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A
You're listening to the number one podcast for nonprofit leaders, getting your nonprofit fully funded. This is the Fundraising Masterminds Podcast.
B
Transformational giving actually doesn't occur with just cash gifts. There is something psychological. Cash is transactional by nature. Right. We're using it every day. The IRS has said 99% of America's wealth is in assets.
C
But yet, what are 99%, 99% of most ministries going for? They're going for cash.
A
Welcome back to another episode here at the Fundraising Masterminds Podcast. My name is Jason Galasinski and my co host, Jim Dempsey.
C
Hi, Jason.
A
Well, Jim, we've got an exciting episode lined up for our listeners today.
C
We do.
A
We're going to be talking about plan giving, explained how to leave a lasting legacy.
C
Right.
A
We've got a special guest joining us on the program, and before I get into introducing him, I just wanted to let you know that if you are new to this podcast or you've never heard of this podcast before and you're involved in development work or Christian ministry work, you have found the right podcast. We do weekly episodes where we talk about development strategy, fundraising strategy, and all kinds of things related to running nonprofits specifically designed for nonprofit leaders from a Christian perspective. So, Jim, we've got an exciting guest. This person comes to us from the Crew Foundation.
C
Absolutely.
A
This person is actually the CEO of the CRU foundation, over 33 years in ministry, started working with Bill Bright back as his assistant and has a passion for global evangelism and Christ centered stewardship.
C
Yes.
A
So without further ado, I would love to bring on Eric Flesh Hood to the program. Eric, it's good to have you.
B
Jason. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. And. Wow. I'm here with the Fundraising Masterminds. This is amazing.
A
Welcome to the studio.
B
Yeah.
C
Well, I do have to say, Eric and I have been friends for over 25 years. And Eric, Eric is one of the most gifted development minds in the United States and his specialty in plan giving. He is so respected in the industry that it really is a privilege to not only get a chance to work with him, but to call him a friend. A very dear friend.
B
Likewise, Jim. Thank you.
C
Really blessing. Wow.
A
Well, and Eric, you just recently had your first grandchild, so congratulations on that.
C
Yes.
B
I'm still getting used to the title.
C
Yes.
B
I'm going with Big dad, so.
C
Oh, nice. I like it.
A
Well, the topic today, we're going to be talking about something that a lot of our listeners may not know a lot about. We're going to be talking about planned giving. Now, I'm guessing that plan giving has something to do with planning to give or something like that, but I'm hoping that we can get into a few of the details about plan giving and what it is. So, Eric, I would love to just start at maybe the beginning of how did you get involved in ministry? And specifically, how did you get involved in plan giving?
B
Okay. Yeah, Well, I became a Christian through the ministry of CREW on the college campus and joined staff right after graduation. And as you said, I was with Dr. Bright for a few years as his assistant and learned how a president of a nonprofit can really be successful raising money and really challenging people to give their all toward the fulfillment of the Great Commission. It was really exciting to see that. But then actually I was recruited to join a fund development team within cru that was about five years in, and I did development at a local and regional level. And then about 2010, I was approached about making a bit of a career shift from traditional development into what we're calling planned giving. So I've been doing that since about 2010. Received some excellent training from the American College, also some mentoring from Ray Line in Southern California. Ray is considered one of the godfathers of this whole space, especially in the Christian planned giving world. So it was a real privilege to be mentored by him. And then in 2016, I became the CEO of CRU foundation, where I've been ever since.
C
Well, Eric, thanks. That's a great introduction, and that helps us get a little bit of perspective on where you're coming from. Now, I know so many in our audience are probably saying, okay, what is planned giving and how can it help me? Or I have no clue whatsoever, or frankly, planned giving, I've heard of it, but how am I going to survive? I'm just trying to make payroll this week and you're telling me to plan 10, 15, 25 years ahead. What isn't planned giving? Wills and trusts and all kinds of things that are so far beyond me. You know, I don't even know if I'm going to be executive director next month, so why do I need to be thinking about these kinds of things?
