Give & Take

The Digital Marketing Myth Are you relying exclusively on digital tools to run your planned giving program? Think again. Many fundraisers and now advisors depend entirely on outsourced electronic solutions—tax reference libraries, gift law articles, automated emails, and complex calculators—while abandoning proven traditional methods. This shortsighted approach undermines fundraising effectiveness. As someone deeply involved in digital marketing myself, I offer this perspective with firsthand knowledge of both its power and limitations. Learning From Digital Giants Consider Google—the undisputed leader in online advertising. If any organization could succeed using exclusively digital marketing, it would be Google. Yet Google consistently employs sophisticated direct mail campaigns to acquire new customers. Meanwhile, fundraisers expect to attract planned giving prospects with online reference libraries about gift laws? Planned giving isn’t Entertainment Weekly—donors aren’t eagerly awaiting the next update. The Youth Misconception “But my prospects are young and digitally savvy,” you might argue. They’re constantly on

I was invited to speak at a national charity conference with over 800 attendees. Some of them were Directors of Operations and even Chief Executive Officers. So where the heck were all the leadership types hiding? The conference had something for everyone—operations, finance, strategy, and even high-level fundraising philosophy. It was a huge success. Except for my session on planned giving marketing. Read on. The room was filled with enthusiastic young fundraisers, which was great to see. Planned giving represents the robust future of fundraising, yet many smaller programs are still weak in this area. Some are even scared to touch it—let alone read about it. So, I kicked things off with some myth-busting: “Many consultants, vendors, and fundraisers make their living by overcomplicating planned giving,” I declared. “I’m here to simplify it. It’s not rocket science. And if anyone tells you it is, run the other way.” (Besides, rocket science itself isn’t doing

Our clients, friends and prospects often ask which term is better to use for their marketing efforts, “Planned Giving” or “Gift Planning”. This is a decades-old dispute and I am getting tired of it. So I decided to write this blog to end the argument. If anyone is ready to spar, sharpen your blade (well, pencil is okay). A few nonprofits have migrated to Gift Planning because it sounds more “sophisticated.” Others argue that Planned Giving has been around too long and it’s time for something “new.” And some “feel” it makes better sense and sounds better. This is all just self-serving theory. [By the way, we own both domains: giftplanning.org and plannedgiving.org; so we do not have a reason to be financially biased in this article.]

A friend once relayed an interesting anecdote about simple, effective messaging that just so happens to be a perfect teaching moment for those of us in the fundraising world. It seems she was helping out an elderly couple who live down the hall of her apartment complex. The wife had a health problem that had just become acutely symptomatic. My friend was assisting by trying to find a hospital-type bed for the lady to use. Clear Communication In describing the want-ad that she ran on Craigslist, my friend said, “I didn’t really lay it on thick. I just said it was an older couple and the lady had a health condition and they needed the bed and they didn’t have a lot of money, and could anybody donate one?” Talk about effective messaging. My friend quickly discovered that she didn’t really need to “lay it on thick,” because the solicitation,

Breaking the Myth: You Don’t Need a Law Degree Let’s dispel one of the biggest myths in fundraising: that planned giving is only for experts with a Harvard Law degree—preferably the kind who believe every problem needs a 20-page policy paper and a new government subcommittee. If you’re a development officer with a strong background in annual or major gifts, and someone has just tapped you to “start a planned giving program,” you might feel the urge to panic. Or worse—you dive into the deep end by attending advanced seminars on charitable lead trusts, gift annuities, and other exotic instruments you’ve never dealt with before. While these technical concepts have their place, they represent only a fraction of what you need to build a successful planned giving program. And too often, this approach leads to “majoring in minors.” We see it all the time: smart, capable fundraisers get overwhelmed by

Is Altruism an Endangered Attribute? What if the “I” in “iPad” turned out to be Gordon “Greed is good” Gekko from the movie WALL STREET? While we don’t know if Gordon really has an iPad, we’re sure he’s out there, at least in spirit, because results from a recent survey of iPad owners by MyType seem to show that his real-world confreres make up a hefty proportion of those who have purchased this trendy new tech toy. Specifically, as reported by Eliot Van Buskirk in the 7/27/2010 edition of Wired.Com, the survey conducted this spring by MyType (a consumer research firm specializing in personality inventories) indicated that: “iPad owners tend to be wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated and disproportionately interested in business and finance, while they scored terribly in the areas of altruism and kindness. In other words, ‘selfish elites.’” The Opposite of a Donor Presumably individuals who self-report in such

Practice thinking like your prospect. Who are they? What do they care about? What are their hopes, fears, dreams? What are their deepest desires?

Age-Based Marketing isn’t just outdated—it’s brain-dead. Today’s 60-year-olds are launching businesses, not shuffling off to Florida in a golf cart. If you’re still segmenting donors by age, you’re marketing like it’s 1985. Planned giving requires intelligence, nuance, and relevance. Want real results? Stop guessing based on birthdates. Start targeting based on behavior, mindset, and motivation. Because nothing says “lazy fundraiser” like treating a 45-year-old entrepreneur like a retiree.