Category Archives: Planned Giving

Nonprofit Radio for April 29, 2011: Planned Giving Fundraising & A Gift Planning Conference

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Tony’s Guests:
Richard Slutzky, co-author of Thriving in the Comet’s Tail, explains his ideas for fundraising as the U.S. emerges from recession. His insights apply to your long-term and immediate fundraising work. (If you’d like to buy the book contact WordsMaplewood. Call of email the store to buy the book.)

The “comet” in his title is our recession.

Putting aside economists’ definitions, do you believe we’re in the tail end of the U.S. recession?

  • a) Yes, the end is in sight, within 3-9 months
  • b) No, we’ve got at least another year
  • c) I really don’t know when the end will come

John Bacon and Alex Brovey are officers of the Philanthropic Planning Group of Greater New York (PPGGNY).

They’re coming to talk about the group’s May conference, the New York Philanthropic Planning Symposium. This is the PPGGNY’s premier annual event.

The event will:

  1. spotlight the nuts and bolts for new philanthropic planners
  2. illuminate the techniques and tools used by experienced planners
  3. focus a laser-sharp spotlight on those practical topics specifically requested by our members — subjects that have direct practical application to their work

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

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Here is a link to the podcast: 039: Planned Giving Fundraising & A Gift Planning Conference.
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Oppcoll durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent of your aptly named host tony martignetti you may recall, i hope you do. Last week, i had a conversation with hildy gottlieb hildy is the author of the polyana principles, and she had transformative ideas for community benefit organizations to create really monumental change in themselves, their communities and the world. This week planned e-giving fund-raising and a gift planning conference richard slutzky is co author of thriving in the comet’s tail and he’s going to explain his ideas for fund-raising as the us emerges from recession, his insights apply to your long term and immediate fund-raising work, then joining me in the studio, john bacon and alexandra brovey they are officers of the philanthropic planning group of greater new york. They’re coming to talk aboutthe groups may conference the philanthropic planning symposium between the guests on tony’s take two, the blue pedicure challenge what you’ll find out on tony’s take, too, and also the irs dirty three hundred twenty thousand list is coming. The irs is going to release a list of about three hundred twenty thousand charities that have lost tax exempt. Status. That’s one fourth of all the charities in the us, and i’ll talk about both those things. At roughly thirty two minutes into the hour on tony’s, take two. Of course, we take a break right now, and when we return, i will be joined by richard slutzky, and we’ll be talking about the book he co authored, thriving in the comet’s tail. Stay with me. Duitz you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com durney welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio where were always about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m going to be joined right now by richard slutzky he’s, a co author with roger matt ll often richard ehrlich of thriving in the comet’s tail non-profit investment and development during the recovery from the great depression. Published by multi tier media in new york city. Richard is director and senior institutional sales representative at bank of america merrill lynch he’s an attorney, he has a serious seven licensing. He spent several years as a member of senior management for the jewish community foundation of metro west and united uda jewish federation of metro west, both in new jersey. That means he has been in the trenches on the charity side, and i’m very pleased to welcome him to the show. Richard welcome. Thanks, tony it’s. Great being here. It’s. A pleasure to have you. Thank you. Are we emerging from recession? You’re thriving in the comet’s tail. The tail of the recession. Is that where we are? I think so, tony. And i’ll tell you why you know the the depth of the recession. The bottom of the recession happened in march of two thousand nine, and so theoretically right now where we are, we’re always where the economists tell us where we are is in an expansionary mode, but when i’m concerned about when i checked with non-profits is a lot of non-profits buy-in froze during the recession, they either did one of two things. They pulled money out of the equity markets because they were very concerned about if the bottom was actually reached in march, they were concerned in march of two thousand nine, they were concerned that it could go down farther, so they pulled money out so some of them never put money back in the equity markets and lost in the, you know, more than seventy percent increase in stocks after that that we’ve seen since march of two thousand nine or non-profits have never really did anything other than stick to their guns and keep to their asset allocation. Um, i think in both cases, it’s time for non-profits to review their situation and what we’re seeing, at least in our financial practice, is that non-profits are spending the time, you know, in the last year reviewing their investment practices to make sure that they are able to sort of escape from the depth of the recession and to make sure that they have their financial house in order for the next, you know, for the foreseeable future and let’s, talk about the intersection between that investment management and fund-raising for for non-profits your book really advocates breaking down the walls between those two what’s the problem there? Yeah, i think it’s, uh, it’s a multi fault, tony. Uh, and i’ll share some thoughts from both sides of the other aisle. The investment side and the plane giving sex. Uh, first on the investment side. Let’s. Take a typical investment committee who’s on the investment committee. All right, people from maybe from the investment field. Maybe there are, uh, financial advisors or people that actually spend time managing money and maybe there’s people that are savvy, uh, affluent donors to the organization. And maybe, just maybe, there are people that are on the programmatic side of the organization that sit on the investment committee either. As a committee member, like has an ex officio piela staffers. Ah. Ah. Lot of times those people in their normal day today, investment practice, uh i don’t really see or know much about a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuities. They can manage buckets or pools of money because that’s what they do, you know, when they’re dated a professional practice, but they are oftentimes not very familiar with nuances of managing a charitable trust to return up or a charitable gift annuity. They don’t understand the spending rates they don’t. They don’t understand the liability that the organization has to make those payments so that’s a big concern of of ours the way me and my co authors that a lot of investment committee’s, maybe very savvy folks that just may not understand the depth of issues dealing with investing for playing gifts. Now let’s, talk about the other side of the richard richard before you do that, i want to know i want to keep you out of jargon jail. Wei have jargon jail here on tony martignetti non-profit radio. So you mentioned charitable gift annuities and the charitable remainder trust i’m just going to do it briefly, just so that people know that those are vehicles that pay income back to the donor for their lifetime, and there are there are subtle differences between the two but that’s really the important thing to know, i think for our conversation is that the person who’s in charge of investing has two goals, and one is investing for income because there’s income back to the donor and the other is investing for long term remainder because the remainder goes to the charity. So i just wanted i want to keep you out of george in jail, and i want to do it just quickly. Richard, excuse me. I’m glad you did. I hope to stay in jail for the rest of the interview. I’ll warn you, if you if you come close god, please look at the other side. So, yeah, let’s talk about the development committee and development professionals who are focussed on getting in front of major donors and engaging them in a gift cultivation effort to ultimately too snusz solicitation of again and oftentimes when you’re dealing with a major donors and your want to pursue a some kind of plan, gift or endowment opportunity, you’re going to be talking about fairly significant dollars. And one of the concerns that that high in my other office co authors have is that what happens when the development professional is in charge is in front of someone who another going to ask for a major gift? It could be fifty thousand. It could be a hundred thousand. It could be, you know, president gift or it could be a future. And what happens if the donor then says, you know, mr martignetti, thank you very much. Uh, you know, i’ll be consider that gift. But let me ask you, mr martignetti, what would you do, what your organization do if i did give you fifty thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars, how are you going to manage that money? And oftentimes the development professional may not have the information at hand about how that money is managed. They may not know who’s managing the money. They may not know exactly how much is in the endowment for the organization. And i think just like any investor tow, any financial services firm or mutual fund wants to know, you know, how is this going to work and how big my in relation to everything else? I think that development person needs to be apprised as to a little bit more about how. The investments run and their organizations so they could be. They could communicate that to the donor and give them a sense of security that their money will be prudently managed. Once once housed at the non-profit richard, we’re going to take a break, and when we return, we’ll talk about thie integrated financial resource consultant than how that position sort of bridges. The gap that you see and describe in your book. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m with richard slutzky, co author of thriving in the comet’s tail. Stay with us, e-giving attempting to ding getting dink, dink, dink dink, you’re listening to the talking alternative network geever getting anything duitz. Things good? Are you stuck in your business or career, trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics. Politically expressed buy-in, montgomery, taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one. Want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible? Then please join us, starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning morning, alison. As a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marty allison on talking alternative dot com. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Durney oppcoll welcome back. My guest is richard slutzky, co author of thriving in the comet’s tail richard let’s talk about the integrated financial resource consultant that you advocate for in the book. What is that position? The idea behind a knick integrated financial resource consultant is someone who has the understanding of working with an investment committee of a non-profit to help guide them in developing a long term asset management strategies, but at the same time have the sensitivity to the fund-raising needs of the organization and also understand how to manage those unusual assets that we talked about earlier, the charitable trust, the charitable gift annuity and, you know, to be told, i’m not sure how many financial advisers have that, and we really taught we wrote in our book about the integrated financial resource consultant as sort of an idyllic kind of person and wait that mold, but, you know, i think what i would do if i were a non-profit, uh, executive or a volunteer, and we were searching for a team to manage our money is to find an individual or a team that that understand that has a greater sensitivity to both sides that we’ve discussed ah, and, you know, it’s interesting tony there isaiah accreditation that is available through, uh, i probably called the american college in britain, marr, pennsylvania, and they call that the chartered advisor and philanthropy it’s not is well known in the non-profit space as it is in the financial services space and it’s a kind of accreditation that financial advisors can obtain through this american college it’s actually quite rigorous it’s it’s about three modules and a lot of study, and when i hear of individuals that have taken that course and i’ve taken that course, i recognise that they do have that kind of sensitivity that we’re trying teo articulate in the book because i just think it makes for a better service delivery mechanism for the, you know, for the organization has now that you know now that working with an advisor that’s not looking at the bucket as just another endowment pocket or a bucket of acid similar to a you know, retirement plan it’s a fund of money that they’re much more tuned to the use ofthe and what the complexities are of managing a non-profit endowment or other types of non-profit funds, but what does the integrated financial resource consultant mean for current plan giving directors or officers? Yeah, i think. Go ahead. No that’s it. Yeah. Okay. What does that mean? People are in those positions now. Yeah, but i think that means is they would speak the integrated financial resource consultant would speak the language of a plane giving person. They would understand what charitable gift annuities are, for instance, and they would understand the fact that there are some i’ll call up cash liquidity issues that need to take place if i have to make a cash distribution for charitable gift into it. And that’s due on may first, i better have cash available for it. And i better talk to my manager is to make sure that there’s like liquid funds so that the organization can distribute checks or do direct deposits that that’s a level of nuance that not all financial advisors have because they may not understand what charitable gift annuities actually are. Ok? And when you refer to that need for cash, you’re referring to the income that i explained earlier before the break that has to be paid to a new it ints for charitable gift annuities. That that is correct. Tony and my concern, uh, is that a lot of financial advisors look at a lets a pool of non-profit management funds as very long term where you can, you know, have ah, large equity exposure and the money is it going to go on at in tonight? Um, and maybe the charity pulls out, you know, three, four, five percent, but there’s not a lot of other, you know, workings of that of that bucket. And when we’re talking about gift annuities because the money’s coming out, you know, maybe quarterly, maybe monthly and the size depends on again the annuity rates that are sad. And you know what kind of into it. And they have there’s a lot more complexity to the situation that a financial adviser should be apprised of. Richard what does the integrated financial resource consultant contribute? Teo outright giving just immediate gifts. Putting aside the planned gift? Yeah. That’s. A great question. And i think it depends. Uh, you know, a lot of its just a normal stock transaction of cash transaction. That is underlying the direct gift most financial advisors can do that the nuances are who has someone wants to give something? Well, the more unique, for instance, closely held stock. In other words, stock that is not seen on, you know, an exchange, but maybe a stock in a family business, that is, you know, an unusual asset. What does has a financial adviser deal with that or gift of, you know, real estate or a gift of tangible property jewelry? Uh, um, you know, gold, etcetera. So the question is, how does that financial advisor, uh, going tio? They understand, sir. The red flags that have to be dealt with before those kinds of assets can be turned