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What the Fundraising
229: Unlocking the Potential of Planned Giving for Your Nonprofit with Brantley Boyett
00:29:29
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- [00:04]
Mallory Erickson
Hey, it's Mallory. If you want to plan fundraising events that actually build connection, not just transactions, then you need to join me and give butter for this free webinar. On March 11th at 2:00pm Eastern Standard Time, we're breaking down how to create belonging first events that inspire your community and raise more money. Grab your spot now@givebutter.com Mallory.
- [00:33]
Brantley Boyett
Two of the first things we were taught at the lab is that humans are always bringing their biases into every conversation. And even more importantly, we almost all misremember conversations. And if you interview two people about a conversation they had yesterday, they are going to tell you two very different conversations 95% of the time. So I think that means, and especially in fundraising, coming into every conversation with an open mind, coming in with empathy, understanding that the way you viewed things before might not be the way that the donor viewed them in that interaction and really, really listening.
- [01:13]
Mallory Erickson
Hey, my name is Mallory and I'm obsessed with helping leaders in the nonprofit space raise money and run their organizations differently. What the Fundraising is a space for real and raw conversations to both challenge and inspire you. Not too long ago, I was in your shoes, uncomfortable with fundraising and unsure of my place in this sector. It wasn't until I started to listen to other experts outside of the fundraising space that I was able to shift my mindset and ultimately shift the way I show up as a leader. This podcast is my way of blending professional and personal development so we, as a collective inside the nonprofit sector can feel good about the work we are doing. Join me every week as I interview some of the brightest minds in the personal and professional development space to help you fundamentally change the way you lead and fundraise. I hope you enjoy this episode, so let's dive in.
- [02:07]
Welcome everyone. I am so excited to be here today with my friend Brantley Boyett. Brantley, welcome to what the fundraising.
- [02:14]
Brantley Boyett
Thank you. It's exciting to be here.
- [02:16]
Mallory Erickson
I'm thrilled to get to introduce you to my folks and so let's start with you just sharing a little bit about you and your work and what what brings you to our conversation today.
- [02:26]
Brantley Boyett
Sure, yeah. So I am president and one of the co founders of a company called Giving Docs. My background is I am a reformed attorney. I went to the University of Texas for my undergraduate degree and also law school and practiced law in Austin, Texas for about 11 years. Founded this company in 2015 with another attorney in Austin and moved to Durham, North Carolina in 2017 when we partnered with Duke University to do research how to get people to do estate planning at all and how to get people to think about their legacy in that process. Thought I would move back to Texas at some point, but still here in Durham, North Carolina today I have a part time job teaching entrepreneurship and the law at Duke University School of Law. And yeah, you know, Giving Docs from a High Level is an online estate planning platform that is purpose built to get people to plan their estate today and include the organizations that they care most about.
- [03:22]
Mallory Erickson
Okay, so talk to folks who are maybe new to the estate planning world and have a lot of potentially preconceived notions about which donors this applies to, which types of organizations this might apply to. I know I held a lot of assumptions like, oh, we don't have the donors or we're not the organization for that or to be learning about that. So can you kind of give that breakdown?
- [03:50]
Brantley Boyett
Sure. I think plan giving can be useful for any type of nonprofit organization. And there's not really rules around how big you have to be or what kind of donors you have to have. But there has to be, I think, institutional buy in to some of the processes around plan giving. And that comes with a bit of education on how to speak to donors, what the types of gifts there are. I and then, you know, the gratitude process, the cultivation process. I think those are the biggest blockers. It's not necessarily the size of the organization or the revenue or, you know, the donor audience or class, as it were, so to speak, or even the age of those people. It's really just kind of educating yourselves on why that's important and how we can fold this into other fundraising initiatives. I think that there's a bit of fear around it. Like a lot of people are like, oh, I don't really understand that. So I'm not sure if that's important. And certainly for like a lot of younger organizations, they're not there yet. They want to make sure that, you know, the annual fund is shored up and that they have budget for the next year or two years. So devoting that time to that educational piece and human resources can be a bit challenging. I do think that it's really important for organizations of all sizes to be looking at this right now. As we've seen, annual giving has been on this slow downslide. And conversely, plan giving is kind of a rocket ship. We know that right now it accounts for close to 10% of all giving. Great wealth transfer is coming. The new number is 120 trillion to be transferred from US people to other US people by death in the next 25 years and different estimates, but roughly 8 or 9 trillion of that is supposed to go to non profits. So I think the organizations who are putting in the work now stand to benefit the most from that transfer of wealth.
