Tag Archives: charity

Reynolds Cafferata Interview at National Conference on Philanthropic Planning

Fundraising Fundamentals, Planned Giving, , , , , , , , ,

I have left the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning to attend and speak at a seminar in New York City today. NCPP in Lake Buena Vista, Florida continues through today.

Yesterday, I interviewed Reynolds Cafferata, Esq. with the law firm of Rodriguez, Horii, Choi & Cafferata in Los Angeles. That’s a tax firm representing nonprofits and their donors (but not in the same transactions–that’d be a conflict, without a waiver).

He had a great attitude about getting behind the podcast mic. Essentially, “I’m here, I’m ready, let’s go.” Not your typical circumspect, practicing attorney.

Reynolds Cafferata, Esq
Reynolds’ conference seminar is “Creating Effective Legal Structures for Multigenerational Philanthropy.” There’s a mouthful. He parsed it for me. “Multigenerational philanthropy” is charitable giving that brings in the kids, grandkids, great grandkids and other heirs depending how far the donor wants to go. And how willing the family is to participate. Some of these legal structures last a term of years and aren’t truly multigenerational. I wouldn’t have asked him to capture that possibility in his program title.

Donors and their families might do this to pass to heirs the value of philanthropy; or because a certain charity or group of charities has been enormously meaningful; or, simply to give back to society and help those in need.

The “legal structures” we discussed are corporations, foundations and trusts. You’ll have to catch the interview for more on those, but we didn’t go into great detail on these vehicles. I wanted to pursue another line.

His firm represents individuals giving to nonprofits, and I was interested in what he’s seen in nonprofits overreaching with donors. His quick answer was the legally enforceable, or binding, pledge agreement. He sees these too often and holds that they bring little or no value to charities and can be detrimental to donors.

Reynolds’ seminar was yesterday afternoon, but you can hear my interview on Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Sign up for show alerts on the Facebook page and you’ll know which show it’ll play on.

Anne Melvin Interview at NCPP

Fundraising Fundamentals, Planned Giving, , , , , , , , , ,

Anne’s seminar at the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning was “Motivating Your Donor Base: The Science (and Art) of Planned Giving Marketing.” That’s a broad topic and we stuck mostly to direct mail marketing.

Anne is Deputy Director of Gift Planning for Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She’s got 17 years in fundraising, the last 12 in planned gift work.

Anne Melvin
Right from the start she identified misplaced marketing time. Her analysis reveals that 20% of the effectiveness of direct mail comes from the art; 40% from segmentation; and 40% from your message. Yet people spend the majority of their time stressing over the look of their piece or package.

We talked a good bit about properly segmenting your direct mail appeals: deciding who to mail to and for what types of gifts. Anne admonishes that if you’re assessing donor loyalty and commitment, say, those who have given 8 gifts in the past 10 years, ignore gift size. Ten and twenty-five dollar gifts matter. Those are donors who think about you year after year, and they’re strong prospects for a planned gift, assuming they’re the right age for the gift vehicle you’re promoting.

Her message on messaging: keep it simple. One message per mailing (or email). Don’t promote bequests and gift annuities in the same package.

Anne has gotten away from letters. She feels their outdated. The pieces we were talking about are self-mailer, three-fold cards, with an integrated reply device. When Anne does newsletters, she prefers envelopes that drop-out or are stapled-in-the-middle. Harvard has concluded that cut-off reply pieces reduce response rates.

Anne’s program was yesterday, but you can hear our discussion on Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Go to the Facebook page for alerts and you’ll know when it’ll broadcast.

P.S. I love the color of her suit. And not because it’s close to the color of my shirt.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy & Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio Interview of Kathryn Miree

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I’m blogging from the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning. Raymund Flandez from The Chronicle of Philanthropy is here and we partnered to talk to Kathryn Miree about her upcoming seminar, Endowments In Crisis! Best Practices for Nonprofit Management to Avoid the Abyss.

Crisis and abyss. Sounds ominous.

She distinguished for us between true and quasi-endowment. The former is when a donor demands in writing that her gift be restricted to a particular purpose in perpetuity. Quasi-endowment refers to a bequest or other unrestricted transfer where the nonprofit board restricts the use of the gift. The organization’s board is free to lift the restriction down the road.

I subjected Kathryn to a short stint in Jargon Jail when she introduced UMIFA and UPMIFA: Uniform Management (and Uniform Prudent Management) of Institutional Funds Act. You’ll have to listen to our interview on The Chronicle of Philanthropy website or Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio to get the details of these laws and how they impact your nonprofit.

Kathryn Miree
A few endowment management best practices she recommends:

  • strong document retention practices (not merely a written policy) to preserve donors’ written instructions
  • accounting methods that closely track your restricted funds’ earnings, additions, expenses
  • standards for the board to set and release quasi-endowments
  • trustees should not act as investment managers; even if they’re unpaid, you risk proper oversight, which is conducted by fellow trustees

If you’re at the conference you can hear Kathryn in-person at 9AM Thursday. Thank you for sitting for an interview, Kathryn!

Raymund, a pleasure to work with you.

These interviews have me looking forward to my next remote podcast day, at NextGen:Charity in NYC on November 18 and 19. I’ll do podcast interviews on Thursday, 11/18. I’ll run over to Bernstein Global Wealth Management for a lunch program at their midtown office. Then on Friday the 19th, I deliver a workshop at NextGen from 11 to 1.

More live tweeting and blogging and podcast interviews tomorrow. (That sentence has 3 words that didn’t exist just 4 or 5 years ago. I feel so 2173.)

Make 2010 the Year YOU Start Planned Giving

Fundraising Fundamentals, Planned Giving, , , , , , , , ,
Man Giving Gift

I’m writing a year-long series of articles for GuideStar to help nonprofits get started in Planned Giving with a bequest marketing program. The penultimate, fifth article, is out today.

While it’s probably too late to start your program in this, the fourth quarter, you can start planning for 2011. The series has been going since February.

If you really want to dig into bequest marketing, here are the first, second, third and fourth pieces. They build on each other to lead you through the process of inaugurating your program.

Bequests are the place to start your Planned Giving program. They are always the most popular gift in any program, regardless of what type of work you do and who your donors are. Why? I explained that in this November 2009 GuideStar gem, “Get Going On Planned Giving.”

This Year’s Clinton Global Initiative

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Sept. 23, 2010 - New York, New York, U.S. - Clinton Global Initiative 2010 Annual Meeting.Closing Plenary Session.The Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, NYC.September 23, 2010.Photos by , Photos Inc 2010..K65983SMO. © Red Carpet Pictures

Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t seen a lot of press about this year’s Clinton Global Initiative. Not that it was ignored, but I heard more about the Iraqi president’s speech to the U.N General Assembly.

CGI is such a praiseworthy event. Commitments get made to nonprofits, not merely paid lip service. Six billion this year.

Reuters covered it, so click over and see what they had to say.