into cash. With richard slutzky, he’s, co author with roger, matt loft and richard ehrlich of thriving in the comet’s tail, published by multi tier media in new york city. Richard, what does the this position again, the integrated financial resource consultant have to contribute in terms of approaching the the entrepreneurial generation? You talk about that in the book? Yeah, i think that that generation has a much different psychological make makeup essay. Let’s say little about that. Yeah. Why are they giving what motivates them? Kapin? Yeah, obviously. It’s case by case. But if we if you want to speak in generalities, i would say that the world war two generation, you know, they came back to, you know, after, you know, being embattled and really looked at, you know, the community as a cz as a whole, they really weren’t so concerned about what is this particular non-profit mean to me if you were not a psychology major, but i’ve been told that one of the ways to look at this generational differences that the older generation worked on guilt in other words, you see a poor child, and then you would give money because you want to help that child, the younger generation is more union where it’s like, how does this charity make me me feel? How does this make me feel about myself? Well, i feel better if i give to this charity, and i think the other, you know, issue about the younger generation meaning, you know, those between let’s say twenties and fifties, i think though that generation is looks at charities like a business on, so i think they’re much more focused on the bottom line of that organization and not looking again on guilt issues are you know well that you know that does that organizations to solve the problem, but more on, you know, let me look at the blood, the balance sheet of this organisation to make sure that it’s operating efficiently and effectively, okay. And and how does the consultant approach that that that generation, the entrepreneurial generation? Well, i think the idea here is that the integrated financial resource consultants would spend time with the charity and the development staff to make sure that the delivery bols, that the non-profit articulating to the donors are are are sort of well refined to make sure that the messaging is is really targeted to that sort of younger group that’s going to be looking at the balance sheet, for instance, those are the kind of people that are gonna be looking at some of your audience will know about charity navigator dot org’s, which actually rates, um, charities in terms of efficiency, just like finished, just like, morning star rates, mutual funds, that’s the kind of group that may be, you know, attentive to that kind of web sites. So they have to show that they’re the charities have to show that the running efficiently, you know, lien lee? They’re not putting a lot of money into administrative on development staff positions, but they’re focusing all their attention. Most of the attention on the charitable mission. Yeah. And you make a pretty strong point about approaching that the entrepreneurial generation appropriately because they are our future. The future donors. Well, there’s today’s donors as well as tomorrow’s plan giving donors. Yeah, and that gets back to the transfer of wealth issue. Tony, you know, obviously there’s been a huge number of studies done about how the older generation as they pass, is leaving money to charity. But the money that they’re not leaving to charity is going to their children. And those children can are going to control and by themselves, you know, billions of dollars and that’s that’s who the charity’s air going to have to convince to give and and i and honestly, i think it’s, in a way, much harder for charities to, um, to solicit the younger people because it’s more of a case by case, individual messaging than, you know, abroad, direct marketing piece are, you know, advertising that would appeal. That would be a very good appeal to the older, older audience so it’s going to take a lot more work for the charity’s? Teo overcome the objections, if you will, of the younger generation on dh since you’re talking a little about the wealthy, what ah, what’s, affluenza you you spend a little time in the book talking about affluenza? Won’t you share that? Yeah, and i see that here you know, it’s, our financial services firm, where we have very high net worth individuals who are very concerned that there and these air off most of the time self-funding div ihe jewel’s, they’re very concerned that as they leave a legacy to their children, the children you are the next generation of grandchildren are going to squander it, um, and it’s a huge concern in and in a way that plays well to the charities because so many people and i used to think it was just sort of the worm buffets of the world. Who said at one point, i want to leave my children enough so that they do something, but not so much that they do nothing. And that philosophy, i think, has trickled down into the super wealthy, the modestly wealthy or just the affluent and so even if you know, we’ll see what happens with the state taxes, but my point is that, um, people only want to leave now, i think specific amount of money for their children, not just an unlimited amount because they’re not sure what’s going to happen with their children and grandchildren. And, you know, where also are there going to be able to spend that money or give it away? They’re going to give away to charity, so i think that could bode well for the future. So affluence is the dreaded disease of, you know, of the ultra rich that where they’re concerned about how that money, you know, ends up being used by by their children. But again, i think it could bode well for for charity. Yeah, and so so what does it mean for fundraisers approaching people who have that the concerns you’re talking about? Well, if i were back and fund-raising what do you know? This sounds, i guess self evident, i would be focusing on the ultra affluent because those are the people that are probably most concerned about it. For instance, if i if i’m working with someone that has ten million dollars, ten million dollars or more. The likelihood is that they’re not going to get if they have two children, they’re probably not going to give both children five million dollars. Maybe they’ll give them million are too, but some of the money is going to gonna have to go to charity. But if i’m dealing with someone with three million dollars and they have two children, some of the money going to go to charity, the rest of a probability, some of it may but maybe not to the same extent a zit would be for high net worth individual. So that’s why? I think dealing it’s very hard to find some of these days, and i may be wrong about this, but in my experience to find someone that’s alter, affluent who who lose everything to the children for the affluent discussion we just had and of course, in plan e-giving fund-raising we never want to ignore those who are not high net worth but may just be very modest. Donorsearch ten shal absolutely you obvious one want to hit everybody because you never know when we’ve all heard stories about the, you know? The school teacher in mississippi that left everything to charity. But i think from again from a probability standpoint, that’s where i’d be focused in my time and, you know, it’s hard to you can really focus on affluent that’s something that you have to sort of keep in the back of your mind. And i think when you tried to cultivate an individual, i think you’d want to find out what kind of relationship they have with our children and what kind of legacy they want to leave to the children and to the charity. I think those air fare, very game question and then in having that conversation also find out what they’re relationship is to their to their wealth and what their children’s relationship is to the family money and and what concerns they may have about how that wealth gets translated to the family. I think the more that a lot of people don’t think about this, they don’t think about what’s gonna happen once they pass away, but i think there’s, that there is a path that a playing giving person could could walk down to engage a donor in that kind of discussion without being, you know, without going in at a bad direction, yeah, richard’s, let’s, go. We have to leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you, tony. I enjoyed it has been a pleasure. Richard slutzky, co author of thriving in the comet’s tail when we return it’s tony’s, take two, and then i’ll be joined by john bacon and alexandra brovey, and we’ll be talking about the philanthropic planning symposium in new york city, so please stay with me. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. No. Schnoll are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com buy-in are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future. You dream of two one two seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent it’s time for tony’s take two the blue pedicure challenge it was a success a bunch of high school friends on facebook enlisted me in a challenge if they got my show’s facebook page two, three hundred likes by today, which is friday, april twenty ninth at midnight, then i would go to a spa and get a blue pedicure on videotape it on dh. I’ll obviously post the video somewhere that everybody can see it, and they were successful around ah ten thirty this morning. So with more than twelve hours to spare ah, seven year old son of ah high school friend like the show and became like number three hundred so i will be getting a blue pedicure in accordance with pursuing to the blue pedicure challenge me more about that when when the event actually it takes place. Ah, little more serious. The irs dirty three hundred twenty thousand list is coming. The irs is going to be releasing a list of about three hundred twenty thousand charities that have lost tax exempt status because they failed to file the required return for three consecutive years is, and that number is about a quarter roughly a quarter of all the charities in the u s so it’s pretty startling, they’ll certainly be many in every state. The list will be broken down a few different ways, but one of them will be by state and you’ll be able to see which charities this applies to. Certainly a lot of them are charities that are just not functioning, but we fear that a lot of them are functioning and just haven’t been filing there’s more about the irs dirty three hundred twenty thousand list on my block at m p g a d v dot com, and that is tony’s take two for friday, april twenty ninth. In the studio with me now are john bacon and alexandra brovey they’re here to talk about the new york philanthropic planning symposium. John bacon is president of the philanthropic planning group of greater new york and he’s, also director of plant e-giving at the new york public library, alexandra brovey is vice president of philanthropic philanthropic planning group of greater new york and chair of the organization’s philanthropic planning symposium that’s volunteer work. That she does for that group. She is the senior director of gift planning for north shore long island jewish health system foundation. And i’m glad that this symposium brings john and alexandra to the show. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Good to have you alexander it’s. Okay, if i call you alex, right? Absolutely. As the chair of the symposium, why don’t you start telling us what’s the what’s, the purpose of the conference? Sure. Well, our conference this year will be on may twenty six, which is a thursday at the new york marriott marquis. Three new york philanthropic planning symposium is our annual one day conference. The purpose is educational. To bring everyone together, we expect between two hundred, two hundred fifty people. We have speakers coming from various parts of the country and three different tracks. And it’s, just going to be a great day. All right, john what’s, the philanthropic planning group of greater new york. All about as president. Yeah. It’s ah, educational group. So the symposium is very much part of our educational purpose. Also importantly, all of our events are great networking events for people in the field and alive professionals. And in fact, i think a lot of people see the value as that community and the networking people find jobs. May connections and it’s really been a valuable resource for many of us, including myself. I found my current job a tte, the new york public library at a plan giving luncheon eight years ago and coming out of the for-profit world into the non-profit. And that kind of thing happens constantly. So it’s, a great professional organization, was strong networking opportunities. Who are the members? It’s traditionally been playing, giving officers working for charities, but a lot of allied professionals they mentioned richard slutzky, who was just speaking on the program earlier, is a member and in fact, a boardmember s o people in the finance world accountant’s. Quite a few independent consultants like yourself on different folks so it’s across the board. But anyone interested in what is now ah called gift planning as opposed to playing giving and our name has changed several times to reflect those changes in the overall field. Yeah, let’s, talk a little about that. It used to be the planned e-giving group of greater new york. So that was a pygmy. Pg and y right it’s still pickney, but now it’s ppg and why? Why? The change from the former pickney to the current pig knew that reflects a change at the national level. Our council was originally called the deferred giving group, which says a lot about many years back is that that’s in the early seventies, right after the sixty nine tax act, which in effect codified a lot of things that we now use as tools for people to give. But then we were the council independent counsel plan giving group of greater new york the national committee on plan giving were one of the founding councils of that they changed their name to the partnership for philanthropic planning a few years back. And we in turn changed our name to kind of blend in better with the national change, but keeping our acronym, which people like yeah, the pickney right now so it was that national change reflecting a change in sort of it’s a broadening its not just planned giving out, phil, correct planning. So bringing in those advisers you meant very consciously bringing in advisors and even more importantly, bringing in our peers major gift. Officers and others working with individuals at the charity level and we find increasingly that traditional plan giving shops or departments or silos and some of us have called him charities are being broken down, and we wanted to be more inclusive and encourage people who have blended jobs or just have major gets people come because give planning should be part of their work as well. Ok? And that’s also very consistent with what richard was just talking about taking down the walls between asset management and and fund-raising right, i think alex is title is a good example of a different one. I’m on old school plan giving person, but there are fewer and fewer of us around with that in their title. Okay, alex’s title at north shore is direct senior director of gift planning, correct, and there are also people who have philanthropic planning in their title, which would be more closely akin to the name change. And then there are people who are individual gift planners who do a combination of or what we call a blended gifts. You’re not necessarily going after just the traditional playing gift you’re going after the gift that’s best. For the person in front of you and your organization and the conference. Alex, you’re the chair, it’s it’s organized for all the all the professionals that we’re talking about, there’s, something there for everyone there’s, something there for everyone, and this year we’ve actually restructured a little bit. We want to try teo help out. Our accounting members and friends and even non members were invited to come to the conference. We restructure a little bit this year. In the prior year, we had four different tracks going. This year, we decided we’d have three tracks, and we introduced a plenary