Case in point: The main consumer spending metric utilized by the commerce department – known as “personal consumption expenditure” – is showing only a modest .2% growth rate this year. And that’s considered a pretty weak rebound compared to past post-recession growth rates.

What’s more (if that’s the word), analysts are seeing an odd pattern in American consumer spending: We’re spending more of our money on “luxury” items than we are on mass-market, economy merchandise. In general terms this means the Neiman Marcuses are outperforming the Wal-Marts.

According to a Financial Times online story, for example, the luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany’s is doing much better business than the economy jeweler Zale’s.

And that seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?

What’s going on?

Even if we had the answer to that question, it’s not really what this post is about. What we’re interested in is how this high-ticket versus low-rent dichotomy can influence donor behavior in terms of planned giving. And we suspect it’s actually good news for PG fundraisers.

Consider: The current slowdown in consumer buying on the economy end of the spectrum would tend to indicate that cash gifts – smaller annual fund giving, for example – may have to fight an uphill battle in this economic climate.

On the other hand, the higher-value gifts closest to the planned giving fundraiser’s heart – appreciated securities, paid-up insurance, real estate, etc. – may be precisely what current conditions predispose donors to part with.

It has been said before that the present-day economy means there’s never been a better time for planned giving.

We agree. And we think this “bad news” about consumer spending tendencies is just further proof.

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.

And the forgotten monster is not even the spookiest part of the story: This widespread “character amnesia” seems to be correlated directly with use by Chinese-speakers of computers and mobile phones that employ an alphabetic system.

A truly modern problem! And it just goes to show that the best laid plans for successful communication on one side can engender failure to communicate on the other.

What does this have to do with Planned Giving?

Just this: Cultivating relationships with your prospects is the most important thing we do to close gifts down the line. Newer and “better” modes of reaching your prospects hit the streets all the time. Some are high tech, some not so high tech, but the craze over each “new big thing” can put the old reliable methods out of focus, or even out of mind.

I’m just suggesting: Take pains to remember how to use your telephone.

All the hot-cha high-tech bells and whistles in the world don’t trump the impact you make when you call your prospect personally on the primitive-yet-effective telephone. And if you really want to make an impression, you don’t need any technology at all (except for maybe a car): Just get out of the office and personally visit your prospect.

A couple of revolutionary concepts – no batteries required.

How do you view planned giving? Is it simple, or complicated?

One of the biggest misunderstandings I see in the non-profit world is the mistaken belief that planned giving is complex and mysterious.

A development officer is asked to take on the new responsibility of initiating and developing a planned giving program. Let’s assume this development officer’s background is in annual giving and major gift work. What is the first thing she usually does once she puts on the “planned giving director” hat? She begins looking for a seminar to attend on charitable lead trusts, charitable remainder trusts, gifts of complex assets, etc. All this can seem overwhelming — because it is.

It doesn’t have to be that way

Whether you are the Chattanooga Symphony, a Community Kitchen, or Harvard, 85% of all planned gifts are simple bequests. Too often, planned giving folks — especially new ones — get caught up in the details of complex gift forms and end up “majoring in minors.”

Now imagine our up-and-coming planned giving director focusing instead on meeting face-to-face with existing donors who have supported her organization for many years, and asking them, “Have you ever considered including us in your will or estate plan?”

Not a complicated approach

Over time she will enjoy tremendous success securing plenty of planned gifts.

Of course, there is a place for charitable remainder trusts, lead trusts, and the like. But the vast majority of the planned gifts for your organization will come from simple bequests. That is why I recommend creating a brief document with suggested will language that you can supply to donors and their attorneys when you ask about estate plans. [Editor’s note: include appreciated “stuff, ” IRAs, and life insurance, too; these are easy to give and to receive.]

There is a whole industry built around making planned giving more complicated than it really is. Seminar promoters want to sell you on attending their expensive programs, but don’t worry about that stuff. Just go see your loyal donors, tell them your story, and ask them to include your organization in their will.

You will be pleasantly surprised and do a lot of good in the process.

We’re so hung up on fulfilling technical requirements that we frequently forget we’re dealing with people, and fail to identify or analyze the necessary people skills required.

