← Nonprofit Lowdown
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- [00:00]
Rhea Wong
Hey you, it's Rhea Wong.
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If you're listening to nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on
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the newest podcast episodes.
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And then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up.
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Tess Conrad
Foreign.
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Rhea Wong
Welcome to nonprofit Lowdown.
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I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, my guest listeners, it's Ria Wong with you once again with nonprofit Lowdown. Today, my guest, Tess Conrad, who is the founder and principal consultant of Full Potential fundraising. Today we're going to talk about planned giving. Tess, welcome to the show.
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Tess Conrad
Thanks. It's great to be here.
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Rhea Wong
All right, before we jump into all the questions, can you give us a little tour of the life of Tess? How did you end up in this plan giving world? I feel like it's a specific part of the fundraising journey.
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Tess Conrad
It is so specific and it's so cliche. But I fell into it. I fell into fundraising. I fell into plan giving specifically. So I did a BFA in theater performance. And as I was graduating that program, I realized that, that I didn't actually want to work in the theater and I needed a job. And so I ended up doing face to face canvassing, getting people to sign up for monthly donations at mall kiosks. And I did really well with that and I was promoted to manager pretty quickly. I ran into fundraisers while I was working who said, oh, this, you're good at this. And did you know it's a career? And I was like, I need one of those. So that sounds promising bills. And I could have gone the film route, but I really didn't want to do film. So yeah, I from there I did a certificate in fundraising management and then one of my first jobs out of the face to face canvassing job was implied giving just because it was available and I knew the person who was hiring for it. And there was a learning curve because I was going from looking at my fundraising results like really by the week with face to face canvassing to these decade long relationships. But I found it was a way more meaningful way to connect people with charities. And I just, I loved it.
- [02:13]
Rhea Wong
Okay, let's kind of do it because I literally had a conversation just this morning with someone about the power of planned giving and she was saying that she ran an organization where planned giving made up for a significant percentage of their operating budget. But from folks who prior to the planned gift had given like $50. So they weren't really big givers and yet were leaving million dollar gifts. So talk a little bit about that because you've talked about how planned giving can often come from the most unlikely of sources. Like, one of my favorite anecdotes is Deborah Antoine told me that when she was raising money for channel 13, her biggest givers were retired schoolteachers who left a planned gift. People who'd given like very small amounts through their whole life then dropped the significant gift. So talk to me, how do you actually identify plan giving prospects when you're looking at your whole portfolio?
- [03:10]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, you're touching on a few things there. And really, if you're fundraising from individuals, this is the path to long term growth. And you probably have way more potential estate gifts in your database than you realize. Because the main thing is loyalty, not how much they give in lifetime. Because there are so many people like those retired school teachers or maybe someone who just worked in the trades or ran a little like mom and pop construction company. They don't have a lot of cash to give in their lifetime, but they bought a house in a city back in the 90s and it's appreciated in value a lot. And they saved for retirement and they had a pension. So they end up with all of this wealth that they realize that they want to share because it's more than sometimes even these people are like, I came from pretty modest backgrounds and I don't want my kids to be handed this much. So they want to still provide for their kids but share the wealth with charities and causes that they care about.
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Rhea Wong
And so if I were to look at their portfolio, who might I identify as potential folks that I might reach out to for a plan giving conversation?
- [04:13]
Tess Conrad
You really want to look for that loyalty factor. So I would look for someone who has at least five years of giving more the more the better and consistently giving over those five years. And on top of that, if they are giving and they're a volunteer, that's also a really good indication or they're coming to a lot of events or very engaged in the email list. Also, people who give in honor and in memory can be good legacy giving donors because people will also give through their will in honor and in memory.
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Rhea Wong
So potentially like my monthly givers might be folks that I might talk about applying giving gift to.
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Tess Conrad
Yeah, if someone's been a monthly donor for five or more years, that's great for legacy giving.