B
Right, Right. I'm so glad that you guys are starting in this place because planned giving is a term that really has lost its saltiness when you use it. People don't really understand what it is, and it has evolved somewhat what it means. But I like to think of it as giving from wealth. It's wealth giving. And what do I mean by that? Well, if according to the irs. Most wealth in the United States is not held in cash. A very small fraction of it is held in cash. And yet that's where most of the fundraising efforts and organizations is focused now. It's very important cash, right? It's the lifeblood, it's the daily paying the bills. But we really need to think about the other 90 to 95% of wealth that is held in assets.
C
Right?
B
Stocks, real estate, retirement accounts, property that people own, collectibles. And so I think the reason the term plan to giving cropped up is because when you start talking about giving assets, it does take more planning to get those assets in the door than it does with just stroking a check or swiping your credit card for that cash gift. So, so that's where the idea of plan comes from. And then, and then there's another aspect to it, too. When people are thinking about giving away significant chunks of their overall net worth, sometimes those gifts are what they say are deferred. So they will happen later in time, but they need to be put in place today.
C
That's excellent. Now, I have to ask Eric, is there a better term? If it's lost its saltiness and it doesn't have effectiveness, is there a term that we should be using that's better?
B
Well, on our team, we'd use terms like gifts of net worth. We talk about asset giving, and sometimes we use plan giving. But like, like you're putting your finger on. It's. It's not. It doesn't really communicate as well as some of the other, those other terms do.
C
Got it, got it.
A
So a lot of our, the organizations that listen to this podcast, there might be smaller organizations. They might be just local pregnancy centers or a small Christian school or child evangelist, child evangelism fellowship. You know, maybe a team of like two or three people. Right. They're generally, they're, they're just trying to survive or they're just, maybe they're getting to the point. We're trying to help them get to that point where they're thriving a little bit better. But like Jim said, when should someone like that start getting into plan giving? Like how. When is a good time for that? Is that something they should do in year one or after a certain amount of time? Is there a certain budget size that you should be at or staff size to be able to take on plan giving? Can you give us an idea?
B
Sure, yeah. It's a very big field. There are lots of types of gifts that kind of come under this umbrella, and you can stage how you Go after these based on the maturity and development of your program. But I think there's probably two types of gifts that I think anybody who's, who's got a, a supporter base, a donor base of people who've been giving regularly over a number of years. You can talk to them about gifts of stock, for instance. That is a non cash gift. That's an asset. Those gifts tend to be much larger than cash gifts and a little bit of education with donors that, that can come in. Now that is not a deferred gift, but it comes with a lot of benefits for the donor and the organization. Another example would be gift, the will or trust or estate, an estate gift. Those don't cost the donor anything. Right? It doesn't cost them anything. You're asking for a gift when they're done with their assets. And that's a pretty low level, easy thing to talk to people about. And especially in the world of hospitals and universities, this is their bread and butter. They are doing this all the time. I think the Christian world might be a little bit behind our friends in those secular spaces.
C
Now, Eric, who would, who would benefit the most from this? You know, if I'm a director of a pregnancy center and I'm going out to meet a handful of donors, I set up three or four appointments over two days. Who am I going to deter? How am I going to determine who it is that I'm going to talk this with?
B
Yeah, you would probably want to do some research on your folks. But take stock, for example. There is a wide swath of the American public that are owners of the US Stock market.
C
Okay.
B
So I'm going to venture to say that your donor base is full of people who are owners in the US Stock market. And giving gifts of stock is relatively easy to do, doesn't take a lot of time or effort, but can yield a lot of benefits. If you simply let people know that you can accept that as a gift or that, that you're interested in receiving a gift like that.
C
Right, right.
B
Yeah.
C
So their net worth, their value, you know, knowing that they have a business, any of those kinds of things, do those give any indication for you at all about having these conversations?
B
Yes, it certainly it would because the more you know about the asset base that the donor has, if they're a small business owner, then you can approach them about giving a portion of their business that can actually be done and is done all the time, or if you know a rental empire or a vacation home. So the, you know, real estate, you can then Begin a conversation about what it might look like to give a portion or all of that to your organization.
