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National Conference on Philanthropic Planning

October 16, 2009

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
What's in a Name: Planned Giving or Philanthropic Planning?

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. Selzer said.

Mr. Stelter suggested that nonprofit organizations adjust the way they reach out to prospective donors, such as by changing wording on their Web sites.

“It says, Click here for planned giving, but 62 percent of the people don’t understand it,” he said. He offered alternative phrases, such as charitable gift planning, giving options, and opportunities to give.

— Debra E. Blum

Friday October 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [2]

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
Want to Ease Fund-Raising Anxiety? Review Giving From Years Past

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.

Then, like now, he said, donors gravitated toward gifts for endowment and immediate needs, rather than brick-and-mortar projects, and donors were more likely to want to be modest about their giving, shying away from publicity or naming opportunities.

Deferred gifts — the stuff of planned-giving programs — get added attention during economic down cycles, Mr. Sharpe said, and it’s up to fund raisers to help donors choose the right way to give at the right time.

One bright spot already on the horizon, Mr. Sharpe said, is the potential
for gifts of appreciated securities from donors who bought stocks over the
last year when the prices were especially low.

“Last fall when everyone was selling, somebody was buying,” Mr. Sharpe said.
And by early next year, as the market continues to recover, he explained,
those buyers will have newly appreciated property ripe for charitable
contributions.

— Debra E. Blum

Friday October 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comment

October 15, 2009

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
Charities Step Up Marketing of Planned Gifts

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 with 9 percent in 1999, said they were also focusing on donors as young as 45.

In both surveys, organizations were most likely to say that education and awareness were the top benefits of promoting planned gifts. But groups in this year’s survey were less likely than the groups 10 years ago to cite landing big gifts as another top benefit of their marketing program. In 1999, 32 percent of the groups considered it a key advantage. This year, that percentage had dropped to 14.

Mr. Kateman attributed the change to a growing sophistication among fund raisers and charities about how to measure the success of efforts to solicit planned gifts.

“It’s not just an immediate dollar goal, but how many proposals were sent out, visits made, touches,” he said.

He said that fund raisers are also better identifying themselves as stewards of donors’ money, making sure their marketing materials demonstrate to donors how their gifts will be used and their impact. That shows, he said, in the increase in the share of organizations – from 3 to 14 percent — that listed “donor reassurance” as a top benefit of planned-giving marketing.

“They’re trying to avoid buyers’ remorse,” Mr. Kateman said, before noting the phenomenon in philanthropy parlance: “gifting remorse.”

— Debra E. Blum

Thursday October 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comment

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
What Can Fund Raisers Expect in 2020?

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 said, from the involvement of professional advisers —like financial planners, accountants, and lawyers – who will be more likely to recommend charitable giving as part of estate and tax plans. At least half of all gifts will come with the advice of professional advisers, he said, up from 30 to 40 percent today.

Charities and their fund raisers will increasingly turn to e-mail, Web sites, and other ways to attract, contact, and interact with donors online. By 2020, he said, 90 percent of contacts with donors will be electronic and 10 percent in print. That trend, he said, will be fueled in part by what he called “green donors”, people interested in cutting their consumption of paper.

One prediction Mr. Schultz offered for the not-so-distant future: Increased interest in charitable remainder trusts. He said the number of such gifts will surge next year before capital-gains tax rates are scheduled to change the following year.

— Debra E. Blum

Thursday October 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comment

National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
Poor Economy Makes Planned-Giving Fund Raisers Feel Defensive

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 called the National Committee on Planned Giving), said the economy has made many fund raisers particularly sensitive about the perceptions around how charities spend money because organizational belt-tightening often hits them first.

Many nonprofit groups, she said, have cut back on the number of fund raisers, their professional-development opportunities, and the technical support available to them.

“We are sabotaging ourselves because our hands feel tied by the concept out there that program is sacred and administration is wasteful,” Ms. Howe Johnson said.

In an interview, Mr. Pallotta said: “Planned-giving officers are just as integral to — and care just as much about — the cause as the person in the field, working with the children, or on the disease. In fact, they are the ones making sure those people get the paychecks that keep them going.”

— Debra E. Blum

Thursday October 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comment

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