill has been a godsend. We’ve been able to offer our community this easy service that's been so important to them, and helped them get their affairs in order in a year where it matters more so than ever.

Jay Haddad

Manager of Individual Giving

The Solution

The Entertainment Community Fund partnered with FreeWill, so that they could tap into their largest community and quickly scale their planned giving program. FreeWill’s Partner Success team acts as an extension of their staff, providing strategy, marketing communications, and tools to help their supporters easily make a gift in their will. And they use their custom FreeWill site to offer clients a valuable, and free, will-making service that aligns with their mission.

In just one year, their team doubled the number of legacy gifts that they usually receive, raised $2.5 million in bequest commitments, and engaged a new pool of potential donors.