You (Yes, YOU) Can Talk Confidently About Planned Giving!

Jeff Schreifels 

When you hear the words “planned giving,” do you start to panic? Are you already scrambling to turn this off? Okay, first, relax. This episode is for you. Despite what you may have learned, you do not need to be a licensed attorney to talk to your donors about leaving a gift through their estate. In fact, you are doing a massive disservice to your donors and your mission if you’re not talking to your donors about how to make a legacy gift. But we get that asking these kinds of questions is uncomfortable, especially if you don’t have the tools to get started. So for today’s episode, we’re sitting down with Robert Shafis, our Director of Planned Giving Services, to learn what you need to know, so that you can speak confidently about planned giving with your donors.

Recorded 

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard And Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels 

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Jeff Schreifels. And I’ve got Richard Perry here with me. You know, when we talk to fundraisers about planned giving, we often hear things like, “Well, that’s not my job,” or “I don’t know anything about planned giving.” And this is a huge loss for your donors, because planned giving is an incredible way for your donors to give meaningfully and transformationally to your organization. And it’s a huge loss for your organization, who could be bringing in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in the years to come. So, Richard and I have invited Robert Shafis, our Director of Planned Giving Services, to join us today and share some tips to help everyone in fundraising share confidently about planned giving with their donors. Welcome, Bob.

Robert Shafis 

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Richard Perry 

Yeah, great to have you, Bob. Now, Bob, listen, why don’t you start off by sharing some of the concerns or the roadblocks that cause mid-level and major gift officers to avoid talking about planned giving? I mean, that’s a good place to start right there.

Robert Shafis

Yeah. And you know what, it’s not just major gift officers and mid-level officers who have this fear that I’m going to talk about right now. Because I’ve had presidents of organizations come up to me and say, “Bob, I’m not sure I’m comfortable talking to this guy about planned giving,” because it touches on death. And that’s not something anybody wants to hear. And of course, the donor was 85 years old, as was his wife. I knew he already had done some estate planning. He was a big corporate executive. People like that have largely dealt with mortality issues. When you’re talking to somebody about a planned gift, it really doesn’t have to touch about on death. It talks in terms of legacy behind them, the kind of thing you’re going to leave for your family, your friends, and for your community to know about. So the first thing that you see is people fearful about talking about something that talks about mortality. But like I said, I have personally never had a donor get upset when I was talking with them about that particular issue.

Robert Shafis 

Another thing to think about is how the donor feels about their charitable giving. One of the things that is important when you’re talking about planned giving is getting people to think of themselves as philanthropists of their assets instead of donors of their income. So as you’re talking to them and you’re talking about what they own, and you’re elevating that discussion to the point where they’re thinking in terms of the assets that they own and the things that they can do with those assets. That’s an important part of getting to that planned giving discussion.

Robert Shafis 

Now, from the perspective of the fundraiser, a lot of times they have some kind of preconceived notions about planned giving, that it’s hard, it’s technical, need to know everything there is about taxes. You know, like you need to know the ins and outs of how a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust or charitable lead trust operate. And one of the things that we know is that the vast majority have received planned gifts from people who’ve passed away and left something to an organization are the simplest planned gifts, bequests, living trust distributions, beneficiary designations. So when you’re talking to somebody about a planned gift, that discussion should be not so much about the technical ways of doing it. But about that legacy discussion, and to talk about the fact that this is really important for your organization, this is a very important income line item. And by doing this, you, Mr. and/or Mrs. Donor, are going to really help the organization that you love. So the lack of knowledge about planned giving is not should not be a stumbling block for mid and major level donors.

Robert Shafis 

Now, if you’re lucky enough to have a full time planned giving officer, right now you have a whole other area of discussion, because you can begin talking to the donor either about bringing that planned giving person to the table, so that you can have that discussion with the donor directly with the planned giving officer, or many times the major gift officer will simply go back to the office and say to the planned giving officer, “Will you help me with this donor? I, the major gift officer, have a good relationship with this person. So it makes no sense to transfer that relationship to somebody else. I’ve already got that. But I need the talking points now that are going to help me as a fundraiser to work with that donor and get them to make that type of major legacy commitment.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. That’s good stuff. So um, those are all the things that are concerns or roadblocks that you’ve come across in your career. Well, what do you think are some of the most important areas to explore with a donor which relates to planned giving Bob?