speaker. I’d liketo take a moment to mention our fremery cerini she’s, beth shapiro, kaufman she’s, a member in kaplan and dried drysdale’s, washington d c office she’s coming to talk to us a little bit about what she did when she worked for the irs on the other side and what she does now and what she thinks might happen in twenty thirteen and she can speak freely now that she has a different employer. S o plenary. So is she the keynote speaker? She’ll be our keynoter plenary speaker, which will be first thing in the morning and then we’ll have three different tracks, three sessions per tracks. So the rest of the day they’ll be a mid morning session, a lunch in it, which will conduct some piggy business sametz actions and other items, and then two sessions in the afternoon, and then will cap off the day with a reception. It’s a wonderful day, okay, and again the day, may twenty sixth of this year. And where is it being helped at the new york marriott marquis? Okay, how do we let’s acquaint people with some of the other speakers besides your keynote speaker? What? What are some of the highlights of speakers? Sure, we’re goingto have to panels i’ll actually let John mentioned 1 of the panels because this is something that our members really matter, and they really make a difference, and they’re the ones that set the stage for what we do it pickney so our members had a wonderful meeting in april, a suggestion came out of that meeting and we actually revised a panel, and we’re moving from there all that john mentioned that for a moment, if i may, please john. Yeah, we have thes master forms as alex was just alluding to meant for senior members of our group to get together in a smaller setting and talk through things and metha, which i will garble here. But the new york prudent management of institutional funds act, which you may have discussed on your show, would have. But but not this show. So i want you out of jargon jail. So why don’t you give a quick explanation of what? The new york prudent management of institutional funds act is? John, your urine? Yes. You walked into the quagmire. Now i have to crawl, claw yourself out. Basically, our friends in albany saw fit to adapt the uniform management of institutional funds act putin. Sorry, management. Institutional funds act in their own distinct way. And many of us that the charity will side are dealing with trying to implement certain requirements of the new york version of this law. It does get give us a lot more liberty to spend and manage in doubt funds in particular and other institutional funds. But it has certain peculiar requirements, the most worrisome of which is a notice requirement to donors of older funds. And this is for those of you who work with charities or our donors. It’s not always. Welcome to receive a letter asking you to elect treatment on your fund. It’s led to a lot of confusion. Someone happiness, it’s just a unnecessary came out wrong, it’s. Just a aspect of the law that’s less than optimal. Okay. And i’ll remind listeners that we did have kathy boil on from cheeping hill advisors. Several shows a go for the full hour talking about the new york prudent management of institutional funds act, which is based on the uniform act that john’s talking about. Okay, little digression. But john got us in the quicksand, so we’re out. They’re jargon jail. And you were talking about the masters, the masters. Siri’s john? Yes. Those were for alex is here. Yes, we did. Yeah, before our regular luncheon programs, which are every well third wednesdays of the month. Eight times a year. And the masters for a just been a great place for people have high level discussions on topical issues, including nypmifa. Okay. Okay. And there’s something for the masters in the symposium. Alex. Exactly. So there are actually three tracks this year. One of the miss masters. Second one is nuts and bolts, and a third one is a new track called innovation. Okay, and we’re going to talk about those. When we return from this break, please stay with us. Talking alternative radio. Twenty four hours. Do you love movies, then join me and share your pains about them on the radio. This is mike, a movie fan like you, starting may tenth. Join me every tuesday night at six pm for my new show movie time on talking alternative dot com. Call me live or email me at movie time radio. At gmail dot com. We’ll talk about all the blockbusters whose the best director and which movies air overrated, among many other topics. Join me for movie time. Tuesdays at six on talking alternative dot com. Looking to meet mr and mrs wright, but still haven’t found the one i want to make your car relationship as fulfilling as possible. Then please join us, starting monday, may second at ten am for love in the morning with morning alison as a professional matchmaker, i’ve seen it all. Please tune in and call as we discuss dating relationship and more. Start your week off with love in the morning with marnie alison on talking alternative dot com. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays, one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com talking. Welcome back. Come with john bacon, president of the philanthropic planning group of greater new york, and alex brovey, vice president of the group and chair of the organization’s philanthropic planning symposium, which is what we’re talking about today. And alex, right before the break, you were acquainting us with the three tracks that you have. Please yes. So in in prior years, we had four tracks this year, we have three, so our nuts and bolts track is really meant to assist those new to gift planning or those who need a refresher of the basics, and we’ll have three different presentations. One will be a panel intriguingly entitled. We are all planned giving officers now, that’s actually meant for our major gift colleagues and others who want to come and just talk about the fact that everyone is expected to do a little bit in this area of plan giving her gift planning interesting. S o that’s really interesting. We’re seeing this integration and this breaking down of walls as my first just richard talked about as you heard some of that way alluded to this really is a trend that is significant, absolutely. And that has to go back to the name change at the national level and in our local level and what we’re actually doing and what we’re all actually seeing. So the reality of it is planned giving people raise outright gifts people who are expected to raise outright money’s might combine that with a plan gift it’s all what’s appropriate for the donor in front of you on dh with the challenge for the gift officer, whatever seat they might be sitting in is having to learn a little more. Is that john? Is that red john? Yes, and in particular, we have a lot of experience with older donors are group tends to skew older and their issues about getting old mental competency, health and other things that were sensitive to that. Frankly, some of our individual giving or major gift friends are not as sensitive to but again it’s falik said it’s really about being donor-centric on dh donors infect our our clients if we’re on the charity side and literal clients of our adviser colleagues. So it’s really just doing the right thing by the donor and sometimes that’s a blended gift and, you know you mentioned john your title. At the public library is still planned giving direct plan e-giving but are you seeing the integration there across fund-raising or or not so much or what? Not so much in our case, primarily because we have individual financial goals in the different silos in our shop, but i think that’s going to change it really has to change you think so? Yeah, ok. And i’m i’m asking you because the public library is, you know, a venerated old sort of old blind charity in in the country, right? And in a sense where a large shop as well so that those distinct groups can exist to some degree, there were four people in my group recently, so it’s a big plan giving group. Ah, and there are over forty, people in our overall development department. So it’s a big group. But i think even it’s in smaller charities, especially where there may only be one or two people dealing with individuals, they have to do all those things. And we again hope to be a resource for people who are interested in give planning. Okay, on dh that becomes the challenge especially then for the very small shop i mean let’s take a charity that maybe it’s just a founder and one other person that that that founder executive director has enormous challenges and but they’ll find something for themselves and for their organization at the symposium. Absolutely. And i think alex mentioned the nuts and bolts said that there’s nothing to track we’re talking one or two of the other sessions might just spur a thought or be applicable to a certain situation they’re facing. And again, i think, almost as important as the networking meeting other people in the same situation, talking to board members and others there who have a lot more experience and it’s really a great sharing experience old the whole day. And alex, how about the other the other tracks? Sure. So the other two tracks or the master’s track this past year is john mentioned earlier, we started a what we called a masters forum for the more experienced members of our group who wanted to have something that was a little more challenging or something at their level. Some of these people have been members for perhaps two decades that have been doing twenty or thirty years of work in plan. Giving or now gift planning, our master’s track is for those who are more experienced or for those who want to challenge themselves a little bit. We have the panel john described earlier and off the top of my head. We also have someone discussing charter bally trust, which is ah hyre level technique that donors who may be up against the five million dollar estate tax issue might be willing to consider. So we tried offer something for every level. So we talked about nuts and bolts. We talked about the masters. Our third, a new track this year is innovation and innovation focuses on the art and psychological aspects of gifts. And i think it’s that to which john might have been eluding recently. So there’s something for everyone there. This will be more the i don’t want to call it the soft part. But this might be why? Why? Someone would want to make a gift or how you broach a person in the correct way in order to get the best result in the end. That’s interesting that innovation. Why? Why you said that’s a new track? Did that come out of the advice that you got from members from last year? Well, in a way, it did, because every year we survey our members, we actually survey them after every lunch and all eight luncheons, and we take their advice to heart and we what we’re seeing throughout the years that people had some technical programs during the lunches and we try to mix it up a little bit on offer someone the rest of what they do. So the other part of what you do is the relationship side and that’s, probably even the more important side you could argue, regardless of your level of knowledge about this plan giving our gift planning aspect, you need to to be able to develop the relationship with the donor or the client. So that’s kind of how that came about a little part of the board looking at what we didn’t provide for members this year and then a small part of what we can do based on member feedback. Ok, of course, we’re talking about the symposium on may twenty sixth, but pygmy also does host monthly luncheons you mentioned. Why don’t you say little about those john? Sure, during the off summer months, every third wednesday, generally we have a luncheon program with a featured speaker and again a networking session beforehand, which is really quite important part of it and generally pre luncheon in the morning will have either a master’s form or a beginner seminar that was the pattern this year. In years past, we’ve had the same speaker doing morning session and then speak it lunch, so check it out and i think we didn’t give you our website yet. All this is on the website, which is www dot ppg and why dot org’s? Okay, you’ll be able to register for the supposing there and to find out about membership for next year, and we’ll resume those monthly luncheons in september. Okay, alex what’s the cost of registration. We have costs based on whether a person is a member or a non member. So i members get a little bit of a break. It’s two hundred seventy five dollars to register any time up until a couple of days before the conference. Non members. Or three. Fifty. And if you bring an additional person from the same organisation? Three hundred dollars. All right, that is the philanthropic planning symposium here. In new york city on may twenty sixth, again, the place to go to register is www dot p p g and why dot org’s? You’ll find out about the group and also the registration for the symposium there. I want to thank john bacon, president of the philanthropic planning group of greater new york, and alex brovey, vice president of the group and chair of the organization’s philanthropic planning symposium. Alex, john, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks durney been a real pleasure. Thank you. Next week, it’s going to be craig newmark craig is the founder of craigslist and he’s going to be my guest he’s going to be with me to talk about craigconnects his latest venture, which helps connect people of goodwill for the common good by highlighting non-profits that are making an impact. I hope you’ll be with me for that conversation with craig newmark. Of course, again, i want to thank my guests today, richard slutzky, john bacon and alex brovey you can keep up with what’s coming up? Sign up for our insider email alerts on the facebook page. If you go to the facebook page, you’ll see quite a bit about the blue pedicure challenge as well, until that scrolls away, but the video will be coming soon. I promised document video documentation you will get it while you’re there. You can, like us, become a fan of the show. Always. The show is on itunes. You can subscribe automatic downloads, of course. Listen on the device of your choice. Anytime you like, you’ll find our itunes paige at non-profit radio dot net creative producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is claire meyerhoff. Our line producer is sam liebowitz, and sam is also the owner of talking alternative broadcasting and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media, who did an outstanding job helping to promote the blue pedicure challenge also want to give a special thanks to bobby fried l he is a professional photographer, he’s in the studio today, he’s shooting stills, he’s shooting video that will be available on the facebook page as well as soon as we get that all together. So special. Thank you to bobby freidel. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio always talking about big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I hope you’ll be with me next week. Next friday, one p. M eastern here on talking alternative broadcasting, which is always at talking alternative dot com. Durney metoo. I think that’s. A good ending. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. Things. It’s. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Do you love movies, then join me and share your pains about them on the radio. This is mike, a movie fan like you, starting may tenth. Join me every tuesday night at six pm for my new show movie time on talking alternative dot com. Call me live or email me at movie time radio. At gmail dot com. We’ll talk about all the blockbusters whose the best director and which movies air overrated, among many other topics. Join me for movie time. Tuesdays at six on talking alternative dot com. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call us ed to one, two, nine, six, four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one, two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors. Magnify your brand exposure and enhancer. Current marketing after their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com you’re listening to talking on their network at www dot talking alt-right dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day.

