Exciting news! I learned last week that I’ll be joining NextGen:Charity in New York, NY. This is a conference on nonprofit innovation to help charities be more efficient and more effective. The goal is to powerfully connect organizations with donors and community. I’ll be there on Day 1, November 18th, to do interviews for Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio along with sending out updates via this blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
These are some of the people scheduled to speak on day one:
Seth Godin (#1 business blogger & 12-time bestselling author), Nancy Lublin (DoSomething.org & Dress For Success founder), Scott Harrison (charity:water), Peter Thum and Jonathan Greenblatt (Ethos Water), Scott Belsky (Behance), Randi Zuckerberg (Facebook), Joanne Heyman (Urban Zen), as well as Google for Non-Profits, and many others.
On Day 2, November 19th, I’ll lead a two-hour workshop on “Planned Giving & Social Media“. That workshop will be from 11am to 1pm at Columbia University, Lerner Hall (116th Street and Broadway).
This will be an exciting and fun event. Click here or on the picture for a 20% discount to NextGen. You have until November 5th to take advantage of this great speaker’s discount. I’m really glad I can offer it to my friends.
Anne MelvinRight 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 She feels their outdated.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.
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.)
This week I’m at the National Conference on Philanthropic Planning. While here, I’ll interview a few people for Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio and also attend a few sessions.
Aviva’s seminar on Friday is Red Flags & Pitfalls of Planned Giving. She used to have 10 red flags but has jacked it up to 11. That reminds me of the movie Spinal Tap, where the band’s amp has a volume setting of 11 for extra special gigs. I mentioned that during our interview and embarrassed myself by not remembering the name of the film. It occurred to me later and I interrupted her flow to blurt it out. Skilled interviewer, I.
Aviva shared that Planned Giving officers often aren’t aware of their own institutional policies. This leads to trouble when the gift officer assures the donor their gift will be accepted, without realizing a higher level of approval is required. The fundraiser might also promise credit and recognition that the nonprofit isn’t prepared to provide.
Your donor needs counsel that is qualified. Their real estate attorney isn’t knowledgeable in the details of a charitable remainder trust. (Difficult question that I’ve had to answer for clients: how far should the nonprofit go to insure qualified representation?)
Aviva Shiff Boedecker
“Be careful to avoid conflicts of interest,” Aviva warns. Even the appearance of a relationship that’s too cozy can lead to a gift challenge from heirs who feel they aren’t getting enough because your charity is getting a portion of the estate.
Her final advice: don’t be afraid to ask for help. As a gift officer you should know what you don’t know (didn’t Donald Rumsfeld call those “known unknowns”?), and consult an advisor who has the expertise you lack. That could be someone from your trustees or advisory board or a paid consultant. You need not work alone. If you do you could really screw things up. (That last sentence is my own commentary.)
I mentioned Rumsfeld to Aviva. Suffice to say, I don’t think she’s a neo-con lover.
If you’re at the conference you can hear Aviva’s full complement of 11 red flags on Friday 9 to 10. If you listen to my radio show, Friday’s 1 to 2PM Eastern, you’ll hear my full interview with Aviva. Not this week, but soon. You can sign-up for radio show alerts at the Facebook fan page.
Thanks for being my first guest, Aviva!
Next up is Kathryn Miree, this afternoon, on Endowments in Crisis! Raymund should be here by then.
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.”
I’ll be there on Day 1, November 18th, to do interviews for Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio along with sending out updates via this blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