Robert Shafis 

Yeah, there’s actually two categories of things, things about the donor’s attitudes, and things about the donor’s assets and family situation and things like that that will affect the type of planned gift that eventually you’ll recommend. You know, consistent with everything we do in Veritus, we want to explore the passions and interests of the donor. What is it that most excites that donor about that charity? It’s a little different than planned giving, because let’s say you have a donor who’s interested in the XYZ project at your organization. But if they make a commitment in their their estate plans to fund the XYZ project, will the XYZ project still be around in 15 or 20 years when that gift comes to fruition? The answer is usually not. So what you want to do is make sure that the donor’s passions and interests are expressed in the planned gift in a way that the organization will be able to easily use it when it comes to the organization in many years.

Richard Perry 

So it’s a more general category then.

Robert Shafis 

Right, let’s say it was a food bank. And the XYZ project dealt with the receiving food from a certain vendor and then distributing it in the community. Yeah, in a certain community, you might want to ask the donor to consider making that request to the food bank for food in that community, rather than for the XYZ project. So like you said, Richard, a more general type of approach. The other areas to discuss with donors can be done very easily. Most donors, you know what they like to talk about themselves. So if you’ve given them an opportunity to talk about their business, their investments, their family, oftentimes, they’ll be willing to do that. Now you have to be a good enough. You have to have a good enough plan on how to talk about that. So that rather than saying, “Tell me all the things that you have, that you have invested in,” you might want to take the approach of saying, “You know, I find your investments really fascinating. How did you get started in this? Tell me more about your business. Is it a family business? How did that business get started?” And a lot of times, if it is a family business, you won’t be able to shut the donor up? Because the donor is going to say, “Well, you know, grandpa started this business right after World War Two. Yeah. And then, you know, he built it,” and on and on. So you’re gonna find out a lot about those types of things, simply by having a good friendly discussion.

Robert Shafis 

Estate planning is another thing that, you know, I personally have asked a lot of people, do you have a will? And this is one of those things a lot of fundraisers are really afraid to say to a donor, do you have a will? I’ve never had a donor get upset. And they’ve almost always either said yes or no. And now you get to explore with them in the same way, a level of fascination that you should express in what they’ve done. “Oh you do have a will? Would you be willing to share about what you did in order to get that? Who did you work with? Could you tell me more about the thought process and how you work with your family and how you work with your professional advisors, etc?” Related areas are people who express some concern about taxes, they need more tax deductions, they don’t like paying taxes. Well, some of these planned gifts are going to be able to provide you all kinds of tax deductions and other benefits. Also concerns about income, you know, you tend to be working with the older segment of your donor base. And a lot of older donors are concerned that they’re going to outlive their assets, right? And so they want more income, and some of the types of planned gifts that are out there are things that can provide a larger and more secure series of payments that will augment their income.

Richard Perry 

So here’s the question I have, Bob, I mean, that was really, really good stuff in terms of those areas that we need to explore with a donor. But like, how does planned gifts fit into the context of an organization? In other words, where? And because you usually think about it is like it’s kind of over there in some other room? It’s not like, well, how does it fit into the context of an organization, you know?

Robert Shafis 

Different organizations do it differently. I know a university system that has an Office of Planned Giving. And then there are dozens, maybe hundreds of fundraisers who work for the various schools of the organization. But then when they find somebody who might be a good planned giving prospect, they go to their office, and they talk to that person about planned giving. And then they’re kind of staffed by the planned giving staff in their relationship with the donor. I personally like either having a planned giving officer working directly with the major and mid-level donors, so that it really becomes a partnership and that the discussion is who, major gift officer, is in your portfolio, that you know well enough that you think that you can have these kinds of discussions with. And you just keep that going. Because most of your best planned giving prospects are already assigned to somebody’s portfolio, somebody’s building relationships with this person. And if it’s the major gift staff or the mid-level staff, the planned giving person should be there to answer their questions, to help them strategize, and then to help them implement and close that gift. Yeah, so that even though they have a planned giving officer, that’s not a function separate and apart from the overall fundraising processes going on there. Right.

Jeff Schreifels 

Okay, so what are some of the initial steps if you’re a mid-level or major gift officer, can they take to get more comfortable talking about planned giving? I mean, besides getting over the idea of talking about death, right? What are some other areas?