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Rhea Wong
Okay, let me ask another question that I get a lot, which is, Tess, is there any way that I can ask about the amount that is being left? Because I think a lot of people are out here. We know that you can't ask about timing, obviously, but is there a way that we can ask about amount without seeming grubby?
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Tess Conrad
This is a loaded topic because, yes, there are ways that you can ask, but it has to be done so carefully. And also the real question I want you to be able to answer is, why do you want to know? Because a lot of the time, it's not for fundraising, it's not for your relationships, it's to appease your finance team. The challenging thing is a lot of donors give percentage of their estates, and that will change throughout their lifetime. So it's really hard to know what that amount will actually be. And when it's done the wrong way, it can really make the relationship a bit weird. And, yeah, these are relationships you really want to grow over time. And if you grow the relationship over time, the gift might grow as well.
- [05:52]
Rhea Wong
I would say, I think, just for fun scenes. What would be the wrong way to ask? If everyone out here be like, I kind of want to ask, but I also don't want to do it the wrong way. So what does that look like?
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Tess Conrad
The number one thing that I think charities do wrong is just to mail out the intention form. So an intention form is a form that asks the donors to give details about their will with very little conversation about it. It's thank you for your gift and will. Here's your intention form. And when you're being listed in the will, it's similar to being listed besides family and, like, how would your mom react if you were like, hey, could you just write down for my tell
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Rhea Wong
me, like, you're gonna leave me when you die?
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Tess Conrad
Yeah, exactly. I would say that's not the way to do it.
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Rhea Wong
So what would be a way to do it? If this is something that was important that we might want to know?
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Tess Conrad
Yes. And there are cases where you do really need to know the details, particularly if you're dealing with any kind of named scholarship funds or the gift is restricted in some way. So I would have it in a conversation with the donor, not the first conversation where you're thanking them for the gift, unless it is a complicated situation and you do need to get some details on that, but in a second or third conversation. And you can bring it up really gently about, hey, we would love to know a little bit about the gift and will. You can choose how much you want to share with us, but we have this, like, little form to fill out. We do go, hey, if I sent that to you. And then you can also phrase the form as in, like, they could just check off like, it's a gift in my will, and that's it. They don't have to fill it out all the way, but I would just have it like that. And so it's very, like, consent based, which I know you also teach in
- [07:24]
Rhea Wong
your major gift fundraising, all about consent. And it's such an interesting thing, too, because, for example, I have beneficiaries in my will. I'm not this big wealthy giver. I give what I can, but. And yet the places that I give to you have never asked me if I've ever considered putting them in my will. So I think to your point, there are a lot of secret givers out there that you don't even know.
- [07:48]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, exactly. And if you can know about it, like, what a way to find the ambassadors of your cause. And as I mentioned, if you have a really strong relationship with them and grow it over time, there's a good chance that gift will increase as well.
- [08:00]
Rhea Wong
And one of the funny things is that this is in the major gift space. But a lot of times what people don't realize is that when folks get to a certain age, they have to give money away based on their particular situation. They may have required minimum distributions and qualified charitable distributions. And it's important to consistently show up for your people because you just never know. Like, case in point, I knew a couple that had to give $10,000 away because of tax purposes. They're like, what do I give to? And I was like, okay, you've never had to think about that before. So it goes to your point about, like, continuing to nurture the relationship because you never know.
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Tess Conrad
Yeah, exactly. Relationships drive dollars, and we need to be consistent about it. And in nonprofits, we have such a tendency to really only think about what's right in front of us. And if it's not giving me money right now, is it even worth doing?
- [08:49]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, that's actually a great segue. So you recently wrote an article called that we'll get to this Later Problem, and I see it myself as well, which is nonprofits are really focused on the short term. They're focused on the next quarter, the next year. Maybe they're thinking one year out, but they're not really thinking long term. And when you're talking about a planned giving strategy, that is a long term investment. It's potentially decades long. Major gift strategy also tends to be a bit longer. Right. We know on average it's about 18 months to close a gift from start to finish. And so I'm just curious, if you're talking to the fundraiser, who we all know is probably overworked under resourced, what case could you make for them that they really should be thinking about a planned giving strategy?
