The Planned Giving Moment

Not every organization has an obvious or natural planned giving constituency. We see it all the time in consulting. That is not to say “forget about planned giving.” Before making a conclusion as to your planned giving viability or not, you have to literally look around to see if there are places and segments within the framework of your organization that connect to potential planned giving segments of supporters and friends.

For example, while visiting an upstate New York, community college and after having discussed the various ways this campus could somehow infuse some planned giving into their fundraising program (not an easy task on a tight budget, tiny staff, pretty small and relatively young graduate base), our last stop was a special dining room run by their culinary arts program (just part of the campus tour).

As we approached the dining room, I noticed four planned giving prospects leaving the dining room for the elevator (i.e...four senior ladies who happened to look like they were really enjoying themselves). And, then we entered the dining room – passing very tastefully designed windows where spectators could watch some of the cooking and baking of the students.

Sure enough, the room was full of planned giving prospects enjoying their tasty meals in a great atmosphere (the dining room had been the dining room from a grand old hotel that was given to the school and now tastefully decorated and hanging various art works on loan on the walls). The staff told me that getting reservations for the once or twice a week lunch times was extremely difficult – it was a first call, first serve reservation system and it booked up almost immediately every week. It turned out that this dining room was a major sensation in the area for people of the right age, who get a wonderful dose of good feelings at the campus on a regular basis, and probably feel like the campus is a second home.

I turned to the chief fundraiser who I had been meeting with and told her that this is where her planned giving events needed to be and these are the people she needs to invite (in addition to older graduates, longtime donors, board, etc…).

This was my planning giving moment: when I saw clearly that this college had a special relationship and platform for connecting with their mostly older local residents.

You never know – you have literally look around at the happenings of your organization. You may have a natural planned giving group right in front of you.

At my first full-time job in planned giving at the Anti-Defamation League, I had a similar planned giving moment when attending a New York regional lunch/current affairs update – just another run of the mill ADL guest speaker talking about civil rights or whatever. For reasons unbeknownst to the planned giving staff, they started scheduling these for lunch (not the usual 8 am slot for busy execs). I walked in the door to the first one and lo and behold, a room full not only of planned giving prospects, but many of our actual planned giving donors in the room.

It turns out that the general fundraising staff lost patience pretty quickly with these “cultivation” events – all they saw was rooms full of older people, many taking home sandwiches but no new major gift donors.

My thought at the time: Excuse me short term thinkers – where do you think your 100+ new bequests a year and $4-$5 million+ in actual bequest dollars annually come from?

They discontinued these luncheon update events pretty quickly from what I remember. What a shame. For virtually no cost, and little staff effort, they could fill a room with up to 100 older residents of New York, mostly from Manhattan itself, on a monthly basis.

Were these people ever going to be major gift donors, if they weren’t already so? No.

Were they going to become annual donors? Maybe yes, maybe no.

But, were they candidates for 6 and 7 figure bequests? Definitely.