Robert Shafis 

Well, I think one of the first things any major gift officer or mid-level officer should do is kind of back away for a second look at their portfolio, and try to see who within that group has the longest relationship with the organization. Because for all the talk about planned giving revolving around old donors and things like that, it’s longevity of donor status or volunteer status, it’s probably the most important thing to take a look at. And then if you can also begin looking and see who you think owns a business. Who within your portfolio, do you think has significant assets? A good indicator sometimes is people who’ve made gifts of non-cash assets or from Donor Advised Funds. To me that means they’re being well-advised by somebody. And so if you can find a pool of people who have some financial assets in terms of business, substantial assets in terms of investments, and/or retirement assets. So anybody who’s giving from an IRA at this point, is the kind of person you should be taking a good look at.

Robert Shafis 

And so you should then now that you’ve discovered those people, go in and talk to the individuals and begin exploring some of those particular points. So if it’s a person who, like I said, owns a business, get them talking about it, find out is it a family business? And more to the point, what are their hopes and dreams for that business? If it’s a family business, they’re probably going to transfer it to the next generation. Right? If it’s not a family business, if it’s a business that the donor owns, with some partners, let’s say they may very well be interested in ultimately selling that business, to some, either to the other partners or to somebody else. And that is one of the best times to talk to a donor about a charitable planned gift. Because the more the larger the potential sale is, the more likely it is that A) there’ll be a lot of taxes involved, right, and B) their placing at least part of those assets into some sort of charitable trust will save them lots and lots of taxes and give them other benefits.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Now, we’ve already talked about how planned giving isn’t as complicated as people think. And it shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t be a barrier for mid and major gift officers to start talking about it. So but let’s talk about the simplest possible planned gifts, wills, living trusts, beneficiary designations. How can you start those conversations with a donor?

Robert Shafis 

Well, it’s interesting, there’s a study that shows that the phrase that people react best to when you’re talking about planned giving, is not planned giving. It’s not major gift planning. It’s not legacy planning. It’s gifts through wills. So that’s, everybody knows what a will is. Everybody knows what a gift is. So that should be kind of a starting point. For any discussion: “How would you like to be able to make a real impact on this organization by making a gift through a will?” And so that will naturally lead to a discussion on not only wills, but at this point, now that you’ve got their attention, you can begin talking in terms of beneficiary designations, which are especially attractive these days. Because if I go and have a will done, it’s going to cost me a few hundred bucks. If I go and have a living trust done, it’s probably going to cost me a few thousand bucks. I can make a beneficiary designation from one of my retirement plans, often online, and it’s not going to cost me anything. So as you’re discussing these issues with donors, you’re going to find that this is sometimes a really good arrow in your quiver, because you’ll be able to say, I actually know a way that you can make a significant impact on this organization, at little or no cost. It’s also a good thing to talk about. If the donor says something like, and they will, you know, “I’ve already done my will and I don’t want to change it.” Well, you don’t have to change, you can go ahead and do something else that’s just as simple and it won’t cost you anything. So focusing on those things.

Robert Shafis 

The other thing I’m just gonna mention is people who’ve made gifts from IRAs. If you’re working with somebody who’s done that, one of your discussion points ought to be, you know, you can make our charity a beneficiary of your IRA. And that’ll make a real impact on our mission. So keeping it simple is really important. Even if your organization issues charitable gift annuities, or manages charitable trusts. That should not be part of the discussion early on. These are things that are kind of specialized for people who have specific assets or specific income or tax needs. So making that discussion simple is the key to getting people’s attention and probably getting them to do something in their plans.

Richard Perry 

Yeah, I really liked how you said, hooked into the statement: “Everybody knows what a will is. And everybody knows what a gift is.” And that’s such a simple concept. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Because I advise myself I’ve thought about planned given is this very complex thing, like you just mentioned. But the entry really most often is wills. Gifts through wills. Yeah. So here’s another, a slightly different angle on all of this, that I’m that I’m interested in is, what does it look like when fundraisers are confidently talking about planned giving? And then what does it look like when they’re not?