- [09:35]
Tess Conrad
Yes, there's a few things. The first is understanding that it's not all separate. So it's not like doing planned giving is going to take away from the gifts you're going to get in the next year or two. We actually know that when a donor has left a gift in their will, their average annual gift will increase by 77%. So when you start doing effective fundraising, which is like major gifts and planned giving, and you're thinking about relationships over a longer time horizon, you're building more meaningful relationships and you'll probably see a return quicker than you would expect. And the other thing is, if you are someone who really cares about the mark you're leaving on your portfolio, on the organization and growing, you really need to be thinking about gifts like major gifts in lifetime and planned giving beyond that, because there are organizations that are getting 30% of their income from gifts and wills. So if you take an organization that does have a lot of individual givers and they don't have very many gifts and wills coming in, you could increase your overall revenue by 30%.
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Rhea Wong
So about the relationship between major gifts and planned giving, so what I heard you say is that they're not always correlated, which I agree with. And, and what I see is that a lot of charities lump plan giving into the major gift portfolio. And then the MGO has like a portfolio of a thousand names and they're wondering why nothing has happened. So talk to me about why you think that structure is broken. So let's start there. Like, why is that structure broken?
- [11:08]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, this was actually a topic in a presentation I did recently at AFP in Calgary. And I had someone come up to me after that and said, oh my gosh. I've realized that major gifts and planned giving should be separate, even though they are interconnected. And part of that is just the way we fundraise for those two types of gifts are different. So the major giving cycle which you teach is that continuous circle of identifying, cultivating, soliciting, stewarding, and then back, it curves back in on itself. And the thing about this model is you're always thinking about the next gift. And if someone shows that they're not going to give anytime soon, like in the next year or two, you could probably put them on the back burner to make sure your portfolio is small and manageable and that in the context of major gifts, that's good. But in planned giving, once someone's in your portfolio, average estate gifts are $50,000 as we mentioned, it's really hard to know exactly how much will be given, especially since these are percentages of estate. So you have to treat them all as major givers. But also these are average middle class donors that aren't used to being wined and dined or like the way some major givers might be. They don't need the intensive one to one connection, but they do need more one to one then annual giving. So there are different approaches even though they are more high touch than your standard, like dealing with these 50 $100 donors.
- [12:26]
Rhea Wong
So based on that then you could have a plan giving portfolio of say 100 people and have it be completely manageable as opposed to. Because I really advocate a smaller major giving portfolio of about 40. So potentially your planned giving portfolio could be much bigger.
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Tess Conrad
Yeah, and I agree with small major giving portfolio portfolios. When I was an in house plan giving staff member, I had a portfolio of 750 donors and I was able to manage that. And I did it through a lot of one to many tactics that feel like they're one to one. So things like really thought out email merges to different sections of my portfolio depending on what they were interested in. And I started the email with I just wanted to let you know. So it sounded like it was really one to one. I was really just writing it up, emailing them, but I was doing it in batches of a hundred. And granted you do have to be really careful with this technique. You don't want to get caught in spam filters. But with the way I was doing it, it was fine. And the donors loved the emails, they replied all the time. And then I had different communications go out that allowed people in my portfolio to raise their hands if they wanted to actually meet with me one to one. So the people who want T's who want phone calls, they're getting them. But a lot of them were happy getting handwritten notes and emails, but it still felt like they had a connection. And when I left that job I actually had some donors tell me that they were sad to see me go even though I never had a one to one connection with them, but they felt like they were connected with the organization through my work.
- [13:52]
Rhea Wong
So how often were you doing touch points with them? Was it quarterly?