C
Now unpack this a little bit then for me, Eric. And so our, our listeners understand why. What would I do if somebody gave me a portion of their business or gave me their entire business? I mean, what would I do? Isn't it better that they just sell their business and give me the proceeds? Shouldn't I just have them sell the stock? I mean, I, you know, I mean, what.
B
Right.
C
Golly, I'm scared to death of talking to people about this. I wouldn't know what to do if someone said, I'd like to donate some stock to your organization. What do we do? I mean, unpack these so that, you know, people feel more comfortable having discussions like this.
B
Sure, sure. Well, we're down here in Florida and orange groves are very popular here in Florida. So I'm going to use the orange grove as an analogy. So these assets are like or trees. They've been cultivated, they've grown and they're yielding fruit. But as soon as you go to sell an orange tree or sell your oranges, Uncle Sam's going to come along and say, hey, we need to take 10, 20, 30, even up to 50% of what you're going to sell. And then you can, you can do what you want to with the rest.
C
Right?
B
Now that's not very cost effective for, from a giving standpoint, if I'm going to lose up to 50 cents and give after I pay Uncle Sam.
C
Right.
B
But what if you could take your orange grove and put it in a protected environment, put it in a tax free zone where Uncle Sam can't reach in and take the oranges, can't reach in and chop down a few trees, but you can put it in that protective environment and then allow the fruit every year to come in and be given to ministry. That's what's going on in. That's why you don't want to sell before you give.
C
Got it.
B
And that's why planned giving, the planning part of this often involves the tax planning side of things so that you're taking advantage of what I like to call the government's matching gift program. Did you know that Uncle Sam has a matching gift program?
C
Love to hear this.
B
And so for every $2 you give to charity, Uncle Sam will match it with another dollar if you give it before you sell it and let the charity sell it after you give it to charity. Because then it's in the tax free zone that Uncle Sam cannot.
C
Wow, nice.
B
I Love that.
A
How does that, like, so how does that work practically? So like let's say I own a coffee shop, you know, it's doing well, you know, I've got 10, 20, 30 employees, you know, and I want to give my business to Crew foundation, for example. Does that mean that Crew foundation is going to run my coffee shop?
B
Great question, great question. Typically, charity is not going to be in a, going to have a minority, non voting interest. So the company is going to be made up of shares or percentage interest that would be gifted, but it's a non controlling, typically non voting interest that is given to the charity. So you don't want the charity getting involved in the day to day running of the business. And there are ways to structure the gift so that that doesn't happen so the business owner can sleep at night knowing, hey, I can still run the business, do what I do best, which is make money and we can give the charity what they do best, which is receive gifts in a tax free zone.
C
Right.
A
So, but doesn't that only benefit the charity when they sell the business or when they die or something like this? When you talked about the fruit being extracted out, I assume that that maybe refers to the profit of the business.
B
That's right.
A
So how does that mechanism work?
B
So the charity, charity in a lot of these cases become a shareholder along with the other owners. So when distributions, profit distributions are made, the charity receives its share of according to its ownership. I see. And that income is either all or mostly tax free. Wow.
C
Yeah. Now one of the things that you taught me, Eric, was that you don't have to sell your entire share of, of your company. You can sell off portions of it and, or you can donate portions.
B
That's right.
C
To, that's right, the ministry as well.
B
And that's a, that's a big aha for a lot of donors when they realize, oh, you mean I can give 30% of my vacation home, I don't have to give 100% because yeah, we kind of need some of that to live on.
C
Right.
B
And you can do calculate, you know, there's actually a thing called a zero tax sale, which means when it comes to real estate, oftentimes if a donor is willing to give about a third, they can walk away with zero net tax on the sale of that appreciated property. Just by giving a third of it away, the net tax would be zero. Wow, we see that a lot of times.
C
Yeah. Now Eric, you know, of course we've always heard cards for kids and all, you know, the, some of the standard things. But what are things that nonprofits might not realize that gets donated on, you know, maybe even a.
