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Helping Your Donors During A Life Transition
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             Making a Gift During a Life Transition   

Sometimes potential donors may want to be engaged and donate to your organization when experiencing a life transition.  When there is a major change within a person’s life such as illness, death of a loved one, or even sending their last child off to college, this life changing event may become an impetus to make a planned gift as a means to feel whole again.  They may welcome the opportunity to sit down with a professional gift advisor to plan out the best way in which they can provide financial support.  It is up to you and your gift development team to help people accomplish their charitable goals during moments of life transition.

You can be instrumental in the gift planning process by sharing with the potential donor the joy of making a difference through a planned sustainable gift. Be ready to illustrate for the potential donor how his/her financial support and involvement will be especially impactful. One way to accomplish this is by providing examples of donor impact at various giving levels.  Likewise, be sure to explore different gift options with your potential donor such as your endowment fund, which can be a good choice for those who want to create a memorial.

Provide a general overview of your planned gift options during your first meeting with the prospective donor. He or she should walk away with a firm awareness of the many rewarding opportunities for making a planned gift to your charity.  Right before the conclusion of your meeting, request that the prospective donor fill out a data card that requests information to help you analyze the donor’s charitable interests and giving readiness. Be certain to request and schedule a follow-up personal visit where you can discuss more concretely charitable proposals. Upon returning to your office, combine and analyze information gathered from your conversation with the prospective donor with the data collected from your data card.  If you collected good information during your first discussion, use it to create a proposal that matches the charitable motivations of your prospective donor.  Meet with your donor and his/her advisor and share how your planned gift proposal is a good fit and ask for a gift commitment.

Maximizing Use of Technology in Major Gift Fundraising
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Customize Your CRM To Meet Strategic Fundraising Objectives

The need to develop deeper personal connections with donors and potential donors is vital to any long-term giving strategy.  When people feel strongly connected to an organization, they absorb the organization as part of their personal unit, making it a locus of much of their social activity. In turn, they attend and promote events, recruit friends to volunteer, influence and engage others on social media, and provide increasing levels of financial support. This type of kinship network (cultivated by what we term the “absorption” process) is assisted through the development and use of data management, modeling and analytics.  Many nonprofits have complex social relationships. As such, there is an imperative need for nonprofits to customize their database infrastructure so that it is providing the analytical information needed to more easily comprehend and predict donor behavior. We cannot underscore this enough – to obtain useful analytical donor information, you have to know more about the people who support your nonprofit. This also enables the organization to better segment communications and gift proposals in order to maximize fundraising efficiency and achieve campaign effectiveness. Nonprofits should do more than just have a relationship management system – it is vital to customize the system to meet specific needs.

A big question you need to ask is whether you are getting your money’s worth from your present technology.  An effective CRM allows you to customize data fields, collect and track details with precision, and integrates with other data sources such as social media.  Most importantly, your CRM should make it easy to analyze data in order to visualize the bigger picture with respect to your donor base.  If your CRM has these functionalities, the next question is whether you are maximizing its use effectively.  Are you uncovering the right prospects most promising to your major gift or annual campaign? Are you using your data to discern which solicitation appeals best resonate with any given donor? Are you generating and analyzing reports that help you develop better fundraising strategies?  Again, making certain that you customize your technology infrastructure so that it is saving you time and strengthening your relationships is essential.

Finally, if you purchased a CRM, you also need to invest appropriate time customizing fields that effectively segment constituency. Again, the goal here is to build personal connections. Your data, when customized, will help you quickly provide more personal appreciation and recognition to supportive constituents.  In segmenting data, there is certain demographic data you obviously wish to maintain such as age, gender, income level, level of involvement, and generational designation (i.e. millennial, baby boomer). But, you also want to collect and store data that is customized to your strategic fundraising efforts. For instance, if you desire to build an effective legacy program, two key elements are donor trust and donor perception.  Legacy donors need to trust and have a good perception of your financial stability and stewardship.  Thus, you may find it beneficial to track constituent perceptions over time.  In this example, you may want to particularly track the effect sharing financial reporting communications has on donor perception.  In this case, you may need to integrate your CRM with a dashboard to measure and track this key performance indicator. The last take away is that you need to make sure that your technology is working hard for you, and to make that happen requires customizing your technology to your individualized needs.  For assistance with database customization and donor modeling techniques, contact us at info@scottpractice.com.

Starting a Planned Giving Program? Avoid These Common Mistakes

educational training

1. Poor Donor Cultivation

Planned Giving provides a unique opportunity for the organization to build a foundation of support from donors who share a connection with the organization’s mission. However, leadership must develop a clear strategy concerning how they will build and sustain donor relationships. Planned gifts generally materialize when there are concentrated efforts to cultivate existing and new relationships.

2. Not Investing in Donor Research

In the long run, the dividends an organization receives from its planned giving efforts can make a significant impact. The planned giving program can also be the difference that keeps the doors open when other funding sources fall short. However, planned giving is an investment of time, and donor research is one of the necessary time commitments. The organization must take the time to research and educate a large pool of prospects.

3. Lack of Program Visibility

Everyone in the nonprofit organization must be on board with promoting planned giving opportunities. The nonprofit’s planned giving program should be mentioned to existing and prospective donors at every function, on the organization’s website, in every donor newsletter, and during every donor visit.  If the nonprofit organization does not champion its planned giving program, no one else will.

4. Lack of Technical Knowledge

Planned gifts are generally substantial and formulated through complex estate planning arrangements. It is important that staff members receive proper training and development or hire outside consultants to assist with the technical aspect of the planned giving program.   Planned giving staff members should receive training on estate planning, financial planning and federal income taxation in order to present themselves confidently before prospective donors.

5. Unreasonable Expectations

Planned giving is a means to achieve a better financial future for the organization. Planned giving is about the future, not the present. Leadership must approach planned giving from a different mindset. Leadership must accept the reality of not seeing a payoff from its efforts for a long time, possibly years. However, because of the expected longevity in receiving a planned gift, the organization can set higher acceptance thresholds. For instance, the organization may require a certain dollar minimum or value before it accepts a certain type of gift. The longer the horizon before the charity receives the gift, the higher the minimum donation requirement.

For more information on establishing a planned giving program, contact us at info@scottpractice.com.

The Hallmark of a Great Gift Planner

Gift Planner

A great gift planner will:

  1. Honor Donor Confidences.  Making a gift out of estate assets may touch sensitive concerns regarding personal wealth and family expectations for some donors.  A great gift planner recognizes this and is sensitive to a donor’s concerns.
  2. Provide Information.  The gift planner should be knowledgeable about various gift vehicles and opportunities that best match a donor’s goals and desires.
  3. Meet With Advisors.  Sometimes a gift plan can be confusing and difficult to explain.  A great gift planner is able to discuss the plan in detail with a donor’s advisors so they have a good grasp of what the donor desires.
  4. Coordinate the Gift Plan.  A great gift planner is good at fitting all the puzzle pieces together.  She will help orchestrate the gift process with a checklist of steps and will move the process along so that the donor’s gift giving experience is stress free and enjoyable.
  5. Provide Ongoing Contact.  Once a donor has made a gift, a great gift planner will maintain contact with the donor to ensure that the donor remains connected with the organization throughout the donor’s gift giving cycle.

To request a brochure on our planned giving services call 1-888-206-0066.