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Tess Conrad
I do quarterly and that's what I push my clients to do. Quarterly or even just twice a year. But again, it's a mix. Like it's personal, but it's not as high touch as major gifts.
- [14:04]
Rhea Wong
So let's talk about this test because I know that there are lots of folks out here listening and they might be thinking we're too small for major gifts or we're not ready for major gifts. So what would be your recommendation of either size of organization or maturity of portfolio to consider a major gift strategy?
- [14:20]
Tess Conrad
Plan. Gift plan.
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Rhea Wong
Gift strategy. Sorry, I'm clearly in my own head. A plan gift strategy.
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Tess Conrad
Yeah. So it's not huge. I would say looking at those long term donors. So donors who've been giving for at least five years consistently. If you have 250, it could be worthwhile doing a small plan giving program. That being said, having 250 long term donors like your planned giving will look different than someone who has 50,000. But it's still worthwhile doing.
- [14:47]
Rhea Wong
Yeah. So what does a planned giving program look like? And let me back up here. So if I'm on the smaller end and I have 250givers who've been giving over a consecutive five years, do I need to have a dedicated planned giving officer or can this be part of someone else's responsibilities?
- [15:06]
Tess Conrad
It wouldn't make sense for you to have a dedicated plan giving officer at that size. So you should have someone who's the main planned giving point person as part of their role though. So someone who has ownership over making sure it gets done. And your question as well about what a planned giving program would look like? A small one. So you should have a basic planned giving strategy which would include some marketing touch points. The thing about gifts and wills is the decision making process takes years. So you want to have little messages and nudges towards gifts and wills in your existing communication. So it's always in the back of their mind as they're thinking about their will. And so when they go to actually write their will or rewrite their will, they think of you. So just making sure you have those touch points in newsletters, maybe some social media, that kind of thing. And then making sure your database is set up to track your plan giving pipeline. That's also an important part of programs that gets neglected is you need the back end and then making sure you have at least two touch points a year with the people in Your portfolio who either have said, I'm interested in potentially leaving a gift in my will, or I have left a gift and just keep those relationships going. But that's something that, like a bare bones program could have.
- [16:20]
Rhea Wong
Let's talk about some of the concerns I've heard people talk about with planned giving. So things like, it just seems complicated, like from a tax perspective. And do we need to get into the thing where we have a bequest, but it provides a lifetime income for people? Like, how do I deal with all of the legal particulars that seem very complicated to me?
- [16:40]
Tess Conrad
One challenge of the plan giving education that's out there is they don't always distinguish what's for advisors and what's for fundraisers. So I always coach the fundraisers that I work with. You are a fundraiser, you're not a financial advisor. So it's actually easier than you think. And 80% of your plan giving communications and conversations should be about your why message. And that why message is actually a planned giving case for support, which is a little bit different than a case for support you might have for major gifts or a campaign or even just your regular annual programs. But your job is to inspire them and to plant the seeds. And the only real information that you need to share if you want to get technical, is you can leave a specific sum or a percentage of your estate. And then you do want to make sure you have your registration number and your legal name for them to actually have your correct information in the will. But it's a lot easier than you might think.
- [17:31]
Rhea Wong
Yeah. Because I, I do worry sometimes. It's, do we need to get involved in, like, tax strategy and legal issues around wills and so forth? And it seems very daunting.
- [17:42]
Tess Conrad
You definitely want to encourage your donors to go talk to their advisors for tax planning and for legal stuff, especially if you're talking with a donor and they say something like, oh, I want to disinherit someone. Talk to a lawyer about that, because that gets complicated. But you can mention, oh, you would save taxes on your estate. I usually say something like, similar to how you get donation tax deductions in your lifetime, your estate would get those same deductions, basically. But you should talk with an advisor about it.
- [18:08]
Rhea Wong
So if I'm listening to this and I'm like, hey, Tess, this sounds great. Can you walk us through. So we've talked about setting up the program. Can you walk us through what happens if someone leaves us in their estate? What are the actual things that happen here?