People skills are by far the most valuable to your success. You can always hire a professional to assist you with technical details when it comes to planned giving. If you are gifted with both skill sets (which is rare), may The Force be with you!

Always remember: People give to people, not to institutions. So instead of taking the next course on gift annuities, pick up a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie… an $8 investment that has made millions for millions.

Why is it that we so often look at a gift negotiation as a cat-and mouse game — as a struggle between what “we” want and what “they” want?

Perhaps we forget the simple fact that fundamentally, we both want the same thing: Prosperity and growth for the charity.

Prospect and fundraiser are both pulling in the same direction. You’re just getting there in different ways. Think about negotiation that way, and the whole shebang looks different. Chances are it will feel a lot smoother, too.

Whether you’re looking for annual, major, or planned gifts, you can get to closure faster and with fewer obstacles by following two elementary principles:

1. Focus on the parties’ authentic motivation: Their interests, not their positions.

2. Generate a variety of options to parse and facilitate agreement.

When done well, dynamic negotiation satisfies both sides’ interests. Forget the cat-and-mouse paradigm and replace it with a collaborative mindset based on win-win thinking. Change the inputs you’re operating with, and you may change the outputs you’re getting.

And close a lot more gifts with a lot less pain.

To learn more about Anne Melvin’s approach to dynamic negotiating, read her article in the Summer 2010 Edition of Planned Giving Tomorrow.

Studies show that when a business partners with — and really benefits — a non-profit organization, consumers who believe in that organization and its cause are much more likely to respond to or patronize the business.

This fact should be a wakeup call both for businesses and for non-profits.

Today’s contrary economy poses serious challenges for charities. Current donation levels are lagging, and impending tax increases, combined with likely reductions in tax benefits for charitable support, don’t improve the outlook. According to PlannedGiving.Com’s 2010survey, 67% of our peers are concerned about this.

So smart non-profits are looking to grab every advantage.

This is where partnering with for-profit businesses offers increasingly attractive benefits. For the charity, such promotions result in more donations, free advertising, and new first-time donors. For the forprofit, the partnership promises additional business.

You can even partner with other nonprofits! Read Chase Magnuson’s blog post below.

Such opportunities for robust mutual benefit couldn’t come at a better time.

Because they neglect the time and effort needed to do it right.

Successful social networking requires:

• Circular promotions from all venues
• Constant day-to-day monitoring
• Publications to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn sites
• Embracing the online social networking culture
• Cultivating participation
• Creating engagement activities

This is work. Even the miraculous Internet will not give you something for nothing (that’s why Viagra spammers are dying). And this is why you must approach Facebook marketing with a results-based mindset. If you can’t or won’t measure ROI, it’s not going to work.

Now, I am not opposed to social media — so hold all hate mail. But don’t Facebook due to peer pressure. Because a little bit of this and a little bit of that and hopping from this year’s hype and hoopla to the next will distract you from venues that are already getting you results.

Quoting Sam Caldwell, “All the followers in the world will jump on the social networking site bandwagon with little or no evaluation and waste all kinds of dollars and time. The leaders will evaluate it and execute it if they feel it serves their interests. Or, they will move on to what gets results. The real question is, are you a leader or a follower?”

Social media is like any other marketing vector. It’s serious work requiring real effort. So ignore peer pressure and do it if you have commitment and resources to do it right.

Apparently this IT person was feeling territorial and thought, “Why buy a website? We can build one ourselves!” Unfortunately, he didn’t know what he was getting himself and his organization into in terms of time, effort, expense, and more…

…though he may know now.

Making phone calls, writing letters, scheduling visits – you’ve got to stay in touch with your prospects.

Have a gift under way? You’re sweating the details with the donor’s advisors and your financial staff. Get the quarterly checks out; don’t forget stewardship; isn’t it time for another meeting of the Legacy Society?

Planned giving officers have always functioned with multiple demands on their time. Today they must also account for their productivity to management increasingly focused on call rates and gift quotas. So not only is finding the time to develop a planned giving website in-house difficult, but the time spent may not impress your boss.

