Patience Is Essential for Fund Raisers Who Seek Planned Gifts

By NICOLE LEWIS

Only 15 people have made planned gifts to the Ronald McDonald House of the Twin Cities since it began soliciting such donations 18 months ago,

as far as the charity knows.

Orlee Engler Kahn, director of planned giving and endowment at the charity, is nevertheless delighted.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was because I was brand-new,” says Ms. Kahn. It also helps that four donors have said their gifts will be six-figure bequests.

Unlike some charity fund raisers who hope for quick returns on their planned-gift marketing efforts, Ms. Kahn recognizes one of the major difficulties of soliciting planned gifts, which often provide donors with income and charitable tax deductions: They don’t produce instantaneous results, in large part because many gifts don’t materialize until the donor dies.

“It’s a process that requires time, patience, continuity, and relationship building,” says Ms. Kahn, whose charity helps families with children who have life-threatening diseases. “First people have to trust you.”

Marc Carmichael, president of R&R Newkirk, a consulting company in Willow Springs, Ill., that specializes in helping charities obtain planned gifts, says fund raisers need to be sure their boards and bosses understand that it will take at least 3 years, and often 5 to 10 years, to see results from marketing efforts started today, because donors need time to learn about planned giving and to evaluate their financial needs.

Taking the First Step

Charities that are just starting to solicit planned gifts often don’t know how to take the first step in letting potential donors know about their options.

Ms. Kahn got the word out by including notices about planned gifts in the charity’s quarterly newsletter and by mailing personalized letters to 200 of the group’s most consistent donors.

“Nobody had ever talked to them about the idea of a bequest or setting up an endowment,” she says. “My call was the impetus to look into a will.”

Ms. Kahn, who is a lawyer, made herself accessible to answer questions and also hired a financial-services company to help the charity handle paperwork and oversee investments.

She says she purposely sent her mailing to a small group of people.

“To nurture and cultivate each relationship, I cannot risk being spread so thin and inadvertently miss someone and alienate them,” says Ms. Kahn, who works part time. “We’re on a small but steady track to really build the planned-giving program and give it the attention that it needs.”

Following are some other suggestions that fund-raising veterans offer to charities that are just beginning to solicit planned gifts:

Use your own resources. Almost all organizations send donors newsletters and other publications in which they can advertise planned-giving options for little or no cost. Experts advise consistency: Put the ad in the same place each issue.

Some charities have other natural outlets: Theaters can slip notices into ticket envelopes, public radio stations can broadcast on-air messages. Fund raisers also suggest ensuring that every contribution form has a box that donors can check to receive information about planned giving. And many groups also include a line on their letterhead that reminds donors to remember charities in their will.

“You really can do a lot on a modest budget,” says Dan Peterson, director of planned giving at Wisconsin Public Radio, in Madison.

When the station began looking for planned gifts four years ago, Mr. Peterson sent a survey to listeners tucked into a monthly newsletter. He received several hundred requests for information. More recently, with the help of a student intern, the station has been creating a planned-giving section on its Web site.

Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, involves its medical staff in promoting gifts. While the hospital deliberately avoids asking its doctors for donations, it tells physicians about the institution’s planned-giving options in case a patient requests information.

At an annual dinner for staff members, the hospital showcases one or two physicians who helped with fund raising. During the event, fund raisers discuss different gifts received that year, including planned gifts, which are essential to the hospital’s fund raising: 25 percent of unrestricted funds for the hospital’s campaigns come from planned gifts.

Collaborate with other organizations. Small charities often don’t have sufficient staff or expertise to handle some aspects of planned giving, such as the paperwork that accompanies such donations. When a donor wanted to make a planned gift to Connecticut’s Long Wharf Theatre, the organization sought help from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, which will manage the gift for the theater. To enable it to help more charities, the foundation recently hired a staff member who will concentrate on helping groups promote planned gifts.

Borrow ads. Keeping an eye on how other charities advertise planned giving can be a money- and time-saving technique.Douglas Stasek, major- and planned-giving director at the Blake School, a private elementary and secondary institution in Minneapolis, liked the Nature Conservancy’s language on a planned-giving brochure so much that he called the charity and asked if he could borrow it.

“They said, ‘Go ahead, knock yourself out,’” he recalls. “Within the business, people are good about that, if you are not a direct competitor.”