4 Reasons Planned Giving Is A Jealous Mistress

Bambulka courtesy of M.A.R.I.O.N, on Flickr
Planned Giving does not like to share its affection with other fundraising work. This job post from Twitter reminds me it troubles me to see Planned Giving as part of a split-job responsibility:

NEW JOB!! Development Assoc-Corp/Fdn Rltns & Planned Giving, XXXXX University, Somewhere, USA (bit.ly link omitted)

I’ve got 4 reasons why pairing Planned Giving with other fundraising responsibilities hurts your PG program:

  1. The “other” has shorter deadlines. Whatever it’s paired with, the other fundraising responsibility will have more immediate deadlines, like in the example above. That means PG doesn’t get the attention it needs. Promotion is ignored and relationships aren’t cultivated. The worst combination I’ve seen is with annual fund. In the fourth quarter, the goals are weekly. How much PG do you think gets done in those three months–and the hectic planning leading up to them?
  2. The “other” yields cash sooner. A planned gift nearly always means cash to your nonprofit at the death of the donor. The exceptions are IRA rollovers and the rare charitable lead trust. Take the annual fund pairing. Cash comes in the door often within weeks of a solicitation, and certainly that year. You can wait decades for money to come from the planned gift. If the fundraiser is evaluated on money raised in the year, will PG get much attention? The answer to this is balanced and sophisticated performance evaluation criteria. I haven’t seen it for split-job fundraisers.
  3. The administration deceives itself. Having declared Planned Giving to be in someone’s title, the administration and board are satisfied they’ve “got Planned Giving covered.” But because it gets short shrift (see 1 and 2 above), PG isn’t covered. It’s largely ignored.
  4. PG never gets its equivalent share of the title. If it’s half the title, as in Director of Major and Planned Gifts, it won’t get 50% of the fundraiser’s attention and time. I once saw “Director of Annual Fund, Foundation Relations and Planned Giving” at a college. That’s silly, for the reasons above.

I don’t presume every organization can afford an employee devoted to Planned Giving. Such a presumption would also be silly. But expectations must align with reality. I see gross misalignment, because administrators and boards don’t recognize the jealous side of Planned Giving.

Nonprofit Radio for April 8, 2011: Excel in Email Execution

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

You can subscribe on iTunes and listen anytime, anyplace on the device of your choice.

I’ve posted some questions about this topic on the show’s Facebook page. Click over and give me and my guests some insight and direction on what you need to know regarding email marketing and execution.

Tony’s Guests:

Dave Poulos, Principal of Granite Partners, will share 5 Elements of Effective Email Marketing and have tips for list hygiene.

  • Are you getting the most out of email?
  • Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practices?