- [18:22]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, it's good to Touch on this, because sometimes charities are almost, like, scared of that, and that prevents them, but it's pretty easy. So when you're left in someone's will, when they pass away, you will receive a notice of the will, and with that, you'll receive a copy of the will, and you'll usually sign something and send it back to the executor of the estate just to say, yes, we've received this. The process will be a little bit different depending on the type of gift. So if a donor gives you a specific gift, that will has to go through probate. And once that happens, you'll usually just be paid out this specific gift, and it will be done pretty easily. If someone in the family contests the will, then it could be caught up in the courts. And there's a chance that if a family member is questioning whether or not their loved one was manipulated into a gift in the will, that you might want to submit some documentation about. Hey, yes, we are in the will. Like, not that we are in the will, but we had a relationship with them before. Like, even just records about. Yeah, they've been donating since 2000, but that's pretty rare, not common. You don't have to worry about that. You can always involve lawyers if you need. The more lengthy process is something called a residual gift, which is a percentage of the gift. So that will typically be paid out in multiple installments. And you will actually get the estate accounting. And with that accounting, you're basically just doing some due diligence and making sure that there isn't anything on there that looks fishy. And if anything does look fishy, talk to the executor about it. And don't sign off on anything unless you feel confident that everything is above board. And again, usually everything is above board. If there's something wonky, it's because executors are often over their head, like, they don't really know what they're doing. But if there is anything unusual, you can always get an advisor or lawyer to help you out at that point. But usually it's pretty straightforward.
- [20:08]
Rhea Wong
Okay, what would be something fishy as an example? I'm just trying to.
- [20:12]
Tess Conrad
So one example that I heard of was someone who had a friend who was an accountant who charged a $20,000 accounting bill for an estate that was very simple. And so it was. That seems unreasonable for accounting for this kind of estate. And this person's your friend. And so in that case, the beneficiaries, including, like, family members, too, brought it forward to the Courts. And the courts were like, yeah, that you can't do that. And they had to pay the money back.
- [20:34]
Rhea Wong
Okay, so I'm glad we talked about that because I think a lot of people may not know what the process actually is.
- [20:39]
Tess Conrad
Yeah. And there are like, you can get into a lot of different things with the state administration. And you could look at your local plan giving councils and see sometimes there's webinars that are hosted by lawyers who would walk you through that process. But don't be scared of it. If something comes up at that time, you can always bring in professionals to help you.
- [20:54]
Rhea Wong
All right, so I want to get a little bit juicy here. So you mentioned that you took a job as a major giving and legacy giving manager at an unnamed nonprofit. You got into the data and discovered that of the 5,000 donors that they said they had, you had maybe a hundred real prospects. So take us inside that moment and especially now because I know that lots of folks are jumping around and looking at different jobs. What do you think that every fundraiser should ask in a job interview before they say yes? So this is not plan giving specific, but just general information because we all have horror stories. I have my own, but like, how do you know what the skeletons in the closet are before you sign on the dotted line?
- [21:39]
Tess Conrad
You sent me some of our topics after we had our pre podcast interview. And I was like, oh, it's getting juicy. I don't want to talk about this. But yes. So there was a nonprofit that I was very excited to work with in major giving and legacy giving. And in the interview I wanted to know what is the size of my portfolio? Cause this was the first time that they would have both a formal major giving program and a formal legacy giving program. And they said, we have 5,000 donors. And I was like, great, I can work with that. And then I got in and I found that when I actually looked for the long term donors, I don't even think I went for five years. I went for people that had three years of giving history. So who are the consistent donors? And it was only a hundred. And so from that I was able to say maybe 10 of them could give a thousand dollars or more. And so I was like, why am I being paid for this job? And I don't think they necessarily intended to mislead me in the interview process. I think it was that they really didn't know about their data and that you do want to be looking for loyalty. The reason why this happened was they had a peer to peer fundraiser that had A lot of people give, but the peer to peer fundraiser was bringing in one time donors who basically never gave again. They didn't also have a lot of repeat peer to peer fundraisers. I don't want to give too much away because we give way.