B
Well, yes, I'm glad you asked that because, you know, we've kind of gotten into some really advanced complex assets with the real estate and the business interests. But let's not forget IRAs, right? Qualified charitable distributions. Your supporters, age 70 and a half or older are sitting on retirement accounts where they are forced by Uncle Sam to take taxable withdrawals out of that. And many of your supporters don't need that income, but they're going to have to take it. By law. The qualified charitable distribution allows them to send that directly from their IRA account to your charity and not pay a dime of income tax on that. And it satisfies the government requirement that they make a distribution of a certain amount. Now, these types of gifts can be up to $108,000 per year.
C
Wow.
B
Yeah. But it's just a matter of letting your supporters know this exists. We are interested in taking it if you would like to give it because there are tax advantages to you and obviously advantages for our mission.
C
Well, I had one of my own personal supporters recently contact me and say, this really won't affect you, but I want you to know that I am taking my required distribution and that's how I'm going to pay my support to you all on a regular basis now is through that. And you won't get it through the normal circles that you've gotten it.
B
Right.
C
And you know, I was like, okay, yeah, great.
B
Yeah, terrific. And what we see in CREW is those gifts are literally exponentially larger than the average cash gift or credit card gift accrue a gift from an IRA like that. Wow.
C
Eric, I am a nonprofit leader. I don't know much about development, but I want. You just perked up my ears. Let's have that conversation. So what is it that I would say. How would I say that to my 72 plus old partner, financial partner or donor to our organization? We're having lunch or coffee. How would I start that conversation?
B
Jim, I'd like. I know you just recently celebrated your 73rd birthday. Congratulations to you and the family.
C
Thank you.
B
I wanted to take this occasion to let you know of a benefit to you that is available because you're such a wonderful supporter of our organization. Givers at your age with IRA assets can give in a particular way called a qualified charitable distribution where you can meet and satisfy the requirements the government has on making those withdrawals.
C
Right.
B
Instead, you can use it to do your giving and it won't increase your tax taxable income by one penny.
C
Wow, nice.
B
And it's far superior to you taking the withdrawal, paying tax on it, and then turning around and making a gift to us. So I just, if you'd like to know more about that, I can leave you some literature on that or our website link, right?
C
Absolutely. Now, Eric, is there a benefit for a non profit leader to connect up with a financial advisor or an attorney?
A
All this kind of stuff sounds really intriguing. Like if I'm listening to this for the first time, I'm like, oh, how do I get involved in that?
C
Sounds complicated.
A
Though it does sound like this isn't something I can do on my own. Right. Like, I mean, maybe the stock thing you might be able to set up on your own. I know there's different services out there that help non profits, but how would someone go about getting set up?
B
Yes.
A
You know, with these kinds of ideas.
B
Well, again, let's, let's review the simple thing. Right. Any, you don't, you don't need a outside professional to do the stock gifts. You don't need them to do the QCDs, qualified charitable distributions. You don't need it to put in front of your supporters the idea of making a gift through their will and providing that language. Those are things that you don't have to pay an attorney for help these more advanced gifts. There are foundations, I'm willing to bet very near you, even Christian foundations that can partner and help you get off the ground with this. They're the ones that have the experts who can answer the second, third, fourth question after you've introduced the topic to your friends. They can actually help you secure those gifts, help you walk through the transactional process. They can, many of them can receive that real estate on your behalf, sell it, and then send you the proceeds. Community foundations can do this. Other Christian foundations, there might be a church, even larger churches in the United States have, have ancillary foundations that can, can do this.
C
That's great. Good. That's excellent. So, Eric, if we want to start out from easiest to most complicated, and we don't have to get super complicated, but. So you're saying stock would be something that's a real easy one. You're saying out of your required distribution. That's another thing, Ira. Right. Any other kinds of things that are equally as simple from that standpoint?
B
Well, you probably. We haven't touched on charitable gift annuities.
C
Oh, yes, please, let's go down there.
B
So there's a, one of the reasons that Plan giving is so powerful is that there are tools that allow a donor to essentially give away the same asset twice.
C
Wow.