- [05:48]
Mallory Erickson
Okay, can we maybe bust a myth or maybe I'm playing into it, I'm not sure. But I'm thinking about all the sort of, like, resistance I had to this as like a small organization. And Ed. And I know, especially with some of the limiting beliefs I held around fundraising, that I worried about any type of kind of fundraising program that could potentially cannibalize funding from my annual giving. And so can we talk about the relationship between. Because I've since learned and seen the ways that planned giving programs can really actually enhance your annual giving, deepen donor relationships, sort of be a part of a much more. More, I don't know, vulnerable and intentional conversation that supports giving across the board. But I know folks perhaps have some fears there.
- [06:40]
Brantley Boyett
Sure. Yeah. I think there's this thought, and we see it all the time with our clients and kind of out in the wild in the industry at large, that major gifts and plan gifts are siloed. You know, major gifts wants to hold on to the donors and get their big gifts this year, and they don't want a plain giving conversation ruining that. That someone might come in and be like, oh, I'll give it to you when I died and it's tons of money and I don't need to do major gifts anymore. I think what people find over time is that the organizations who have the best both types of programs, major giving and giving, are communicating really well with each other. I mean, it seems obvious when you say it out loud, but best type of people to create a major gift are often people who have communicated, submitted a plan gift and vice versa. The best type of people who are going to create a plan gift are the ones who already created a major gift. So it's difficult. There's politics at play and people need to meet quotas. And like, yeah, in the short term, potentially one could get in the way of the other. But if you're thinking about this holistically and long term, it makes perfect sense that those two sides of the organization would be communicating and encouraging each other. While that doesn't always happen in real life.
- [07:56]
Mallory Erickson
Okay, right. Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like that is one of the things with smaller organizations, at least if they have the tools to be able to do this, can actually be more coordinated around potentially. And so that's interesting hearing that. Okay, so can you talk to me a little bit like on the technology side, where before we hit record, we were talking a little bit about sort of the AI revolution or whatever we want to call it, and thinking about AI through that responsible and beneficial lens, you're obviously thinking about that a lot too. Can you talk to how that plays in both to maybe your tool, but also how you think about the communication of that tool to donors? Because I think there's this big fear around donors. Fear around AI?
- [08:44]
Brantley Boyett
Sure, yeah. I mean, in regards to the tool, we are essentially an online legal form builder and people are starting to dip their toes in there from like the legal tech perspective in terms of using AI to communicate about this documentation. I think right now we're still really early and there's a lot of risk averse people in that space and people who are willing to take on risk and we have kind of erred on the side of risk averse. Like we are not using that in platform to help people because it is questionable, whether in now or in the future, this would be seen as unauthorized practice of law and all the issues that you face with state bars around the country. And so we're kind of tiptoeing into that space while also, you know, embracing the use of AI in all of our day to day activities that we're doing internally in the company and then also in terms of messaging donors. So part of our job is getting the platform in front of people and encouraging them to use it. We were part of a behavioral science lab called the center for Advanced Hindsight. It's run by a behavioral economist named Dan Ariely. And a lot of what we were doing was reducing friction in the platform and trying to make it really easy for people to, you know, finish this process. But more of what we were doing was like, how do we communicate with donors in a way that doesn't scare them off from estate planning, that does encourage them to do legacy giving. And you know, that involves a lot of testing and you know, designing, testing, implementing, revising, testing, implementing over and over again. And AI makes a lot of that easier, at least faster. Right. And we can get that stuff out. There's questions swirling around the industry about the what's ethical in regards to communicating with donors using AI? And I think a lot of those questions at the moment remain unanswered. And that is why I'm a big fan of the work that you and Nathan Chappelle are doing at fundraising AI to at least have a conversation around that, because it's going to happen. It's happening already. Lots of organizations are kind of quietly doing this. And I mean, we all have Gemini in our Gmail right now and it's crafting emails for us. And there's a question about what's fair and ethical in regards to donors and communicating with them and how much should we let them know. And I think that's fascinating. I think overall it should be a good thing for fundraising, but there's certainly dangers in alienating or angering donors who feel like, you know, that personal touch has been lost and the human relationship that they had with the organization has been eroded.