- [22:46]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, of course.
- [22:46]
Tess Conrad
Yeah. So I would say ask for those loyalty indicators if you are taking a role about the portfolio. I wish I did that. I wish I said, okay, of that 5,000, how many have been consistently giving for three or more years or five or more years? And if they don't know, be like, great. I would love to continue this interview process, but until our next interview, I need you to get that number for me and look in your database.
- [23:08]
Rhea Wong
Yeah. And I would also say for anyone out there, just basic numbers like retention rate, acquisition rate, conversion rate. If an organization doesn't know those numbers, that is also a red flag to me.
- [23:20]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, especially when they already have a few fundraisers on staff. They should really know that, which there's no problem.
- [23:26]
Rhea Wong
Yeah. That goes to my whole other issue about flying blind. I just published an article on LinkedIn this morning about how menopause is like fundraising. And so a bunch of high school girlfriends of mine were all on this text chain and we're just swapping tips about menopause because I think there's so little in the way of actually good information. And I feel like fundraising is the same way. It's, oh, I heard this podcast or someone's doing this, or we're testing out this template and guts. Surely we can do better than this. Surely we can have some actual real data and some tried and true tested practices, not just like what I found on Reddit and Google.
- [24:06]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, I saw that and I did comment on it too, because I saw it relating to planned giving. And the frustrating thing for me is that sometimes there actually are some tried and true best practices that aren't being looked at. And instead it is just as you said, your menopause group when like you could actually be implementing better programs and instead charities are just copying other charities who are doing bad practices because they copied another charity. And the chain goes on and on. And then everyone has a planned giving program that's like they're spending money and time on, but it's not the most effective thing for them.
- [24:37]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, actually, let's talk about this. So when we spoke, you said your ideal client knows that plan giving is important, but has been wasting money on the wrong things, like public awareness campaigns or directory listings or things that look legit but don't actually. Result in gifts. So in your opinion, what are the biggest looks like plan giving, but isn't investments that charities are making or right
- [25:01]
Tess Conrad
now mostly when charities come to work with me, I'm not the first person that they spent or like first plan giving thing that they spent money on, but the other things that they spent money on in the past didn't work out very well. So the one thing to remember about gifts in wills is that your prospects are your existing supporters in some way. If they're not your donors already, they are subscribed, they are following you, they're volunteering with you, they're like, they really care about your cause and identify with it in some ways. So any kind of campaign where the main thing you're getting, like a newspaper ad or maybe just a listing on a directory isn't going to get you planned giving leads and it's not going to get you planned giving donors. So you really shouldn't be spending money on that unless you already have a really robust program and you're like, hey, let's try this out. But even then, I don't even think it's that effective. The other thing that can happen is sometimes charities will spend money on planned giving campaigns that are made by a direct marketing agency. And these direct marketing agencies, they typically focus on getting what's called hand raisers. So a hand raiser is anyone who says, yes, you're in my will, or I'm interested in leaving a gift in their will. And there are great experts at these direct marketing agencies and they do really good work, but they don't provide a complete program. They just provide that marketing. So I'll often see charities who say, hey, we did this really cool survey campaign and it got us a bunch of hand raisers. But that was like two years ago. And then just our program completely stalled and plateaued. And they didn't even follow up with all of the hand raisers properly because they didn't have the systems in place. And I saw that the direct marketing agencies do give them guides and try to help them out a little bit. But their main thing is that marketing deliverable. It's not the full program. So it's really best for charities who already have a basic program in place.