 
Claire Meyerhoff is Editorial Director at The Planned Giving Company. She will reveal how to write for email fundraising, so your messages get opened, read and responded to.

 

Top Trends. Sound Advice. Lively Conversation.

You’re on the air and on target as I delve into the big issues facing your nonprofit—and your career.

If you have big dreams but an average budget, tune in to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.

I interview the best in the business on every topic from board relations, fundraising, social media and compliance, to technology, accounting, volunteer management, finance, marketing and beyond. Always with you in mind.

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Here is a link to the podcast: 036: Excel in Email Execution.
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Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host last week on the april fool’s edition, it was ask awareness for small shops that was with amy eisenstein. She’s, the author of fifty, asks in fifty weeks, and she shared lots of valuable insights for opening up relationships, identifying prospects, cultivating and soliciting all for small development shops. In fact, one of our listeners posted to the facebook page that it was the best hour she spent all week last week. I appreciate that this week we excel in email execution, it’s going to be dave pulis davis principle of granite partners and he’s going to share five elements of effective email marketing and also have other tips about list hygiene. Are you getting the most out of your e mail? How do you develop an email list if you don’t have one? Is your list hygienic and only engaging in safe practises? Also claire meyerhoff claire is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is this show’s creative producer claire’s going to reveal how to write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened rid. And responded to so we’re all about email in this hour between my guests, it’s tony’s, take two at roughly thirty two minutes into the hour, and this week on tony’s, take two five ways to be a planned e-giving evangelist or an evangelist for whatever it is that you love doing that’s on tony’s, take two. So we’re all about email this week. After this break, i’ll be joined by dave pulis and where we’ll get started with our excel in email execution show. Stay with me. Did the shooting getting ding, ding, ding, ding? You’re listening to the talking, alternate network waiting to get in. Good. Cubine is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police crawl are said to want to nine, six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio were all about email today, and i’m joined now by dave pulis. Dave, how you doing? Good morning. Thanks for having me, it’s my pleasure to have you welcome. Dave is the ceo and chief consultant of granite partners, which you’ll find out granite hyphen, part p a r t dot com he has been creating successful marketing programs for clients, mostly in the washington d c metro area for over twenty five years, and i’m very glad that his work and his expertise in email marketing specifically bring him to the show. Welcome again, dave, thank you, david. What does somebody do if they don’t have an email list to get started with him as well? Talk about building the list before we talk about what to do with it. Uh, there are a number of approaches that depends on what situation you’re in. If you’re looking for consumers, there are off a lot of ways to build a consumer list. Um, one of the more prominent and more recently evolved is the social media. You can use social media to evolve yourself into an e mail list based on friendster, facebook twitter followers linked in connections those kind of things can all be gathered and uses a colonel for a personal sort of networking list that you can use to promote whatever business you’re in. Okay, we’re non-profits fundraisers, it’s a little more complicated. Okay, well, that’s let’s deal with complicated cause. Our audience is small and midsize non-profit so that’s that’s where we want to be how should they go about it if they have a list of people who have been supporting them? Maybe just for a couple of years, maybe for many years, but they don’t have email lists. Uh, probably the first thing to do is make sure you have permission to communicate with their members are builders. They say something. Do you have a least an address for them? Send him a postcard asked him to send you back their email address. In response, you’ll give them some sort of data special report or a copy of research or something the value to them in response in return for them giving up their email. Okay, so use their their physical address to get their email address or okay on your website if the organization has a website. And you simply ask visitor’s log in before they can access certain pieces of it or certain information that they need include a lot to give them your e mail address. In that way, you can collect it and use it for later. Okay, so maybe not to get to your home page, but to get to some deeper content on your site. You mean then then there’s ah, little there’s an access that requires email address that’s one good way to do it. Because you’re making sure that it’s not just a casual visitor, you’re having themselves collect by their level of interest. Okay, okay. What’s, what you would end up doing if you if you put it on the front of the home page, you’re going to get every tom, dick and harry that entered that in the search. They wanted to see the front page and make sure they got to the right spot. See if there’s anything of interest there at all, you make them register, you get their email address, you send out e mails. You wasted all that time, money and effort to maintain the list. And they have no interest in on what you’re offering right? Ok? Or you might even just turn people off who might have an interest, but they said just to see the home page, i have to sign in, right? Right, you’re going to get some abandonment issues, they’re for your for your web page as well, and there are people that have a legitimate reason to see your front page and can use the information, but that you don’t want to write. I love how you call it abandonment. I’m not going to put you in jargon jail for that way have jog in jail here on tony martignetti non-profit but i already know you. I said it and then you called it abandonment. I just love the you know everybody every every business has its has its language. So abandonment issues. Yes, of your plus, if you know if you having spouse problems, that could be an abandonment issue. But we’re not going that deep again. That’s a different show that’s ahold of yes that’s a whole different person. Um, abandon ministers? Yes. Alright. What about what about events? And if you’re hosting an event, maybe just put post cards on the table at the events or something like that. Anytime you’re gathering an environment where you have potential donors or potential participants, you want to make sure you’re gathering, collecting email addresses, okay, people importing them on their business cards. It’s a good way to start raffles contest, even offering as i do on my website content in exchange for the information we talked about it buying, offering by mail some sort of special report i offer electronically a report on my website and i forced people to give me their email address, so i consented to them. Okay, electronically and it’s, a much fairer trade and people who are looking for something to read like to receive free reading material and return. It makes a lot of that now. Will people see that example on the site that i gave the girl to granite hyphen p a r t dot com they will there’s a new report there on how engaged customers on the left hand column. If you click there, you’ll be able to download on a free pdf of a report guard through some research. We did a little while ago about how to engage customers. Also have tto log in. To give me your email address, i can send it to you, you’ll get a response back that tells you yes, we received your order, and if you like anything else, please let us know, and you’ll also get a confirmation of the fact that you received the order and a questionnaire about whether you like it or not. Okay, so i assume those are all the best practices because you’re doing them for your business, it’s all automatic. I don’t have to do a dog gone thing, and it makes people connected to me much better and gives them a lot more opportunity to give me feedback on the information. And unless they collect their name without creating too much of a problem with their identity and something you alluded to in that description of the way you’re recommending things go about o r non-profits go about building this list is having permission. What? What is what is permission? Marketing and how do we get permission? Permission marketing is a critical step in producing effective push down marketing. What you’re essentially doing is letting people to give you their permission to market to them. And that does two things. One engages their level of interest and let them self select what they want to receive. Two it also tell you how they want to receive it by medium, he opted in is a way of gathering permission marketing. If you send out an e mail to all your members, say ifyou’re non-profit membership organization and say, we’re updating our record, we’d like to give you would like you to give us your email address so we can communicate with you that way. Check the following boxes about what’s appropriate what the best address to use is if we have this information correct listed below. Check that and we’ll keep that. And also, if you do not like to receive anything from us, check the box below to opt out, so opt in permission has sort of past it if you give them an opt out option it’s a little less over on a lot of people to sort of ignore it, which gives you sort of tacit permission to market to them. But the trick is they’ve given you the information and are allowing you to market to them directly without being directly at fort alright, and then you as the e mailer as the non-profit have a responsibility to honor all those selections that the person has made. Absolutely. And if you don’t honor them, your reputation with that person and in general, gets tarnished to the point where it’s almost unusable, and we’ll go into that a little further with, with the a little later on. Ok, we’re going to take a break right now. My guest is dave polish. We’re talking about excellence in email, execution, stay with us, talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. 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Well, cleanly is one that functions and deliver your message precisely where you wanted to go every time. And there are a couple of things that you need to start with. You’ve built a list that you think is right. The first thing is to make sure that what you start with is good, that we all know about computers, garbage in, garbage out. You have to make sure that you all the addresses fit and conformed to the format for proper email address. Okay. Typos, bat fingering the addresses, getting things backwards, transposing characters. Email addresses are far, far higher accuracy level than postal address. Write the e mail. I just has to be exact, right has to be perfect, another perfect every time or it will not go. I know what you have to do is check it bilich manually and electronically to make sure that all conforms and you, khun, send every piece of mail on their towards both to go ok is the simplest way to do that. To send a test email to someone to verify that on dh, then get their permission in the way you described is that is that a decent way to do it? Uh, you’re better off eyeballing a list firsthand mechanical and then going through optically and and making sure you haven’t missed anything. Because if you get things wrong, you may get stuck or trapped in filters and create problems. And what that’s going to do is block you when you get the right of duitz okay, you want to clean it up visually? First, as best you can make sure that all the symbols are right before the domain name it’s not a exclamation point instead because i’m gonna get the wrong key. Happens a lot. You can do search and replace doing this. It takes very little time. To do it electronically and then go through and i bought a list they just have to three people looking over, make sure there’s no glaring errors. You want to make sure that all the domain names that have the letters spam in them are taken out those traps put in there by the sometimes when you rent list more often than not, but occasionally somebody’ll flip one in there. When they’re registering, they’ll give you a bogus address that doesn’t really exist. You want to pull out the ones that have a domain name that’s sort of suspicious looking, you’ll learn about it after a while to make sure you’re getting exactly what you think you’re getting, okay, so to get behind to get into the content, let’s say so this wouldn’t thiss wouldn’t be people filling out cards at an event, probably or mailing back in response, it’s when registering so people might give bogus address you know i don’t have such a good hearted person, i don’t even think of e don’t even think of people cheating on something so simple is that really learned over time that it’s ok, you fill out a form somebody’s going to send you back something, and often those lists are sold over and over and over again, and by the time the third generation sale is over, you have no relevance to the list of all right, and you’re getting stuff that you really don’t want it clogging up your e mail box, and you don’t want that, so they either make up a fake address to give you so that bill passed through the filters as a legitimate address initially, or they’ll give you one that they never open, which isn’t gonna do you any good. Anyway, a lot of those gmail accounts or a well accounts that are free people will just have one of those strictly as they used to fill out all that junk drops into there. I see you don’t want to be in that list. You want to see a legitimate lift with a legitimate carrier, verizon or comcast, or or one of those for home and the businesses typically you want them to reflect the domain of the business there. Part of that tells you a legitimate what gmail but gmail dahna all those could be legitimate accounts, you couldn’t you couldn’t screen all those out? No, you can’t, but you can see one that looks, uh two, far from their real given name. If you have that to compare it to, uh, nobody’s registering, you know, as nerd sixty five jool and they’re not giving you a scientific address or their name is fred spelled backwards or something. You start to look at the bogus ones and figure it out. Okay? And since you did mention something that we hadn’t talked about in developing the list, let’s, talk a little about purchasing a list. What is that valuable for the small or midsize non-profit purchasing a list rental and compiled lists can be of value. You have to be very careful about the source if you go through a legitimate list broker and you’re looking for a very legitimate piece of a database that concerns especially business addresses. Yes, you can gain a lot out of that because those things have been double opt in check they’ve been verified on a monthly basis that they do exist and they are really and that they do fit the profile that you’ve selected when you rented the list. Now you have to keep in mind that those are usually for one time use only, and you cannot reuse them unless you have a special agreement from the renter compile lists are another story, those of those public things that you could buy that say have been scraped off of websites or have been captured out of the air from from email conversations and that kind of thing. Hackers will market these things to bring an extra bucks. They’re not very useful, they’re not very male herbal, and you’re getting into some serious spamming trouble by even attempting to use most of them because they’re loaded with with the monitors and traps and keys in their little tell people that you’re ok, then you want to be working with a legitimate company that you can verify you mentioned scraping off female what’s your trading closely to jorgen jail has, and it sort of has a a suggestion of what it is, but but i don’t want you to even be anywhere near drug in jail. So what? What is scraping somebody’s? It sounds like unsavory