Remember:

• Copy must be written, edited, reviewed (by peers and by counsel) and revised, not once but multiple times.
• Once delivered in draft form, your website must be extensively debugged to ensure its architecture incorporates logical navigation and wayfinding.
• While your site is under construction, you’ll be making steady demands on the time of your designer and webmaster… and your webmaster already has to answer to everyone else at your organization, too.
• Is your site up? Congratulations. But you’re not done yet. So that your presence on the Internet doesn’t go stale, you should regularly update your site to keep pace with changes in rates and tax laws and add new donor testimonials.

Opportunity Costs

These tasks incur not only direct costs, but opportunity costs in the form of contacts not made, prospects not visited and gifts not closed while you and your staff construct your website. When you do it yourself, you ask your planned giving staff to become part-time Web designers. Is that an efficient use of their time and skills?

Think that by doing it yourself you’ll save money? Consider this: Some top-rated fundraising operations have spent six to eighteen months getting self-designed sites operational, only to be less than satisfied with the final results. Can you afford to commit that kind of in-house effort?

We can do it all for you:

• Designing websites that deliver motivated prospects is our business. We know how to write copy that both informs and intrigues, how to incorporate visual cues and navigational techniques that draw the reader through the site, how to place interactive features that extend the prospect’s visit.
• We completely customize each site. Graphics will blend seamlessly with those of your main pages, or we can develop a separate visual presence for your program. The text will describe all of the gifts you offer, but no others, and will note such details as your age and gift minimums and whether or not you serve as trustee.
• We keep your site current. We monitor tax law and rate changes and automatically update your site to reflect them. We will add (and rotate!) donor profiles and keep staff contact information fresh.

VirtualGiving can deliver a website that is online faster than if you produced it yourself, cheaper than if you hired an Web developer, and that generates more interested prospects than one produced by a graphic designer. The result? You can focus on what you do best – raise money for your organization.

VirtualGiving’s websites are part of our comprehensive, Web-centric marketing program that can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your prospect communications. If you don’t need a complete package, we won’t bust your budget: you can select any of our tools a la carte.

By Chase Magnuson

Many charities shut themselves off from this significant source of revenue because they’re leery of getting involved in what they see as a complex area.

The attitude is, “We’re risk-averse. We don’t have procedures in place to deal with gifts of real estate. Plus, we’ve either had bad experiences, or heard of other charities that had bad experiences with real estate. So we steer clear.”

Here are great opportunities on one hand, and fear and trepidation on the other! How can we solve this disconnect?

If a smaller nonprofit doesn’t have the real estate know-how or gift acceptance procedures in place, I recommend they partner with a charitable entity that does. This more experienced lead, or “accommodating,” charity enables them to accept the gift.

Let’s say a donor offers you a land lease, and you don’t know where to start. So you approach a larger, more savvy accommodating charity to undertake the donation. Typically, under your agreement with the lead charity, your nonprofit might receive 65% of revenues generated from rents and/or sale of the lease.

This approach helps out smaller charities by cultivating teamwork within the nonprofit community. And it gets you started up the learning curve.

So if you’re thinking you’re not ready for real estate, here’s a way to change that.

To find out more about how your organization take advantage of the opportunities offered by real estate, read can read an interview with Chase Magnuson in Planned Giving Tomorrow Summer 2010 edition.

These days, four dollars looks infinitely smaller than it looked back then. In 21^st Century America, we’ve been desensitized to dollar amounts up to and including those with 12 zeros after them (i.e. numbers in the trillions).

No surprise there: One hesitates to pay attention to numbers that big when they appear all the time with a negative sign and a dollar sign in front of them.

The problem for fundraisers, of course, is that when even a million dollars looks paltry, donors can easily feel that their “small” gifts won’t make much of a difference to your organization.

They need to know they’re wrong about that. It’s our job to tell them.

So it’s crucial for planned giving to be specific:

• Let prospects know exactly how much good their donation will do in concrete, real-world terms.
• Explain to them how important all donors are to accomplishing your organization’s mission.
• Show them how all planned gifts contribute to growing your nonprofit’s endowment over the long term.
• Emphasize that your gratitude for and recognition of their gift is based on the fact that every dollar looks big to your nonprofit.

And let’s all hope that one day in the future we won’t be so familiar with how many zeros there are in a trillion.