- [11:29]
Mallory Erickson
One of the things that I so appreciate about what you said is like at the very beginning of that around where you're not using AI, I think that's just such an important part of the conversation in terms of like, part of the responsible and beneficial use of AI is being critical and is not treating it like this binary thing, like we're either using it or we aren't using it. And you know, being so either or in that way and being. Being more sort of like calculated and intentional and cautious in certain places than potentially in others. And I think it just opens up this. I don't know, like, there's something about the AI conversation where I feel like people feel like they're losing their sense of choice or like if they say yes to the first thing, then now all of a sudden it's going to be everywhere and it's just going to communicate with their donors without them. And you know, and, and there probably are things like that that like, if you're not careful, stuff does start. Start to happen. But I think you highlighting that and you know, for nonprofits who are trying to figure out like which company is, it's so interesting. There was another company like six months ago who said something similar to me. And my response that was like, wow, that for me is what makes me want to endorse the company. Right. Is to say, like, here's a way in which we're actually not using it very specifically, very intentionally for these exact reasons, because we, while it might make things, quote, unquote, easier for nonprofits in the immediate moment or easier for you in the immediate moment to have that it actually could have these long term, these downstream negative impacts or vulnerabilities around sort of like the legal implications. So I just want to like double click on that because I think it's so important that you guys are doing that.
- [13:21]
Brantley Boyett
Yeah, I think even to like expand on that, I think that those of Us in the not for profit technology space have kind of an obligation to do some of this homework for the organizations we're working with, not just because it's good for business, but because it's good for them. And we can, we're uniquely suited to kind of help answer these questions because of the network that we have with each other, which is, you know, once again, why I would encourage anyone listening to your podcast who hasn't gone to look at fundraising AI to do so. Because I think there's a wealth of information there and, like, a great group of people trying to solve those problems.
- [13:59]
Mallory Erickson
Yeah, okay.
- [14:04]
Hey, it's Mallory. Can we be honest? I get the whole get rid of the gala energy, but the thing is, ditching a fundraising event tells me the way you have been running them might have been shortsighted. Fundraising events aren't just about raising money. They're about building relationships that sustain your mission long after the event is over. That's why I'm teaming up with GiveButter for a free webinar on March 11th at 2:00pm Eastern Standard Time. All about how to create belonging first events. We're talking real strategies to design experiences that connect people, deepen engagement, and, yes, help you hit your fundraising goals, too. If you want your next event to leave people feeling inspired and not burn out in the process, then sign up now at givebutter.com backslash/mallory.
- [14:55]
All right, so separating. So moving on, because I could go down this rabbit hole and I'm going to force myself not to, but you mentioned this concept of hand raisers and how nonprofits can sort of think about maybe they're starting this program or maybe they've had, like, a legacy giving program that's, like, pretty dormant. And what's, what's that process for either of those folks to. To think about this playing a bigger role in their fundraising?