- [26:52]
Rhea Wong
And actually that really mirrors a lot of the advice I give for major gifts as well, which is don't open a relationship that you can't tend to, that you can't nurture, because people will just end up more pissed off than if you hadn't started it to begin with. Right. So if you're gonna ask questions about major gifts or plan giving and you don't have the capacity to steward it, don't even go there. What are some of the other best practices that you recommend that folks think about as they're considering a plan giving strategy?
- [27:20]
Tess Conrad
Everything I do is based off of my plan framework. So the plan, it's an acronym. P is program architecture. So that is all the backend stuff, the foundations of your program. So making sure you are properly tracking your database and making sure those hand raisers don't fall through the cracks, having an actual planned giving plan for 12 months that you thought out so you know what you're doing, you're not just being caught by the shiny object that's in front of you, that kind of thing. And then also the system. So you actually could nurture 750 donors with one full time staff, that kind of thing.
- [27:53]
Rhea Wong
Yeah, got it. I'm wondering if I'm thinking about starting a planned giving program, do I need to have like a giving circle or special society for my legacy givers?
- [28:03]
Tess Conrad
You can. I think that's not going to be a main motivator, but it can help with social proof. I wouldn't call it legacy society, though, because surprisingly, a lot of donors who are leaving gifts in their wills are actually not that concerned about being immortalized. They're not thinking about that. They're thinking more like what they really care about and how the cause aligns with their values. So it's more important that you have that planned giving case, the legacy messaging component, because then you can really connect with the donor's values, who they are, which is what drives this decision, because the decision is different than a major giving decision. And they're trusting you a lot.
- [28:41]
Rhea Wong
Do you recommend that? If we were to think about launching a plan giving program, does it make sense to have it in tandem with something else? Like maybe we want to introduce an endowment campaign or we want to introduce some sort of capital campaign. Is that something that you would recommend that we think about?
- [28:57]
Tess Conrad
Only if endowments are already part of your strategy. So you don't need an endowment to do planned giving and give some will fundraising. At that charity where I had 750 donors in my portfolio, those were all unrestricted gifts and they didn't have an endowment to put it in to give test. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, you don't need an endowment.
- [29:19]
Rhea Wong
So actually, as I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, you know what, Tess, you've made this sound very doable. Because I used to think maybe planned giving was for super sophisticated shops. Maybe like The Met, the MoMA. We're just a small shop, we can't do this. But actually it sounds like maybe this is doable.
- [29:35]
Tess Conrad
It is, yeah. And that's my goal in getting it on these podcasts and publishing my blog. It's just to show that mid sized charities can do this. It's not just for the biggest ones.
- [29:44]
Rhea Wong
Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel like folks should know as they think about their plan giving strategy?
- [29:49]
Tess Conrad
I would say average estate gifts are $50,000. I don't know if we've mentioned that. But the returns, even though it takes time, the returns are there. And it's pretty much the closest thing I've ever seen to guaranteed ROI and fundraising. And not no fundraiser should ever guarantee you roi, but if you already have individual supporters, this is the way to grow your revenue by 30%. Right. It just takes time and you really have to trust the process and it really, it's about the relationships.
- [30:20]
Rhea Wong
Okay, wait, one other thing that you brought up that came up this morning in my conversation. CFOs who want to bank planned giving gifts. What do you say to that?
- [30:31]
Tess Conrad
So there, first of all, there are ways you can project your plan giving revenue once you have a bit of a portfolio. And I've done this as an in house staff member at several organizations. But you can take actuarial data. So what's the average lifespan in your area? With a grain of salt, because generous people live longer. And then what's the average estate gift size? Either nationally, we know with 50 grand or like at your charity. And then you can actually forecast by decade basically about how much you're going to get. Or you could even do it by five year increments, approximately. So that kind of forecasting can be great to show like what the ROI is. Now that being said, it's still a pledge and it's like you can't bank on that happening. Donors can change their wills at any time, the amount can change and that kind of thing. So that it's just, this is about the relationships and you can look at the hand raisers and those averages, but you really do have to trust the process. And the thing I would tell those CFOs is that it's not a new form of fundraising like there is. Sometimes I see senior leadership think of this as, oh, this is like a risky new thing to do. And it's the oldest form of fundraising that's ever been around. It's very well established. It's not some new avant garde thing. It's really tried and true fundraising that's worked for a lot of people.
