In 2025, we continued expanding the Smart Giving Suite by helping more partners integrate a Smart Giving Widget directly onto their websites. Widgets made it easier than ever for donors to give non-cash gifts without leaving your site, creating a seamless experience that kept them fully engaged with your brand. Do you have the Smart Giving Widget integrated?

View our step-by-step help doc or watch our explainer video for a quick walkthrough.

After you install the widget, don't forget to check out the Smart Giving Certificate to help you feel more confident working with donors!

In 2025, we launched Automated Anonymous Donor Stewardship to solve a long-standing challenge partners faced in thanking anonymous legacy donors while protecting their privacy. Donors who choose anonymity do so intentionally, and safeguarding that trust remains essential. This feature allowed partners to submit a brief, thoughtful thank-you message that FreeWill delivered directly on their behalf. As a result, organizations could acknowledge generosity, deepen relationships, and steward these meaningful commitments with confidence. If you have not already, join the nearly 900 partners who have enabled this feature by sending your custom blurb to partnersupport@freewill.com. See sample messages and guidance here.

At the end of 2025, we refreshed the branding of our free, online estate planning tool to improve readability, build trust, boost conversions, and improve accessibility. The result: a smoother, more intuitive experience for new users and increased completion rates throughout the will flow.

We released significant enhancements to the FreeWill Account Page to create a clearer, more supportive experience for returning donors. The updated page now provides personalized next steps based on where donors left off, guiding them to update, finalize, or start a new document with ease. We also introduced a My Nonprofits section that highlights and celebrates the organizations donors chose to support.

In 2025, we launched Recurring DAF Grants to make sustained giving easier than ever. Donors can now set up monthly recurring DAF grants by selecting a simple option during the gift flow. These gifts appear clearly tagged as recurring grants in the partner portal, making ongoing stewardship more intentional and strategic.

2025 was a big year for Grant Assistant. We introduced new improvements to Respond, making it faster and easier to draft proposals and repurpose your best content, while continuing to expand Discover with a smarter matching algorithm and deeper insights into funders and opportunities. Together, these updates give you a more streamlined, intuitive experience from finding the right grant to submitting a strong proposal.

Expanding upon our Anonymous Donor Stewardship features to bring similar automated touchpoints for donors who have shared their information, without adding extra work to your teams.

Bringing additional data and AI-driven guidance directly into your workflow to create a deeper understanding of program performance and inform decision-making and strategy.

Giving you increased flexibility to create branded and mission-aligned digital experiences for your supporters.

You’ll now begin seeing a direct link to your content folder right on your Portal homepage, making it even easier to access your materials in one place. There’s no change to content notifications. You’ll continue to receive them via email, and they’ll still include a link to your content folder. As a reminder, you can download your content to make edits directly, or request edits from your strategist.

We want to hear from you. FreeWill’s 2026 Donor Stewardship Survey is now open, and we’re inviting nonprofit professionals to share how they engage, thank, and retain their donors. Your feedback will help uncover trends, challenges, and best practices that can benefit the entire nonprofit community. It will also inform a learning session at our upcoming Summit (see below).

→ Take the survey here

It only takes a few minutes, and your responses are completely anonymous. Share your perspective and help guide the next wave of tools and resources for donor stewardship!

Real data. Innovative strategies. Stronger relationships.

Wed/Thu April 8-9, 2026 from 12-5:00pm ET

Get ready for inspiration, insights, and innovation in FreeWill’s first-ever Donor Stewardship Summit! This immersive virtual event is FREE and open to FreeWill partners only. Featuring notable FreeWill speakers, esteemed industry experts, and select FreeWill partners, the summit will cover a wide range of stewardship-related topics, from the latest data & trends, to new automations and tools, to turning your donor relations into a growth engine. Join us to explore what's possible when technology, insight, and human connection work together. Register now!

→ Register now!

Thu, March 26 at 1:00pm ET

Many of FreeWill's data-driven best practices are based on our ongoing analysis of product and outreach campaign performance. We're diving into the data from your 2025 smart giving tools now and look forward to sharing key learnings from that analysis with you, including how those findings informed our 2026 strategies.

→ Save your spot.

Access the recording here. In this live session, we shared why tax season 2026 is a key moment for smart giving, outreach strategies, messaging tips, and how to leverage the Smart Giving Suite widgets before the April 3rd campaign deadline.

Access the recording here. Spring 2026 is a powerful moment to connect your org's essential everyday work with the importance of planning ahead. Your donors and volunteers can be the perfect audiences for this timely message. FreeWill encourages all Planned Giving Suite partners to connect with supporters this spring, or during Volunteer Appreciation Month in April, to share how planned gifts ensure sustainability well into the future.

By introducing the Automated Anonymous Donor Stewardship feature in the Planned Giving Suite, nonprofits can now express gratitude to legacy donors who wish to remain anonymous. Partners like North Shore Animal League America (NSALA) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) are already seeing the impact by building trust, strengthening connections, and even encouraging some donors to self-identify.

“Since they are not anonymous to FreeWill, it’s terrific to have the ability to reach them… It gives me peace of mind that I can share my contact information in case they want to reach out directly,” said Amy, Director of Gift Planning at NSALA.

→ Read the full story here.

With limited staff capacity, the Foundation for City College of New York turned to Grant Assistant to streamline proposal drafting and strengthen their storytelling. In their first year, the team reduced writing time by 40% and secured more than $500,000 in grant funding, including a $300,000 grant to help students facing urgent needs. Annika Lüdke, Director of Corporate Relations and Foundation Grants, noted, "Grant Assistant is a great asset for every institution that would like to stay up-to-date, be time efficient, be creative, and look for new ways to tell their story."

→ Watch the video here.

→ Read the full story here.

Want to spotlight your mission and expand awareness of your organization's impact? Get featured in a FreeWill case study and inspire others while reaching new potential supporters. Reach out to productmarketing@freewill.com for more information.

All partners received an email on March 9 with the subject line “Your FreeWill Experience”. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please take a moment to complete the survey, it takes less than two minutes. Your feedback directly informs our product roadmap and helps us prioritize the improvements that matter most to you. New features like the Smart Gifts dashboard were developed in response to partner input.

Thank you for your ongoing partnership and for helping us build tools that best support your mission.

Thanks for staying on the Product Pulse!

Samia, Sasha & Liebs
Product Marketing @ FreeWill