The National Committee on Planned Giving did it when it changed its name earlier this year to the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning.

Now it may be time for charities to follow suit.

“It’s time to get away from the planned-giving phrase because apparently it is not resonating with people,” Larry Stelter, a marketing consultant in Des Moines, Iowa, told a group of, well, planned-giving officers at the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s annual meeting today.

More than six out of 10 Americans in a new study said they were not familiar with the term planned giving, explained pollster J. Ann Selzer, who surveyed 800 people 30 years or older. At the same time, she said, many more people were familiar with specific ways to make planned gifts, such as by leaving money to a charity in a will.

“The jargon of planned giving may in fact be an obstacle rather than an open door,” Ms...

Robert F. Sharpe, a Memphis fund-raising consultant, came to the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s annual meeting Friday to assure planned-giving officers frustrated by the economy that history does, in fact, repeat itself.

Armed with financial and tax data going back more than 100 years, and old newspaper accounts of donations, Mr. Sharpe demonstrated the ups and down — and ups — of philanthropy over time. Perhaps most heartening: His research shows that by 1937, charitable giving had returned to pre-Depression levels, and had continued to grow from there.

“What I was trying to do is give people confidence that we’ve been through it before and will get through it again,” Mr. Sharpe said in an interview.

He told his audience that during the Depression, like now, outright major gifts had dropped at many organizations, but that bequests and other estate gifts had continued. ...

More charities are actively promoting bequests and other planned gifts now than 10 years ago and they are making their pitch to even younger donors, according to research presented today at the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s annual meeting.

In 1999, Michael Kateman, executive director of development at Columbia College, in Columbia, Mo., asked the country’s top 40 fund-raising organizations, based on The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400, about how they encourage people to make planned gifts. This year, Mr. Kateman’s colleague at the college, Brendon Steenbergen, did the same thing.

Comparing the groups, the researchers found that 91 percent were actively promoting planned gifts, up from 82 percent 10 years ago. And while organizations in both years said the bulk of their marketing efforts were designed to reach potential donors age 55 and older, 19 percent this year, compared ...

By 2020, America will have far more millionaires than today and they will be motivated by even greater tax incentives to give to charity, a leading expert on planned giving told an audience of fund raisers at the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s national conference today.

Charles Schultz, chief executive of Crescendo Interactive, a planned-giving software and consulting company, in Camarillo, Calif., said every charity today has at least 700 potential supporters with estates worth at least $1-million. By 2020, he said, that number will rise to 1,000.

And, he said, at the same time wealth will have grown, taxes will have gone up, too –with rates up to 50 percent, he predicted, plus additional taxes to pay for Social Security and Medicare . As a result, many donors may want to give to charity as a way to save money on their taxes.

Charities are likely to benefit, too, he...

For many of the planned-giving officials in the audience at the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning’s national conference, in Washington, Dan Pallotta’s message may have seemed personal.

Mr. Pallotta, a former fund raiser and author of Uncharitable, said that donors unfairly judge charities by the share of money they spend on programs versus administration and fund raising.

“There’s a notion that overhead somehow steals from the cause,” Mr. Pallotta said.

After the presentation, Brian Overcast, a planned-giving officer at the University of Tampa, let out a deep sigh.

“We are that overhead he is talking about,” Mr. Overcast said. “This was a reminder that too many people think that we are the ones ‘eating up’ the resources instead of the ones asking for, generating, the resources.”

Tanya Howe Johnson, chief executive of the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning (formerly...

While philanthropy is a difficult endeavor to speak broadly about, there are several ways that donors can be highly effective in their giving, Thomas J. Tierney, a nonprofit consultant, told members of the Philanthropy Roundtable during its annual meeting last week.

Mr. Tierney, who is chairman of the Bridgespan Group, in Boston, said his organization is working on an article about the common traits of successful foundations that will likely be published in the November issue of The Harvard Business Review.

The shared qualities include:

Be clear about the mission.

Mr. Tierney suggested that donors state in simple terms what their goals are and how they will measure them. He encouraged foundations to require grant recipients do the same, helping charities define their geographic focus, the population they want to assist, a time line for their efforts, and clear set of goals to...

At last week’s Philanthropy Roundtable conference, two speakers squared off on the issue of how much the nonprofit world can mirror big business.

Dan Pallotta, a former fund raiser and author of Uncharitable, argued that charity leaders are unfairly held to a different standard than corporate ones. For example, they are vilified if they receive good salaries, spend a lot of money on marketing, or take experimental approaches that may produce big dividends.

“You put the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage to the for-profit sector,” he said.

He said the heart of the problem comes from the Puritans who helped found America. They fostered a culture that requires “self-deprivation” to help the less-fortunate, which leads to the expectation that charities, especially social services, should pay modest salaries and have little overhead costs.

Breaking such cultural barriers...

President Obama has established policies that limit free enterprise and is starting to do the same with philanthropy, a panel said at the Philanthropy Roundtable conference.

Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, said Mr. Obama has increased government control of business with his bailout of General Motors and other decisions.

The White House proposal to limit the charitable deduction for wealthy Americans, Mr. Brooks said, is a sign that the president would like to see greater regulation of philanthropy as well.

(The president suggested limiting itemized deductions, including charitable donations, to pay for a health-care overhaul and predicted it would not have a significant effect on giving.)

The nonprofit world should expect “probes into traditional philanthropic policy,” Mr. Brooks said. He encouraged ...

How dependent should charities be on government dollars? Two speakers at the Philanthropy Roundtable meeting debated this question.

Diana Aviv, chief executive of Independent Sector, a Washington coalition of charities and grant makers, said there should be a “healthy skepticism” about government’s involvement with nonprofit groups. But government and charities have a strong partnership, pointing to the large amount of public dollars that support nonprofit social services and charities that play in natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

“Government is highly dependent on the charitable sector” to fulfill its civic responsibilities.

She said that despite the relationship, charities largely maintain their independence and can speak out against state or federal policies they oppose.

But the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion...

Michael L. Lomax, chief executive of the United Negro College Fund, called on philanthropists to support new nonprofit efforts that seek radical changes in the U.S. school system.

“The role of philanthropy is to invest in the innovative disruptive model,” he told participants at the Philanthropy Roundtable.

He specifically pointed to Teach for America, which recruits college graduates to teach in public schools, and the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, which is a network of charter schools.

Teach for America, in New York, is training a new generation of educators who challenge the orthodoxy of public education, said Mr. Lomax, adding that traditional teacher colleges are “guardians of the status quo.”

He said KIPP has shown that students from poor and minority neighborhoods can achieve academic success when held to high standards.

In addition to those programs, he...