practice. It isn’t unsavory practice in its connotation, and it is information what you want to avoid. There are people out there, who will go to a business website and literally capture copy paste electronically scrape off every email address that’s buried in there. Your entire staff listing all your if you’re going to a law firm, they’ve got every lawyer listed on there with a love with a separate email address for them, they’re going to scrape all those off of there and compile them all into a big list. Listen, this may be legitimate, but they don’t know who they belong to or what they go to what level of persons is they have no information that goes with it, it’s just a list of addresses, as if people would really want to communicate with a bunch of lawyers or anything. There could be no manufacturing firm or, you know, the post office website or anything. They just gathered a bunch of e mail addresses from a bunch of list. Sometimes they’ll use. They’ll sort of piggyback on someone else’s, the internet activity as well, and their going from site to site start scraping through that. Okay, it gets very, very tedious and very touchy when you start doing stuff like that because you have privacy issues, you have legal issues? Uh, spam laws have teeth in them. Ladies and gentlemen, they can sue you for spamming. So you want to be careful what addresses you’re using and who you’re sending? Okay? And i didn’t want to suggest that. Buying a list from from verifiable source would be a good way of trying to get donors. I mean, as a fund-raising consultant, i didn’t mean to suggest that this is a way to acquire new donors, but maybe to acquaint someone with your with your non-profit but you’d have to be very precise in the type of list you bought in terms of the interests of the people. Is that is that possible, dave, to drill into get a list of people who are interested in, i don’t know environmental activism, and but maybe in the pacific northwest, i mean, do the lists from vera from from stable and appropriate cos come with that level of detail, some do, and some do not, uh, they’re further a head for business than they are for kapin consumer availability, drilling that deeply. Okay, if you drill down into segments that deeply on consumer list, chances are good you’re gonna have to pay a pretty penny for it. A good place to start with that if you have a specific interest, they look bilich environmental, you would want to try going to print publication that deal with that concept sierra club or audubon society or any of those that deal in environmental issues routinely subscriber list from them could be segmented by geography. And you could also rent additionally, email addresses that go with those mailing address him that way. Excellent idea. Okay, because that, yes, you know, the publications targeted. Okay, great. All right, so we need to get around that trying to pull that out of a compiled list is virtually impossible. Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. So we’ve developed our list. We understand how to get it clean and make sure it stays clean. Has to be maintained another thing, because now thing out, once you’re going to get some activity coming back from it, not only response is that you want, but response is you don’t want your going to get people that ask you to take them off. You’re going to get because you missed the target. It wasn’t who you thought it was not interested. And they don’t want you to lock up their box for the next six months with stuff they don’t need. That’s a good thing. You like getting those out of there? Because that saves you time and money. Yes, too. You’re gonna have people that were out of the office that day and i just bounced back and told you they may get hurt or they may not. Three you’re going to have bounced back for another reason, theis, and that part of the country was a little slow that day and missed something. There was a glitch in in a certain segment of the internet that went down for a moment your mail got trapped in it could be any number of other things. There’s a whole series of bounce back code that the internet service provider will give you that helps you interpret those bounce back unless you separate them out and decide whether to keep that address that is a temporary thing or whether it’s permanent it’ll tell you if you got the address wrong, if that person’s not at that address anymore. If that business is not there, that remains not active. Whatever they’ll tell you. What the problem woobox with it, when you learn how to read the code, we got to get those out of there. Once you’ve sent the first one, you’re gonna have to be prepared with how to deal with all those. Things that bounce back and those happen fairly quickly, usually within the first hour or so after you send it. Okay, so that’s that’s really list maintenance and that that’s going to be happening every time you send to your list sounds like there will be a certain level of activity depending on how little that down to practically nothing. Yeah, alright, depending on how many people you’re mailing to if it’s just a few hundred, you’ll have fewer of those which is get you in fewer because you’re making good decisions based upon those code taking the bad ones that are going to be permanently bad out. All right, you’re not re mailing, right? Okay. So, uh, well, let me just remind people that my guest is dave polish he’s, the principal of granite partners. And we’re talking about ex selling in your email execution. So then, dave, we have developed our list and it’s clean, and we’ve gotten the appropriate permissions and we know how to maintain the list over time. You have some elements of effective messaging, actually. What to say? What? What? What’s. Your first bit of advice on what the content of the message should. Be, uh, some of it is what to say, and so that is how to say it. Okay, um, the first thing you’re going to notice is that with the new influx of mobile customers that are out there that have their email come to a mobile device, you have far less real estate with which to impress the recipients you have basically a from a dress and a single subject line that’s all they’re going to see on a mobile device there’s no preview function. So what you have to do is make sure that a the address you’re sending from is from a brand they will recognize or at least understand. So whatever service you are using to send these out, if its outlook, you have to set up a box that sort of carrie’s co-branded makes sense for the outgoing mail or if it’s a service, you want to make sure that they’ve gotten you on outgoing address that reflects your brand so that they know who this thing is from and they recognize. But wouldn’t wouldn’t the service just be using your own? You’re you’re non-profit domain name, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t they have what’s called rotating? Yeah, what’s. A rotating what’s, a rotating. Why would they understand? Why would they rotate for the same non-profit why would they use different domain names to send from? They’ll mask them behind an existing name, so the recipient will only see your name, but they’re using ten or twelve different outgoing addresses because they could shove more down the data pipe. That way they can spread your list out, get it out the door faster, but if you’re a non-profit you want it to come from your domain, absolutely time your domain is that the physical space that your domain inhabits doesn’t allow enough passed through dahna you can’t shove enough email through it fast enough because you just don’t have enough bandwidth, you didn’t run enough stone, so what happens is they’ll spread it out and they’ll mask it. They’ll refer to your domain name. The recipient only sees your domain, which is good, but they’re using ten twelve different ones with sam filters will pick up on the sub and block things out on who’s, the who’s the day that we’re talking about is this a company like constant contact? Is that o r who’s today you’re referring to there are service providers after that do nothing but deliver both female. They are, they’re registered there, certified they’re they’re very, very compliant with the service providers that give you internet access and then actually deliver and carry the mail. This is a middleman that you would go to as a non-profit if you have a list of of ten or twenty thousand potential donors that you’re going to be sending to routinely, you’re not gonna be able to shelve twenty thousand addresses through your outlook account and with any kind of accuracy or time limit. Okay, so what you’re gonna do is anything over about two hundred names you’re gonna want to goto what provider that sends out both female for a living that’s all they do and is constant contact an example of what you’re talking about male chimp? Is that an example? Or there are eyes that i am i in the wrong line, the wrong space, you’re in a similar space in a different scale gostin contact and male chimp and those kind of things arm or of the do-it-yourself version of that, their sort of big versions of outlook, they’re attached to larger relation all databases that lets you get mail out in larger volumes by yourself from your workstation, ok, here, but if you’re sending ten and twenty thousand, even though we’re gonna have a problem, they’re going to start to bog down and go very slowly, and they’re going to use up a lot of bandwidth, okay, but for our audience of small and midsize non-profits the ones i mentioned, what might be suitable absolutely after they’re a great way to get started. If you’re looking at that between two and five thousand names of any kind. Yeah, constant contact, be a very good bargain, ok, dave, we have just a little less than a minute left. Why don’t you tell us what you think is coming next? What’s the what’s, the next generation of email going to look like email’s going to get a lot more robust in the next six months to a year, you can bet on the fact that you’ll be able to embed photographs and video in your outgoing e mail and have it be interactive and reacted currently, if you put an image in an email, you run the risk of having it be screened out by spam filters or by network. Firewall because they don’t allow images, they scan for them and they remove the as being too large, and they cut down on the volume of data traffic so they get rid of them. So if you’re putting an image in there, one of the things we tell people who don’t let the image tell the entire story, have some text that tells the story because the image probably going to make it and you see video coming in email, absolutely video will be able to be embedded in outgoing email beyond the capability we have today where it’s, just a lincoln it’s, actually resident somewhere else. We’re going to be able to actually carry video imagery on before too long. All right, we have to leave it there. Dave pulis principle of granite partners, which you’ll find at granite hyphen part piela dot com dave, thank you very much for being a guest. Thank you for your excellent ideas. Pleasure. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. After this break, it’s tony’s, take two. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Geever oh, this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission one one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back. It is roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, which means it’s time for tony’s take two, and after that, i’ll be joined by claire meyerhoff and we’ll continue talking about ex selling in email execution five four tonys take two five ways to be a plant e-giving evangelist something i blogged about this week, it actually could apply to anything that you that you do that you love doing, and i hope you really love the work that you do so much so that you want to evangelize about it. I chose planned giving as the subject of my evangelism on this week’s blawg, and i’ll just share a couple of the things that i think go into being an evangelist for what you do. Yeah, i love it, you know, in my example, you gotta love plant e-giving you gotta recognize that it has value for non-profits and for donors and for their families, and recognize the good that it khun do for society as you’re helping charitable missions. So whatever it is that you want to evangelize about, you really have to love it and be unashamed about your love of it don’t talk you know sort of humbly or shyly about whatever it is you want to evangelize about, you got you need to be out in the open, you need to be enthusiastic, which should be easy because you love what it is you’re talking about, so carry that enthusiasm don’t don’t don’t talk, you know, sort of humbly about your your love of the subject you want to evangelize about lear, love of your work and and and as you’re being unashamed, spread that word, spread it to people that you work with, people who are in your network that you don’t work with, um, when the topic comes up, you know, what do you do? What do you love doing? You want to be unashamed about sharing it, and you want to use the opportunities that you have to spread the word. And so those are three of the ways that i think you could be a plant e-giving evangelist or an evangelist about whatever it is you love to do, and you can see my blogging m p g a d v dot com for more on those ways and a couple of additional ways as well, and also always the reminder that we are on itunes you can subscribe at itunes, listen and get automatic downloads of the show and listen at your leisure on the device of your choice, whether that’s, tablet or phone or desktop or laptop and that is always at non-profit radio dot net that is tony’s take two for friday, april eighth. I’m joined now my guest is claire meyerhoff. Claire, how are you doing, tony, right, how are you? Pleasure to have you back. I’m well, thank you very much. Claire meyerhoff is editorial director at the plant e-giving company, and she is the creative producer of this show. We’re going to talk about howto write for email fund-raising so that your messages get opened, read and respond to do so. Continuing the topic of excel ing in email execution claire so dave paulus sort of left us with write a perfect point, i think, talking about the header of the email he talked about where it’s from what’s your advice about the subject line of the email? Well, the subject line is really important because if you think about your own email use, what do you do? You’re on your iphone slip. Through it. So the subject find is very important and what you want to do, it make really some buddy. So so whatever you are promising them, you need to deliver it on the inside. All right, clara, i’ll tell you what were you sure need to repeat? Actually, what you said about the subject line because you were you’re breaking up. You’re on a landline, right? I am on a landline, and i’m hearing some feedback. Okay? I know the feedback is a little challenging. Try toe, i guess. Talk through the feedback and or maybe not listen so much, but just just talk on dh when you’re done talking, then put the earpiece back to your ear. But could you tell us again what your advice is for the subject line? I’ll do that. Ok, ok, my advice for the subject line is the subject line is going to be the thing that the person will either open it for. They will delete it so your subject line needs to be something that is really, truly news. What? What is it that you are going to be telling people or you want them to do or you want them to hear about most? So put that in there and basically only about thirty characters or so because they don’t even see the rest of us. Put your good stuff up front. Yeah, you sort of have to write that like headline, right, it’s, it’s, a lot like a headline and think about the news business and think about why you pick up a newspaper and read it it’s because of the headlines and any new yorker knows that york post the daily news, they’ve had a long history of really pretty interesting headlines that really grabs your attention. So think about the same thing with your non-profit what is your non-profits headline? And what is the headline for this newsletter that for sending people something generic, like may newsletter june newsletter? Okay, yeah, i have to. Yeah, the new york times are the sari, the daily news and the new york post. My favorite. Well, one of my favorites there’s a whole book about new york post headlines, which is it’s called topless body in head headless body in topless bar. Aunt, i have a copy of