- [31:52]
Rhea Wong
Yeah.
- [31:53]
Tess Conrad
Do you want to get into the CFO story?
- [31:55]
Rhea Wong
Oh my God, yeah. I love a CFO story because here's what I'm understanding from this. Sure, you can project it, but don't building it into your operating budget. That's actually the message. But tell me a CFO story.
- [32:07]
Tess Conrad
Yeah, just a note on the operating budget. You can, but it's only based off of your open estate files. So once you start getting these estate gifts in, it'll become a budget line, but you won't get there right away. Okay, so the CFO story is something that you mentioned in the email to talk about. And again I was like, ooh, we're getting juicy. Because this is again, not something I always speak about, but again, everything is completely anonymous. But there was a medium sized charity that wanted to work with me and how I would work with a charity like this is as a fractional planned giving director. So I'm actually embedded with our team for 12 months, probably more. And I actually build a fundraising program for planned giving from the ground up. And I do a lot of hands on work with the team. And we were talking for months and the fundraising team was really enthusiastic about working with me and the Director of Fundraising was just like, yes, this is exactly what we need. The CEO was on board. They've been meaning to actually build a plan giving program for years, but they only ever did piecemeal tactics and it wasn't really getting them the momentum they needed. So they built me into the budget and I sent them the contract and then the CEO went on leave. So like obviously everything stopped and the Director of Fundraising met with me, I think twice in that process. Always saying, you're already in the budget. We really see the value in this. We just need to sort out our signing authorities and things like that. Shortly after our second meeting, I got an email from the cfo so Chief Financial Officer that they were going to completely pause this and like they just weren't going to do any planned giving over this next year while the like CEO was on leave. Basically, even though I was already in the budget, the fundraising director was ready to work with me. But that was really unfortunate. And I think one thing you asked is what should a fundraiser do in that situation when that's blocking. Right.
- [33:56]
Rhea Wong
I think it also just speaks to the fact that I think finance and development need to have a very Close working relationship because I think they often don't understand each other's business. But yes. What should a poor director of development do in this situation?
- [34:13]
Tess Conrad
I really felt for this director of development because they got it and they had a lot of experience and they were at an organization that previously had a really successful time giving program. So they knew what I was doing, doing and they're really ready to go that route. Obviously there are ways that you can get your CFO on board. So things like those revenue projections talking about the average estate gift being $50,000. What would it look like if 1, 2 or 5% of our file gave? And that can show you what's out there and potential, but there's only so far. Like you need someone who's willing to work with you, who's willing to talk with you. So this director of development I saw on LinkedIn recently accepted another role at another charity. And I understand that. And to be honest, that would be my advice if you're like if you know what you need to do to be successful and you're being blocked. Senior leaders that just don't get fundraising sometimes like you just have to protect yourself and leave because it's really draining on your mental health to not be getting the results you know you can get because of mismanagement. Basically. Yeah.
- [35:10]
Rhea Wong
I also think ultimately high performers want to be around high performers. And so if you're in a situation where you're not allowed to perform at your best, even though a lot of us are out here and we want to do our best work, then yeah, sometimes moving on is the right strategy. Which may or may not account for all of the turnover that we are seeing in our sector currently. All right, this has been awesome. I'm going to make sure that your info is in the show notes for folks who want to get in touch with you. But I think the takeaway is folks you are never too who never you're. You can start plan giving and you don't have to be super sophisticated. 5,000 donors deep. You can start with as small as 250 donors. So Tess, thank you for giving us some inspo. Rest of the four books. Thank giving. Thank you Ria. Hey fundraisers.
- [36:02]
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