Robert Shafis 

Well, when they’re not, that’s the easy one, nothing happens. If they’re talking confidently about planned giving, so they’re making it part of almost every discussion. If you’re meeting with somebody you know has a planned gift, you should simply be thanking them. And that may lead to a discussion on further things. If you’re working with people and you can bring up the concept of making a planned gift in in their plans in that simple way that we just talked about. The pandemic actually gives us an interesting example of what successful planned giving programs do. I know of several organizations which, at the beginning of the pandemic, they had to basically close up; a lot of their income dried up. And they got a big request that came in right at the appropriate time, because they had been working in planned giving for a long time, they had a pipeline, they had a significant number of people in that pipeline. And people don’t change their wills every time there’s a disease or a blip in the stock market or anything like that people tend to create the will and leave it in place for a while. And so the pandemic really didn’t affect the way a lot of people were looking at their own already executed estate plans. The other example from the pandemic, I think, is those organizations that, you know, had their income stream kind of dry up. But they had been doing planned giving for many, many years. And each of those testamentary gifts that were received, were put into their endowment. And now they had a significant endowment. So even though their income was down significantly, they were still getting a distribution every year from their own endowment. And by having that there that helped them through those pandemic times.

Jeff Schreifels 

Nice. So Bob, tell us what roles the fundraiser can play in the organization’s planned giving efforts.

Robert Shafis 

Well, I’ve mentioned before, you know, the planned giving effort should not be a separate office out there someplace. It should be part and parcel of the overall fundraising process of the organization. So the planned getting officer should be reaching out to the other fundraisers and talking to them about those people in their portfolios who look like they’re good planned giving people, right? Alternately, the mid-level and the major gift people should be reaching out to the planned giving officer and saying, you know, “I met with Mr. Perry, and he is worth millions. And we started talking about planned giving, and he’s interested in finding out more. So now, I’m either going to bring you in to meet with that donor. Or I’m going to ask you to help me have the right language to use to discuss with that donor what to do. It helps too if your organization has some sort of legacy society, because that’s an additional incentive for many people to want to do something.

Richard Perry 

Yeah. You’ve sort of answered this, but I just want to make sure that we’ve covered it like, because you just talked about how a fundraiser can play in their organization’s planned giving efforts, not how can a planned giving officer support collaboration with other fundraisers is I think you said earlier is just basically connecting with the mid-level and major gift people. I mean, anything else?

Robert Shafis 

First of all, there has to be some support by leadership of the concept that planned giving is really important to this organization. So that it becomes kind of an expectation that the planned giving officer will meet on a periodic basis, I usually say quarterly, with all the other fundraisers to talk about progress on the names that they had already identified.

Richard Perry 

Yeah, very important.

Robert Shafis 

And I also think it’s, it’s great if you can have the type of informal interactions where a major gift officer can knock on the door of the planned getting officer’s office and say, “Hey, do you have a minute? I want to talk to you about the donor I just met.” So also making the whole planned giving piece part of the overall fundraising plan of the organization. So that it is just one more element but an element that is completely expected to be there every year.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. So why is this all so important?

Robert Shafis 

I think it’s important, you know, when I was working at an organization, we were in a capital campaign. I would look at a donor and I would say, what is their highest and best philanthropic opportunity? Well, annual fund. And we were simply saying,wWe’ve simply assumed you’re going to continue giving to the annual fund the way you’ve been doing, a major gift and a planned gift. And by addressing all of those elements, you’re going to, on the one hand, elevate their own view their own philanthropy, and on the other hand, help the organization with the biggest possible gift from that particular donor.

Jeff Schreifels 

Awesome.

Richard Perry 

I mean, I would also add, Jeff, that why it’s important would be, like you just said, Bob, if there’s a crisis, and the current giving goes down, the direct marketing, the online, all that other stuff, if you’ve had a robust planned giving program, it’s going to save the day, as we’ve seen in a number of situations.

Jeff Schreifels 

It’s a huge revenue stream.

Robert Shafis 

And what you should be looking for is a consistent number of new planned gift commitments each year, so you have a pipeline that you can expect, for that very reason, Richard.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Well, thank you, Bob, for joining us today for this episode and sharing some great tips to help fundraisers confidently talk about planned giving with their donors. And I hope this has given you a lot to think about as you consider and as you begin talking about planned giving with your donors. If you have more questions about planned giving, and how major gifts and planned giving can collaborate meaningfully, then check out our on-demand training, Planned Giving Principles for Every Fundraiser’s Success. You can find the link in the show notes. Thank you, and we’ll see you next time.

Richard Perry 

See you later.

Recorded 

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.net. Please join us again next time.