- [15:23]
Brantley Boyett
Yeah, so I've been sort of minorly obsessed with this concept of hand raisers for the past couple years. And I started this project with Nathan Stelzer, the Steltzer Company, a few years back. And, you know, coming from the behavioral science lab, I was like, okay, look, we have these people and we define for the audience out there, we define hand raisers as someone who's signified intent to leave a plan gift. But this could apply to major gifts as well, but hasn't taken the necessary steps to do that yet. So, like, yes, I'm going to leave a big gift to the organization. No, I haven't done it yet. And like, how do we get those people across the finish line. What is the appropriate messaging? We've also done a ton of research around like what's the actual monetary value of those types of people to the organization? Kind of a predicting future model. Because. And the reason why we did that work is I feel like in our industry, in the plan giving specifically, gift officers are always trying to justify their existence. Like they have a quota, but that's not dollars that come in the door. Major gifts like you can quantify exactly how much someone raised and properly compensate them for it. But with plan gifts, it's a little more far afield in terms of what's coming in. In fact, a lot of the gifts that are being counted are by people that from gift officers who source them three, four, six employment cycles back. So that's another reason why organizations who commit to devoting resources to plan giving have to really commit for the long haul. Because it may take 5, 10 years for some of these gifts to start realizing. But I think we're leaning in over here more on how do we communicate to these people. It goes into the AI conversation like, is there a different track and AI help with helping us learn how to communicate to these people. We're doing some testing now and we have on our platform, we have tons of people who've created gifts, but we have even more who signified an intent to create a gift. So how do we reactivate these people? How do we like restart the relationship with the organization when their gift officer might have moved on at this point? How do we teach these gift officers to re engage these people? And that's something that's a big initiative over here this year.
- [17:34]
Mallory Erickson
Okay, I love thinking about that. And do you feel like there are kind of like misconceptions or like that we hold assumptions sometimes about the donor isn't holding about themselves, but because maybe a pledge is like sitting out there and they haven't gotten over the finish line. I was coaching a big institution recently, like 15 of their fundraisers. And I remember this guy on the call talking about, you know, this sort of verbal commitment of a gift. It wasn't a planned gift, but and just like the, this person had been giving for 25 years, very significant amounts. He had never kind of defaulted on a promise, but he wouldn't sign a pledge sheet. And the organization was really trying to move to that. And so the fundraiser like needed to show his boss like this is happening and couldn't get that donor over the action line. And from the donor's perspective, they're like dude, like, I've been giving for 25 years. I've never not done what I said. Like, why are. Why is this so important? I'm assuming in planned giving, this happens a lot too. Like, and so how are you thinking about solving a problem like that?
- [18:41]
Brantley Boyett
I mean, that's, you know, you're touching on a couple things there, but, like, the specific story you're telling is, like, the issue with quotas, right? Like, someone needs to get a pledge and how that gets in the way of relationships, right? And then you bring up a really interesting point about, do we bring our biases into these conversations? Like, million percent? Two of the first things we were taught at the lab is that humans are always bringing their biases into every conversation. And even more importantly, we almost all misremember conversations. And if you interview two people about a conversation they had yesterday, they are going to tell you two very different conversations 95% of the time. So I think that means, and especially in fundraising, coming into every conversation with an open mind, coming in with empathy, understanding that way you viewed things before might not be the way that the donor viewed them in that interaction and really, really listening.
- [19:35]
Mallory Erickson
So in that way. Okay, so that's really interesting in that way. Like, is there a way that the paper trail can become a relationship builder if both parties sort of understand that, right? To be able to say, like, hey, like, we're. We have this really meaningful relationship. We're also, as a part of that, handling these transactions that are sensitive, and I want to make sure that I'm handling it with care and that I'm fulfilling on my piece to you. And so part of this process is to really, like, ensure that we are always on the same page and that I didn't misinterpret or misunderstand something. Like, can that kind of openness and genuineness around the purpose of some of that documentation be helpful in moving people forward?
