5 Ways to Screen Women Donors

There’s been a lot of buzz the last couple of years about women being the new market for planned giving donors—and the research backs that up (see Pentera’s whitepaper on Women in Philanthropy). But how do you know how to identify the best women candidates?

Pentera’s review of the latest research, plus nearly four decades of experience, establishes five key factors that you should use to screen women donors.

Age: Older and wiser
Older women are more likely than younger women to make planned gifts. This is also true of men, but even more so with women. Women tend to wait longer to make charitable gifts partly because of their longevity: They are more likely to spend more on long-term care, and they also are much more likely to live alone in their old age.

Education: Well-schooled
Obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher has always been a predictive factor for planned gifts. What is changing is the onslaught of women scaling the ivy-covered walls of colleges and universities. Your organization’s donor pool of highly educated and financially successful women is likely much larger than it used to be.

Marital status: Widowed or otherwise single
Unmarried females generate about half of all charitable bequests, according to recent research by Texas Tech professor Russell James. A vast number of these unmarried females are widows, who outnumber widowers almost four to one, according to the latest U.S. Census.

Parenthood: Childless
The evidence is overwhelming: Women who do not have children or grandchildren turn to charity with their loving care. James found childlessness to be the top non-financial predictor of a charitable estate gift.

Loyalty: A history with you
Volunteering and regular giving, even in small annual amounts, are signs that those donors are open to planned gifts to your charity. Women more than men rate personal experience with a charity—receiving services from it or volunteering for it—as the top factor in determining which charities to support. So look among your service recipients for potential donors.