that, but it’s a headless body in topless bar from a murder. But one of my favorites was when jack cousteau’s ship crashed and the headline was calypso collapse. So isn’t that genius? I just have to show you right now, it’s go on and you’re like a save the whales organization. You’re not gonna have that to live so collapse. So are anything like that? So i think that’s pretty cool, it’s. Hard to be that clever. But those clever and you know what? If you were that clever, someone would probably open up your email. Certainly. What do you have any other advice for? The for that header information. Uh, maybe the from la who should be from or or any other advice there. Well, unless everybody knows that lisa is the head of your organization, it shouldn’t be from one person instead, make it from your organization and have it the name something that is sort of more of an action. Kind of a word. Like not information, but news. Maybe, you know, news at habitat for humanity, dot com or something like that. So give it give it a name that is a little newsy sounding might get someone’s attention better than, say, info at or or you know, something really generic and, you know, keep again, keep it really, really short. And you put the key words right up front and whatever some buzz words are that air right now in your field. So if sustainability or something is a good buzz word, that and so definitely just put the key words right up front that the main thing, okay? And you mean in the from line, so maybe sustainability at the domain is that is that what you’re suggesting? I’m talking about the subject line, so okay, you have your nature organization, and you’re always talking about sustainability, and the name of your newsletter is something with sustainability. Perhaps that could be your email address. I hadn’t thought of that, but it could be whatever, whatever you want. So that it’s recognizable and again it’s all about the brand and it’s recognizable and always be thinking about who your audience is. And i like to think of your email recipients, the people that will open the email and those are the ones we care about, the most people that actually open it, and then the few that follow through, right? Who were those people? Those are your most boyle people just like implant e-giving who were the best plan giving donors your boil donors, people, that e-giving for a long time with the people that are actually opening and reading. Your email, those who you’re really boils followers those year loyal supporters? Yes. Oh, so you’re you want you’re saying you want to have them in mind as you’re crafting your message? Exactly. Keep them in mind. What? What do they care about? So think about a few people that you know, supporters of your organizations have names and faces and think about what are they interested in? What is kathy interested in? What is robert interested in and crafted that way? Ok, on, daz were crafting our message. What’s your advice about how long it should be the subject line. Oh, no, the length of the body of the message. The body of the entire email newsletter should be chunked. So if you have, you know, one big article, you know, trumped that up into different articles. But faras length, you know, there’s. No specific lengths to into an e newsletter. It could be his long or short. As as you like. Think about the ones that you read and pattern yourself after that. If you’re bored after a certain amount of time, then your readers our board, pretty sure. Okay. What other advice have you got to share? I’ve been sort of, you know, suggesting topics, but you tell us tell me what? Your your advices. Well, here is some duitz do plan ahead. A newsletter done that’s on the fly usually looks like it’s been done on the fly. So plan your news letter ahead of time and that means preparing an editorial calendar. Maybe for the whole year. How often are you going to send these out? If you feel like you can send out one a month that’s great. And then think about what you might be doing in those months. Like, if you know, your annual report is coming out and you’re gonna have a lot of new information, then you know that khun, your main news letter might be packed with a lot of great, um, like statistical information, all kinds of cool stuff that you know about in may, but of course in december of the holidays, so you know that you can do holiday related things, so come up with an editorial calendar, so if you’re going to do it once a month, pick a day that you think is a good day to send it out when your readers are most likely to read it and then plan ahead, say well in in february and do this in march. We’re going to do that and have a couple of things knowing full well, what what’s going on if it’s september back to school and that’s important for your organization. Well, then that’s your back to school newsletter and you know you’re going tohave information about that and also decide on a goal before you do your newsletter what’s. The goal of the newsletter is the goal just oh, well, we want to tell people a bunch of stuff that’s going on. Well, that’s not a goal. What’s your real specific goal. Are you entering into a campaign? Are you announcing something? And you want everybody to know about it? Are you trying to raise money? Are you trying to get people to come to an event to sign up for a walkathon? What is the goal of the newsletter and then work backwards from what your goal is. Okay, claire, we just have about thirty seconds before the break. You mentioned planning ahead. And maybe as much as a year as you’re developing your email marketing plan. You want that? To be dovetailed with your other marketing activities, right, you might be sending print pieces as well around your events, things like that, right, absolutely. And marketing is a huge challenge for most small non-profits. The person doing marketing is also doing fifty other things, so the more planned you khun b, the easier it makes your job, so have a little marketing plan for the year, even if it’s one page and it’s a calendar, we’re going to do this in january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august and it’s all about when you send postcards. When you send email, when you send a regular newsletter and other mailing, okay, we’re going to take a break. My guest is clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plant e-giving company were ex selling an email execution stay with us talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Durney i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com upleaf do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing for mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking dot com. Dahna hello and welcome back. I’m talking to claire meyerhoff and were ex selling in your email execution. Claire, you had a list of do’s that you wanted, teo continue sharing with us. Well, some other dues are due. Motivate your reader. You are sending this email to them, and you want them to do something and you need to motivate them to do it. And the easiest way to keep them unmotivated is too forthem, boring and dull. And the best way to do to motivate them is to tell them about something great that’s going on. That really would matter to them. So, do you have a really great event coming up? Do you have something really cool that you and your organization to tell people about it’s is? And news means it’s, usually something you what’s going on in your organization. That’s important to your reader? Not just what’s important to you? Yeah. You just finished your quarterly report, or or you have a new, you know, drink machine in the break room that might be important to you. But it’s not important to your readers. So think about the things that you are. Reader will think. Okay? And that’s consistent with your advice earlier just have a few people in mind and think about what’s interesting to them and write to that audience and think about what’s interesting to them also do the cocktail party saying or the or the coffee shop thing where if you ran into someone at starbucks and they said, hey, what’s new in your organization will help. Yeah, excellent, right? If you just had a couple of minutes, right? Excellent. Another any other dues? Uh, you might want to tell people why this is important now, which is usually through for fund-raising so what is going on right now? Why this is important. So if you’re an environmental organization and there’s some sort of threat that’s what you want to tell people about right now, we need to do this now you need to sign the petition. Now you need to send the money now we’re trying to fight it now your call to action it’s the call to action and make sure your call to action really is a call to action and that you’re writing matches the urgency of it. What i see a lot of times in email that i get from a lot of different non-profits is, you know, it’s sort of the henny penny email the sky is falling, they’re taking our rights away and they’re going to ruin the environment and they’re really bad, and i don’t really want to see that i want to see the action i want to see, like what you were doing, like, you know, we’ve got a bus on its way to this place full of volunteers, and they’re all going, and we need some gas money, like, i want to know what the thing is right now, the action that you’re doing that you need my help, why are you writing to may? Why is that news? So tell me that okay, before we get to your don’ts, which i’m sure you have, how do you make sure that you’re emails are consistent with your general identity for the organization? So they look like the rest of what you send out, whether it’s emails or website or or print well, that goes back to your marketing plan if you have one in some places, don’t you don’t have one it’s pretty common. So think about a couple of simple things that you always do and include that in your newsletter. So if you always have a pet of the month because you’re the animal adoption agency and you always have a pet of the month and you have a cute little name for it used that, make sure you use that in your in your identity, so use those identifiable things that you’ve already created, and if you don’t have some it’s time to create them, okay, so that’s excellent that’s the substance? What about just the appearance of the messages? How do you mean by the appear? What? What artwork? You might include the photos or our identity elements that you have for your non-profit well, i was listening todavia earlier about sending photos and e mails and how a lot of those get filtered out. So i’m definitely thinking about the photo thing because if people aren’t getting them that maybe not a great fool. I love photos if you can use photos, photos are the best and frankly, a lot of times your most loyal donors are also on facebook, and they’re a friend of your organization on facebook and as long as you’re not putting up things like ten times a day, they’re interested in being what you have there not gonna block you. Okay, so think about your facebook think about your email newsletter in conjunction with each other and how they can play off each other. So if you have a great, great photographic like the best photograph that tells the story of your mission like no other photograph, use that photograph a lot of times, repurpose it so you might want to send it in your e news letter and have it on your facebook and in your e newsletter say there are more photos like this on the facebook or on our web sights and people through the website where there are more of these great photographs and then take that really great that one great photographs and put it in your print newsletter used it on a postcard for fund-raising let’s say, you’re doing a little plan giving postcard campaign. Put that one great photo on that postcard so we use the good stuff that you have. Good, we have just about two minutes left. What are some of the don’ts that you want to share? Well, it’s funny that you say that because i try to be positive these days. So i wrote a big list. Do you have all dues and no don’t so i thought for sure. Ok, right around. Okay, well, so okay. Don’t don’t be not creative. Be creative, be creative use of environmental organization. And you just did a survey about ice source in your community. What are the top three? See, that would really get attention. So be creative with stuff. The good stuff that you have that’s interesting that your organization really had a handle on. So let’s say you are an environmental organization. You just did a big survey, and out of that survey results came the, you know, little thing that wasn’t the main focus, but in it was, you know, people complain the most about the certain areas in your county that we’re the biggest eyesores. Well, that’s a new story for you where you can say, what are the top three ugliest eyesores, the whole county. And you can do a lot with that that’s really interesting people will open up that email is your town, you know? Is this eyesore in your neighborhood? Why don’t you leave? Us with one more of your dues or however you want to phrase it dues or don’ts duse or don’t? Well, i like to talk about, you know, writing and words and storytelling, so just do tell really good stories that are about someone that affect other people don’t talk about yourself and how how great you are, talk about the people that you’re serving and how you’re solving prop emblems for people. I’ll give you this one. This is my one last tip i give everybody these days, you can’t think of a story, look at the money, find out a recent gift that you’ve got and how did you use that money? And then find the person that’s benefiting from the money that you’re using. So, for instance, if you just got a gift and you build a handicap ramp, who is benefiting from that handicapped wrapped rampant your facility to find that person and do a story about them and that’s where you find your story stories, they’re everywhere to follow the money, certainly because charities are doing good work so people who are people are benefiting those stories should be very common, right? Where’s the money. Going find, find someone benefiting from it and focus on them. And where would their life be without this organization? And where would their life be without specifically this money that just came in and how it was used? You had a big campaign. Everybody gave money, you raised thousands and thousands of dollars. Where did it go? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, claire. My guest has been clear meyerhoff editorial director at the plan giving company and creative producer for tony martignetti non-profit radio next week we’re going to be all about auctions if if we bring that a little further, may weaken do advertising and awareness advancements in auctions in america. But well, for right now will just stop with all about auctions silent, loud or online. What’s it all about auction’s. My guest is going to be roger divine of divine assistance and he’s going to explain what auctions are all about. I hope you’ll be part of that conversation on we’ll have a group sing at the end. Maybe also scott koegler, our tech guru, and he’s, our regular contributor. Of course, you know that he’s, the editor of non-profit technology news and he’s going to share what’s newest in technology for your non-profit keep up with what’s coming up on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Sign up for our email alerts on the facebook page at facebook dot com and then the name of this show. And while you’re there, like us, become a fan on itunes, as i talked about earlier, that is always found at non-profit radio dot net subscribed. Listen, any time on the device of your choice, as i said, a few times are creative producer is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media. Booker t and the mgs composed our theme music. Thank you very much, guys. I hope you’ll join me next friday, one p m eastern for tony martignetti non-profit radio, as always on talking alternative broadcasting found at talking alternative dot com. You’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. Dahna cubine are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing time? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed, i and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com you’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fit. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two eight six five nine two nine. Zero or visit w w w died. Mind over matter. Y si dot com. Durney talking. Hyre