B
So they can take an asset going back to the. Let's go back to the orange tree. They can say, hey, I'm going to put this tree in that tax free zone and actually I'm going to take income from it for a number of years because I need the income. But when I'm done taking that income, I'm going to allow the charity to take that income and it's in that tax free zone. Uncle Sam is not going to chop off any of the limbs of that tree and I'm going to have the full benefit for me or my family for a period of time, and then it's going to turn and benefit the charity. That's how a charitable gift annuity works. A charitable gift annuity provides income to the donor or someone in the donor's family for life. And then when the donor is done with that, when all the payments have been made to the donor, there is a gift for the charity all ready to go.
C
Wow. Wow. That's great.
A
So how is that, how is that giving the asset twice?
B
I miss that. Yeah. If you add up the amount of income the donor gets during their life, it will oftentimes total the value of that asset. So the asset has multiplied and they've gotten the benefit and then the. So, so, so the goose has laid enough eggs to pay back the donor what they gave away, and then the charity gets the goose at the end.
C
I love that. Well, Eric, it seems that a lot of our major donors really want to give because they want to leave a legacy. They want to make a difference for the kingdom. What. What does that look like for my nonprofit? How can I benefit from their desire to leave a legacy for their organization? What, what is. What is. Unpack a little bit.
B
Yeah. I think one of the best things and simplest things you can do is, is ask questions. You want to ask questions like, what matters most to you in this world? What kind of a world do you want to leave to your children and to your grandchildren? What are the good things in God's created order that you want to preserve for the next generation? What is it that we're doing that you would like to see continue for your children, your grandchildren? So you can come up with these types of questions to get them thinking and tap into where is their heart? What is their vision for their life? There's another set of questions where you find out, how did God make you the giver that you are today. What shaped the values? What was it about your upbringing or your experience in business? The setbacks that you've had in life. So you begin to help the donor understand the story arc of their life. And how does your organization, what role does your organization have in that story arc? So it could be a rags to riches story. It could be, you know, like, my life was not lived in a very godly way, but I want to change the story, I want to change the ending.
C
Right.
B
And I want your organization to be right there helping me do that.
C
Wow.
B
So. So that's how people understand their lives is kind of a story. Questions are a great way to get at that. Listening and then take note. Don't just ask questions for questions sake. Then feedback to the donor, what you heard them say. And how does your organization help them achieve the vision for their life that they're articulating?
C
Right, right. Yeah. We talked an earlier episode this morning about finding that intersection between your partners, your donors desires and your mission, where those two intersect. Because that's that sweet spot and that's what's going to really excite them so that collectively we can help our partners achieve their goals, objectives. Well, ultimately of what God wants for their lives by partnering together.
B
Yes.
C
Yeah, yeah.
B
This is, this is really important. And I'm so glad you're bringing this up because, you know, all the years that I've been in fund development, you know, one thing I appreciate about crew is that we want development to be transformational for the donor, not transactional. Right. Because it honors God, it helps people walk with Christ, enjoy their relationship with God. When it's transformational, part of the sanctification process. Well, there's research out there that shows transformational giving actually doesn't occur with just cash gifts. That there is something psychological. Cash is. It's transactional by nature. Right. We're using it every day to buy the Big Mac to pay the bills. And that's the mindset. People come back. But as soon as you talk about gifts of net worth, where you're talking about, oh, maybe I should give away a portion of my business. That's a big deal. This is my baby. This is like in my soul. That's where people really begin to wrestle with the spiritual issues around their position.
C
They were given a donation before, you know, oh, is it, you know, is it the chicken or the egg in a sense, you know, the. Or, I'm sorry, it's the chicken or the pig. The chicken gives a contribution, but the.
B
The pigs, its life gives Its life. Exactly. Right.
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
B
So. So when, when you go into these types of conversations, even, Even with stock, you are inviting the donor into a deeper spiritual experience.
C
Right.
B
And they will be better off for it. And I'm telling you, once people experience, like that stock gift and they see, they see how it works, they see how it benefits, they experience a deeper level of joy and satisfaction than just writing in their credit card number.
C
Right.
