Love is in the air. (Well, actually it’s not … not any more or less than it is in January or March anyway. It’s just that the greeting card and flower and chocolate industries want us to believe this is the month of l-o-v-e.) But whether you’re a Valentine’s Day cynic or a fan of the holiday, let’s talk about love for a moment.
I’ve been in the planned giving marketing industry for 25 years, and for 25 years I’ve been saying that planned giving is a people business. If you love people, you will go far in planned giving (and in your career). You see evidence of this truth every month on the cover of this magazine. Each issue we feature a leader in nonprofit development. While their stories and backgrounds are politics vary greatly, there’s a common theme that unites them all: they love people.
In the last 25 years, the planned giving industry has changed a lot. It used to be if you got into planned giving it was by accident. In 63 issues of Giving Tomorrow we have featured exactly one person who knew from a young age that she wanted to be a fundraiser. Everyone else, including Dolores Nypaver (p. 6) “fell into it” — in large part because they loved people. Nowadays there are formal training programs and professional degrees. Now a young college student can decide to study fundraising, even specialize in planned giving. Maybe a student makes that choice because he or she loves people. Or maybe they’re attracted to attracted to a degree in gift planning because of the potential for a respectable paycheck or because they like the idea of traveling for work.
On the whole, the development of planned giving as a career choice is a good thing. I just hope with all the formal training we don’t lose sight of what’s most important. This industry has a lot of four-letter acronyms — CRAT and CRUT are two of my least favorites. It’s easy for fundraisers to focus on the technical aspects of planned gifts. But planned giving is 95 percent (at least!) a people business. More than those four-letter acronyms, we need to remember a four-letter word: LOVE.
