Planned giving marketing firms should stick with what they know best.
Companies like to boast about what they do. Apparently, many firms also like to do far more than they should. More and more in the planned giving community I see “marketing” firms promising their clients the world.
Need planned giving marketing materials? Got that.
A website? Sure.
Consulting? Why not.
Legal advice? Of course. Would you like fries with that?
It’s getting absurd. It’s 2017, people! Specialization is no longer a novelty. For Pete’s sake, we even get our morning coffee specialized.
Yet for some reason, planned giving marketing firms try to offer way more than marketing. I don’t get it. If my Porsche needs brake work, I’m not taking it to Bob’s Body Shop and Burger Joint. I want the mechanic who specializes in German-made, high-performance cars.
When I founded this firm in 1998, it was a boutique firm specializing in planned giving marketing. We’ve grown a lot since then, but it’s all been growth within our specialty area. That just seems to make sense to me. So today I am not going to boast about what we do. I’m going to talk about what don’t do.
- We’re not a software company. Software is the last thing you need to attract prospects and close planned gifts. Software is a commodity.
- We’re not a consulting firm. That’s a specialty in itself and there are plenty of great consultants out there.
- We’re not a law firm. You do not need to be a tax law expert to raise planned gifts. Planned giving is a people business. If you love people, you’ll raise more money than you have ever imagined.
- We’re not a tax law news ticker. There are plenty of sources for the never-ending tax law news. But since it’s unnecessary for planned giving marketing, count us out.
- We’re not an electronic mass mailer. Some vendors generate generic content and share it with the nonprofit next door. Not us.
- We’re not a newsletter company. When we started almost 20 years ago, planned giving newsletters were already passé. Studies show most go directly in the trash. Yet the dinosaur development vendors are still churning out newsletters and charging nonprofits big bucks for them.
So, if you are looking for the products and services listed above, we can’t help you. But if you want a specialty shop for all your planned giving marketing needs, look no further than PlannedGiving.com. Planned giving marketing is what we know best. It’s what we’ve done since the beginning and what we refine every day.
