PlannedGiving.com - Planned Giving

I am hitting on this topic because I was recently asked, “Viken, how do you get so much done in a day?” Read more »

A friend called me yesterday with an interesting anecdote I felt I should share with anybody associated with charitable giving.

It seems she was helping out an elderly couple who live down the hall from her. The wife had a health problem which had just become acutely symptomatic. My friend was assisting in trying to find a hospital-type bed for the lady to use. Read more »

Recently I read online somewhere the following:

[A nonprofit] is seeking a planned giving advisor. This is a junior position for a fundraiser with 3 or so years of experience who wishes to move into planned giving. Focus is on bequests, CGAs, and marketing. Read more »

By James Pierson

Many years ago, for my sins, I did time on the editorial staff of a major urban “alternative newsweekly.” During that time I overdosed daily on badly conceived and written press releases. They were all hardcopy and they arrived via snail mail – that was the only game in town circa 1989. Every day I would read several such releases that would evoke from me no such response as, “That’s interesting! I think I’ll write about it!” but rather “This collateral is non-information-bearing.”

Then I would crumple up the paper with extreme prejudice and launch it into the circular file with my opinion of the sender similarly trashed. Read more »

Viken Mikaelian’s recent “You Never Know” post mentioned a lucky accident in which a planned giving professional sent out a direct mailing that inadvertently omitted to include a brochure explicitly referenced in the mailing.

In keeping with the theme of the post, this seeming disaster turned out to have a silver lining, as mailing recipients began to contact the nonprofit in question to ask how they could get their brochures. This not only increased the number of “touches” that program was making with their prospect base, it also informed them who the most responsive, highest-interest prospects were! Read more »

I was lying on the beach with my wife a few years back when a client buzzed through my cellphone, declaring in a sorrowful voice, “I’m going to have to apologize to all of them. In fact, I am writing the apology letter now.” Read more »

You’ll find it up there at the top of the list of disillusioning truths: “There ain’t no free lunch.” It’s true in fundraising, of course; but it can be obscured by the endless parade of miraculous “next big things” that tend to put our common sense out of focus.

For example, the seemingly limitless marketing possibilities offered by the Internet have charmed some planned giving fundraisers into the mistaken belief that this new miracle vector will do their job for them.

Make no mistake: With planned giving on the Internet as with anything else, lack of effort and commitment translate directly into lack of results, Read more »

There’s something graceful about smart marketing messaging. Maybe that’s why it works. And fundraisers competing for charitable dollars need every advantage they can get in engaging and persuading prospects. Read more »

These days it’s not hard to find bad news about the economy. It’s a much bigger challenge to avoid it. But planned giving fundraisers might want to look a little more closely at some of that gloomy stuff because it could be there’s a silver lining in them thar clouds… Read more »

Who could forget Toa Tie, the Chinese monster so gluttonous that it ate itself?

Unfortunately, lots of young people in China are forgetting him. Or, at least, they’re forgetting the symbol that stands for him in their written language. That’s what’s being reported in an AFP story dated 8/26/2010. Read more »