Too Busy? Or is it Planned Giving Placed on the Back Burner, Again.
They say that planned giving is being placed on the back-burner because of tight budgets, smaller staffs and not enough time.
Bull. There’s an underlying reason that none of us wants to acknowledge.
Four years ago we asked fundraisers whether they believed planned giving is “where the money’s at.”
A whopping 74% in the survey answered yes. On the next question, “Where do you spend your time?” a large number (82%) answered “raising cash gifts.”
So if they know the answer, why do they place planned giving on the back burner?
Because most attend to the urgent, not the important.
An analogy can be made here between a toothache and visits to the dentist. If we never attend to the important (visiting the dentist) one day we’ll have to attend to the urgent (a root canal).
Same goes for retirement planning. If you never proactively build your retirement (endowment) you’ll have to reactively work after you’re 70 to make ends meet (like raising annual gifts). Hopefully not at Walmart.
If fundraisers never attend to the important task of building a pipeline of planned gifts to provide a stream of long-term support, they will, year after year, waste time on the urgent task of picking up every $100 gift they can find to meet their quotas.
And, year after year, they’re missing the fact that those consistent $100 givers make the perfect planned giving prospects.
Considering the average bequest is over $68,000… I will stop right here and just say… it’s a no brainer.
Get proactive. Attend to the important, not the urgent. It’s all about your future.
PS: Here are 21 tips on launching a program inexpensively. And here are 10 tips and strategies on marketing your program.
PPS: Use this interactive assessment tool to see how ready you are for planned giving.
