Welcome to our quarterly Product Pulse!

Welcome to the quarterly Product Pulse!

With so many product updates, new features, and value delivered to you and your supporters last year, we’re using this quarter’s Product Pulse to highlight the best of 2024 — and show what you can expect in 2025!

The Best of 2024

For Your Fundraising Team

Nonprofits met William (and can now generate personalized thank you notes in just a click)

We heard incredible feedback about William, your trusted AI companion in content creation. William helps you quickly craft personalized email appeals, social media posts, and so much more. Additionally, our legacy thank you note feature combines William’s AI capabilities with your donor data, allowing you to craft personalized follow-up emails in just a click. Watch a brief video here, or click “Generate Thank You Note” on a contact record on your Legacy Gifts Details page.

Our Learning Hub and Marketing Library were revamped

Our Learning Hub and Marketing Library, both available directly in Portal, were expanded to support your team with a wealth of exclusive trainings, certification courses, and customizable templates for print and digital outreach.

Portal improvements galore

Your Partner Portal is your go-to hub of donor data and actionable insights to drive your stewardship strategy forward, and we made improvements throughout 2024 to make it as streamlined and intuitive as possible:

Update and track projected and received values for legacy gifts directly in Portal! Centralize your data and ensure your team has the most up-to-date information when you update the values on a regular cadence.
The Customizations page allows you to personalize the images and text on your FreeWill products to best match your organization. You can also use the Global Settings feature to update all of your pages and images to the default setting of your choice.
Need to add a new user at your organization to Portal? No problem! Access the Manage Users page to update permissions. Here’s a helpful how-to guide.
We expanded DonorSearch, a wealth screening integration, to all Planned Giving Suite partners.
Want to keep your Portal skills sharp and leverage its many new features? Attend our upcoming Be a Portal Power User training on Thursday, April 17th at 1pm ET.

Grant Assistant joined the FreeWill family

Grant Assistant is an AI-powered platform that helps nonprofits of all sizes write winning grants in a third of the time. From family foundations to corporations to government grants and contracts, Grant Assistant helps organizations apply to more grants and win more funding without hiring additional staff. Not a Grant Assistant partner and want to learn more? Attend our Grant Assistant Showcase tomorrow, March 13th at 12:00 PM ET to see it in action.

For Your Supporters

Improvements to the Smart Giving Suite user experience

Over the past few months, we’ve enhanced the donor experience across our Smart Giving Suite to build donor trust and provide clear next steps—all with a sleek new design. Highlights include:

🎨 A consistent look and feel across all tools, matching your Smart Giving Landing page for a seamless donor experience.
🔑 No more FreeWill logins! Donors can start a gift without account friction.
💰 Financial Advisors can now give on behalf of clients for all gift types.

Want to learn how ongoing improvements to the Smart Giving Suite impacted our 2024 smart giving outreach campaigns? Attend this retrospective on March 27th at 1 PM ET.

Trusts for younger beneficiaries are now live

Our Revocable Living Trust tool supports Children's Trusts, making it easier for high-net-worth donors who want asset management and creditor protection for bequests.

Gift Intent Forms got a user experience upgrade

Our revamped Gift Intent Forms make it easy for donors who didn't create their will on FreeWill to let you know about a bequest commitment and you can also use this form as a way of asking your FreeWill donors to confirm their gift intent with you.

We achieved SOC2 compliance

FreeWill achieved SOC2 Type 2 compliance, which certifies our commitment to upholding the highest standards of cloud security in safeguarding customer data. To learn more, check out this blog post.

What’s in store for 2025

Continue to provide a world-class consumer experience for will-writers and repeat users by simplifying account creation, the will finalization process, and the process of updating an estate plan. FreeWill continues to monitor state law changes to ensure the language in our documents reflects the most current legal developments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Maximize donor lifetime value to make it easier to steward donors and to better predict long-term revenue from FreeWill.
Level up smart giving with embeddable widgets and accessibility improvements to help donors give non-cash gifts quickly and easily.
Optimize the experience and organizational architecture for large federated organizations with continued Portal improvements.
Make the grant application process faster and easier from start to finish with Grant Assistant. Expect to see improvements to the proposal set-up process and template builder, as well as exciting developments in grant discovery and management functionality.

Partner Tested. Donor Approved!

How the team at Jax State leverage the Planned Giving Suite & Microsite in tandem

By pairing their Planned Giving Suite with a dedicated and user-friendly Microsite Jax State has secured over $8.2M in total new legacy commitments, effectively communicated its message to alumni, and ultimately secured a stronger foundation for future legacy support. “Some planned giving website vendors are so complicated…But the FreeWill Microsite is written in a way that is so easy to read and understand,” said Kim Dalesandro, their Planned Giving Officer.
→ Read the full story here.

The Cancer Research Institute achieves breakthroughs with the National Featureship

A FreeWill Featureship displayed CRI’s cause to will-makers creating their estate plans on the FreeWill site—and nearly doubled their planned giving goals to $5M per year. A Featureship unlocked larger reach in an era of digital marketing, and with access to insights on their growing list of new donors in their Partner Portal, CRI’s team was able to leverage FreeWill data to further engage with legacy donors.
→ Read the full story here.

We want your feedback!

Keep an eye out for our 2-minute survey in your inbox (subject line: "Your FreeWill Experience"). We build our products with you and your supporters at the center, and your feedback shapes innovations like recent donor experience upgrades to all our Smart Giving Suite tools, as well as enhancements to Gift Details navigation in Partner Portal.

Thanks for staying on the product pulse!

Sasha, Samia, Michael & Liebs
Product Marketing @ FreeWill

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