- [20:24]
Brantley Boyett
That's a brilliant idea. You should coach people on how to talk to donors.
- [20:33]
Mallory Erickson
I mean, I'm just thinking, like, there are all these things, right, in our sector that we've made so transactional. But, like, there's nothing inherently bad about that paper, right? And so it's like, how do we talk about that paper as being an instrument for connection as opposed to a break in it?
- [20:52]
Brantley Boyett
For sure. And it's a framing issue that a lot of fundraisers, it's not ingrained in anyone. It needs to be trained. And it must be frustrating as a fundraiser whose whole job is like, this is a relationship who Got to have a long term relationship and then someone's thrusting, you know, a contract in the middle of it and a lot of time for what? Like a lot of orgs will come that we talk to have this kind of what I consider slightly antiquated rule around. Okay, we need to book plan gifts. Like we need the donor to sign this thing that says they've created the plan gift. And I'm like, if we don't trust these donors and we're telling them we don't trust them to like put us, put them in our will or whatever, trust document or other type of plain gift, that's not really a good recipe for maintaining this relationship all the way. Like, let's not tell donors we don't trust them.
- [21:49]
Mallory Erickson
Right, right. Yeah, right, exactly that. It's so interesting. Yeah. I mean, everything needs to be sort of translated through the lens and the motivation and the intention of the person on the other side. Right. And it's like, I mean, I feel like I've learned a lot about planned giving from like Cherry and Koshy. And I remember I was sitting on a panel with him once and he, he said something like, you know, he wasn't, he was talking about donor retention and he was talking about sort of the phases of life when donors typically like might stop giving to an annual fund because of sort of where they're at in their retirement, they're being more, they have less liquid, you know, money to play with every year, but then it's still originally in their planned giving, you know, and then, but the organization then sees that they've lapsed, takes them off their email list, stops communicating with them. And then when they go back to review their will, they're like, who is this organization? Because the organization was like, oh well, they don't care about us anymore. And we just sort of made that assumption. And then, and then they take the organization out of the will. And so it's just so interesting, like sort of catching ourselves in the ways in which we project either our fears or our feelings about other people's behavior then into a process. And does that, does it help us or where does it hurt us?
- [23:09]
Brantley Boyett
Yeah, I mean, it's probably worse not to have a process, but these processes likely need refinement. And that's just one example. And it's interesting, you know, plain gift officers are always at odds with CFOs. And legacy giving has carry costs like you have maintaining relationships. Sending people the, you know, legacy society package has cost. And you know, there could be someone that's like, well, we're spending $500 a year on this person. They stopped major giving, you know, let's stop sending them that mailer. Let's stop giving them a free ticket to the gala, whatever it is. Right. And those are challenges and there's not necessarily any specific right answer on what to do there. And it has to be kind of evaluated on an organization by basis.
- [23:53]
Mallory Erickson
But I appreciate that framing because it still makes it clear that it is a choice and it does need to be analyzed. Right. As opposed to just sort of defaulting to something. And I think I would like to see more sort of consciousness in sector around the choices that we're making, even by inaction or even by the absence of a process. You know, nothing sort of drives me crazier than hearing out of one side of an organization saying we don't want, you know, fund our fundraising to be transactional. But then all they measure is money and they cut everything else around the moment of the transaction. And I think it's like there isn't that consciousness. Right? Everybody's just doing the best they can with the resources they have available. They're afraid of not hitting those goals. But I think it's important for us to have consciousness around, like, are those practices, are those processes matching who we say we want to be, how we want our community members to feel, and then recognize where we are and aren't sort of in alignment around that?
- [24:51]
Brantley Boyett
Couldn't agree more.
- [24:52]
Mallory Erickson
Is there a question I haven't asked you that I should be asking you about all of this?