B
And again, I'm not here to downplay or, or, you know, discount cash gifts. They're vital, they're important, they're appreciated, and they're important in the life of a donor. But I am here to elevate.
C
Yes.
B
What is often overlooked. And that's the asset piece.
C
Yeah. Yeah. Eric, one more time, remind us that that ratio of current give to asset giving, there.
B
There have been a number of. The Federal Reserve has looked at this. The IRS has looked at this. There are large wealth management firms that have looked at what percentage of people's wealth is held in cash versus in their assets. And I've never seen a number below 90% in assets. The IRS has said 99% of America's wealth is in assets.
C
Wow. Incredible. Crazy. But yet what are 99% of most ministries going for? They're going for cash, aren't they?
B
Yes.
C
Yeah.
B
Yes.
C
We. Jason, to me, I feel like we're opening up. We just dug into the ground and found a treasure chest. And Eric has just revealed to us that we, we got it all buried in the ground and we need to just start to dig that up.
A
Well, so many non profits just have the mindset of that. There's just, there's only so much pie. You know, we talked about this a lot, but they, they think, you know, I'm in a small town or I'm in this certain town and there's so many organizations around. You know, there's maybe 15. And they all do an annual dinner and they all do the golf outing, and they all do this. So they think, like, the pie is like, only so big. So if pregnancy Center a takes like 15 of the pie, and then the, you know, the Christian school takes 20, you know, and then they kind of do all this math and they think, well, you know, I'm probably only going to get, you know, this much. And they kind of talk themselves into settling for less. But they, they don't realize, number one, God can make the pie bigger. And they also don't realize this whole concept of asset giving, like 90 or 99, as you said, their people's wealth are in their assets, and they don't realize what can be done.
B
Yeah.
A
I think that's why we wanted to talk about this subject is like.
B
That's right.
A
Helping people understand there's more than just cash in the bank, you know, so to speak.
C
Yeah. And a lot of this, I think, is breaking down. Those fear barriers are out there. I think, you know, we just. We start to talk about. And I feel like it's the, you know, the teacher in. In Charlie Brown, you know, you start to talk about asses, like way Eric is talking about things, but it's not right.
B
Have to be right. Well, you know, I think going back to your point there, we in the fundraising, Christian fundraising community need to realize we have trained our givers to think a certain way. We've trained them to think about cash. There was an interesting experiment that was done where people were walking into the grocery store, and the surveyors would stop people as they were walking in. And in group A, they would say, they would ask them, hey, we're just surveying to see if you're walking in today with your credit card. People would pull out their credit card. Yeah, I've got three credit cards here. We also were surveying to see if you're. If you've got your checkbook with you today. Pull out. Yep. Brought some checks, too. Okay, well, great. Group B, they would stop and say, hey, we wanted to just survey you a few questions about your retirement accounts. We wanted to survey you today about your real estate holdings. Wanted to survey you today about your small business. And then what they did was they tracked what was spent by group A and group B in the grocery store. Group B spent way more than group A. And this was. And the re. And the reason is the psychology. You have set up group B to really have the mindset of how much they have.
C
I want more money to spend.
B
Yeah, you're pointing them to their wealth, not their cash.
C
Right. I love it. Wow, that is great.
B
So we can really turn the tide as a fundraising community by elevating this conversation and helping people realize before the Lord. Wow. I really have so much. And it belongs to the Lord.
C
Eric, I'm going to put you now in the position of a ministry leader. The highlight of fundraising mastermind. One of the key pillars is what they refer to as the Perfect Vision Dinner. And so you are now in the appeal portion of the Perfect Vision Dinner out there. It's time to close and ask for money. What are you going to include so that you get people in the audience thinking about, hey, I got more money than I thought I had.
B
Yeah. Yeah. So certainly in a situation like that where you're asking people to make a fairly quick decision. Right. There's not really a lot of time for the planning piece. I would, at a minimum, I would include the option to give stock and I would also use that response device to allow them to indicate, hey, I'm interested, or I already have included your organization in my estate plan. Okay.
C
Yes.
B
There are people in the audience probably who've already done that. Most people, I think the stat is something like 70% of people who make the decision to leave a gift in their will never tell the charity that they've done so. And the charity only finds out when the gift comes in.