Have You Heard These 5 Ways To Be A Planned Giving Evangelist?

Street Evangelism (ca. 1961). Courtesy of Sherlock77 (James) on Flickr

An evangelist is an enthusiastic advocate, someone zealous about a cause. I’m an evangelist for Planned Giving, and I highly recommend the work. Want to join my crusade?

This is what I think it takes:

  1. Love Planned Giving. Believe deeply that this type of giving can transform nonprofits–whatever their missions–and help donors make their ultimate gift to the charitable works they love. Recognize that a nonprofit without some form of Planned Giving program is hurting its future and leaving money on the table.
  2. Spread the word. You love it so much you want everyone to share. When you’re at events, in kitchen table donor meetings, with colleagues, in front of a board, in the web, you exude the value of planned gifts to build endowment; expand other giving; secure financial futures; create lifetime donor relationships; bring families closer; and save the lives of the people you serve.
  3. Be unashamed. You beam when you solicit planned gifts, never asking humbly or apologetically. And that’s how you spread the word, with a slight swagger and a good dose of pride, but never haughty or overbearing. You’d love for people to understand, you know they need to understand. You love what you do and want others to know why. You spend your time with those receptive to your message.
  4. Be a lion, not a sheep. Do what others don’t. Rethink the ordinary and typical. Is there an entirely different way? If not, can the same be done better? How can you improve your annual donor seminar? Make it a panel discussion. Make it a webinar. Serve drinks. Make it shorter, more to the point, and part of a larger event. Host it outdoors or in a donor’s living room. Hold a few and make them more intimate. Consider with an open mind that it may not be worth doing. What do you want to re-imagine?
  5. Fill needs. I started a company because no one provided comprehensive, onsite, start-up Planned Giving for nonprofits. I wrote a book on Charity Registration because there wasn’t a comprehensive guide for nonprofits that want to get into compliance. I created a radio show because small and mid-size nonprofits struggle with the same issues that big nonprofits hire experts to help resolve. What void, gap, need, unfulfilled demand makes you lose sleep and shake your head? Finish this sentence: “There really should be . . .” Now go out and make it.

You can be an evangelist for anything, not only Planned Giving, or even fundraising and philanthropy. I think you should be an evangelist for whatever you spend your time doing.

For me, it’s Planned Giving (and my other pursuits).

Join my crusade–or kickoff your own–and enjoy the feeling.