- [24:57]
Brantley Boyett
You know, I think if you're going out to an audience, people, what, what I usually answer the most is like, am I ready for a plan giving program? And I always tell people, like, or should I use your platform for a plan giving program? And I always tell people like, don't start with us. Like we are nice to have, you know, after. There's a lot of pieces in place. So like to start a plan giving program, you need some kind of audience to talk to, talk to people to talk to about this. You need institutional buy in. So there have to be leadership who understands the value of this, sees the opportunity that I talked about earlier and is willing to devote some human time and some amount of resources to this. I encourage people who don't have a program to first look at consultants. I think getting a consultant can help you build, you know, three to five year plan and kind of lay out all the things that would be needed in terms of marketing and the society and you know, the ideal donors to talk to. And then I feel like there should be some kind of marketing in place, like a donor journey, essentially. So education, cultivation, all these things. And once you've got those pieces in place, it's much easier to make the ask. So our platform is really about making the ask and getting people to signify intent. So I think like, yes, we are super helpful and the results speak for themselves in terms of what we do for organizations. But it's not a starting place. And that's the question I get asked the most. So that just in terms of our platform, that's what I get asked about.
- [26:27]
Mallory Erickson
Giving Knocks well, okay, so it's interesting. I love that you shared that and I'm really glad you shared that. I also think, though, for some organizations who might be struggling to get over the action line about thinking about this program, knowing about the existence of your program might actually still help them start. Right? Because if their fear is about the moment that you solve, right? And they're like, oh, I don't want to start these things because then I got to do all this stuff that actually creates a lot of fear. And in me to think about just knowing that there are actually solutions for that moment, I think might help them take those first steps that you mentioned too, for sure.
- [27:04]
Brantley Boyett
And we can save a lot of time for those people. I would just reiterate that plan. Giving in particular is a very relationship kind of oriented part of fundraising where people really, you know, you're committing. It's your legacy. It's like you're committing part of your life. Putting someone in your estate plan is like adding them as a family member. So these people do want generally some kind of human connection. Now we've seen with our platform that a lot don't. They're like, no, we're good and I don't need to talk to these people. But there's some, you know, technology can't do everything for humans, and I hope it never replaces everything that humans do, at least in our field.
- [27:44]
Mallory Erickson
Likewise. Okay, tell folks where they can go to connect with you to learn more about giving. Docs, thank you so much for this conversation.
- [27:53]
Brantley Boyett
Yeah, sure. I mean, anyone that's interested in learning more can go to givingdocs.com my email is brantleyivingdocs. B r a n t l e yivingdocs.com and I'd love to hear from you guys. And Mallory, thank you so much for having me on today.
- [28:06]
Mallory Erickson
Thank you. I'm so grateful for this conversation.
- [28:09]
Brantley Boyett
Great to see you.
- [28:16]
Mallory Erickson
I hope today's episode inspired or challenged you to think differently. For additional takeaways, tips, show notes, and more about our amazing guest and sponsors, head on over to Mallorykson.com podcast and if you didn't know, hosting this podcast isn't the only thing I do every day. I coach, guide and help fundraisers and leaders just like you inside of my program, the Power Partners Formula Collective. Inside the program, I share my methods, tools and experiences that have helped me fundraise millions of dollars and feel good about myself in the process. To learn more about how I can help you, visit MalloryErickson.com PowerPartners Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to encourage you to share it with a friend you know would benefit or leave a review. I'm so grateful for all of you and the good, hard work you're doing to make our world a better place. I can't wait to see you in the next episode. Fundraising doesn't have to feel like a solo battle. My book what the Embracing and Enabling the People behind the Purpose offers practical strategies and frameworks to help you navigate the challenges of fundraising with ease and impact. And with our free discussion guide, you can deepen learning and collaboration with your team or book club ready to transform the way you Fundraise. Head to Mallorykson.combook to order your copy today anywhere books are sold and you can grab the guide there too.