C
Wow.
B
But many more people are willing to reveal that information if they are asked. Yes. So that's why I would. I would make that kind of a check the box, but. And then qcd. A qcd, I believe, is in the realm of a decision that someone seventy and a half years or older in your audience could latch onto and decide. Yep, yep. I'm willing, I'm willing to at least talk about this with someone in terms of fulfilling my commitment that I'm making tonight.
C
Yeah. Eric, I did a dinner last spring and I just as a random thought, decided to throw in three little letters. And I know you know what those. I'm sure you know what those three little letters are, but it increased giving significantly at this event that I did. And I'm like, why have I not even mentioned those three letters a long time? And it's dark. And so just real quickly, maybe just explain what those three letters mean.
B
Yes. Excellent point, Jim. We would be completely remiss if we didn't touch on donor advised funds.
C
Right.
B
So a donor advised fund is a segregated charitable giving account that's held at a foundation that a donor advises that foundation where to send the grants from that segregated giving. Fun. And I'll tease it this way. The daft is the key tool to unlocking the donor's net worth to actually make it giveable.
C
I love that.
A
Well, well, thanks, Eric, for joining us on this episode. It's been a good starting point, you know, for a conversation. We're going to be having a part two on the next episode where we're going to go into a little bit more detail about this. We're going to talk about some practical things on how you can get started in this realm. But for now, we're kind of out of time. So thanks again for tuning in to this episode. Of the Fundraising Masterminds podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or you have some questions about this area, please let us know in the comment section below. And also subscribe because you're not going to want to miss the next episode. Well, Jim, any final thoughts about plan giving?
C
Yeah, it just. This is incredible from my standpoint. What an incredible opportunity you have. If Eric hasn't at least piqued your interest with that 90:10 or even really 9 to 9:1 ratio, you weren't listening. You've got to see Asset giving as critical. Eric has done an amazing job. I oftentimes call him Mr. Asset because he's always got us thinking within crew. All of our leaders are thinking about Asset giving now and don't pass up on that opportunity. It's that diamond in the rough that you've been looking for for the longest time.
A
Well Eric, you've definitely got me interested, so I'm going to be tuning in for sure on the next episode. But thank you everyone for tuning in. We will see you next time.
C
Take it.
Title: Planned Giving Explained: How to Leave a Lasting Legacy
Podcast: The Fundraising Masterminds Podcast (Episode 109)
Date: November 12, 2025
Hosts: Jason Galisinski and Jim Dempsey
Guest: Eric Fleshood, CEO of Crew Foundation
This episode delivers a deep-dive introduction to planned giving for nonprofit leaders. Designed to demystify the concept, it explores why every nonprofit—no matter the size—should understand and embrace asset-based giving to secure transformational gifts and long-term sustainability. Drawing on decades of experience, guest Eric Fleshood breaks down complex ideas into practical steps, while the hosts guide the discussion toward immediate application for nonprofit leaders.
Memorable Metaphor ([11:47]):
“These assets are like orange trees...as soon as you go to sell, Uncle Sam’s going to take 10, 20, 30, even up to 50%. But what if you could put your orange grove in a protected environment, a tax-free zone?...That’s why you don’t want to sell before you give.” – Eric ([11:47])
Sample Approach to Donor ([18:27]):
“Jim, I wanted to let you know of a benefit to you…Givers at your age with IRA assets can give in a particular way called a qualified charitable distribution…you can use it to do your giving and it won’t increase your taxable income by one penny.” – Eric ([18:27])
Memorable Experiment ([30:07]):
An experiment in a grocery store showed that when people were reminded about their assets (retirement accounts, real estate), they spent more than those prompted only about cash/credit. The mindset shift increased their sense of capacity to give ([30:07], Eric).
“You’ve got to see Asset giving as critical...It’s that diamond in the rough that you’ve been looking for for the longest time.” — Jim Dempsey ([35:17])
Tune in for Part 2 for a deeper, practical guide to launching planned giving in your nonprofit!