November 13, 1997 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Charities angle for donations from new and long-time donors alike; stock-market worries some fund raisers
The kindness of strangers is a big help to charities at the end of the year — the time when most organizations receive the bulk of their contributions.
Holiday inspirations — plus a desire to reap income-tax write-offs — make many people decide to give to causes that they never previously supported.
To tap the impulsive spirit, many charities use special techniques at year’s end.
The Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger, run by food manufacturers, conducts a special campaign to encourage supermarket and drugstore customers to give to charity at the same time they make purchases. More than $1-million is raised from customers’ gifts.
The American Lung Association has cast a net in cyberspace, offering people who happen upon its World-Wide Web site the chance to make a donation in exchange for sending friends and family members an electronic greeting.
While such efforts can attract new support, other groups have found that the best way to encourage year-end giving is to send loyal donors a nice thank-you gift for past contributions.
Hale House, a New York charity that helps ailing babies, last year sent more than 1,100 of its most-generous donors a thank-you in the form of a handmade doll. The charity received 71 per cent more in net proceeds than when it sent its top donors a simple tree ornament.
Some charities attract new gifts by offering loyal donors an individually tailored pitch that explains exactly how they can improve their financial situation by making a planned gift — those donations that provide special tax breaks and, in many cases, regular payments to donors or beneficiaries.
Over the past two years, Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia has increased the number of planned gifts it receives by sending donors who have already made such contributions a special year-end letter. Using personal details such as the person’s age and other characteristics, it spells out financial benefits that each donor would receive by making another planned gift.
Many charity leaders expect planned gifts and other year-end contributions to be up this season due to the healthy economy, but some non-profit officials say they are concerned that the sudden stock-market plunge last month will dampen donors’ generosity.
A few charities may have already lost gifts. In New Jersey, at the Monmouth Health Care Foundation, a hospital fund-raising arm, officials met with a donor who gave his word that he would set up a gift annuity worth $16,000. The meeting took place on the day before the Dow dropped 554.26 points.
Despite the market’s subsequent rebound, “I haven’t heard from him since,” says Blair Hearth, director of planned giving. Nevertheless, Mr. Hearth says, he believes that the donor, a retired surgeon, will come through in the end. With the market’s recent volatility, “right now he is focusing on finances and has lost focus on the gift,” Mr. Hearth says. “But I have every confidence that he will give eventually.”
Other fund raisers believe that the stock market’s ups and downs are going to work in their favor.
Many elderly donors in particular, they predict, will want to use appreciated stock now to create planned gifts that provide income — before those assets can be eroded if the market takes another dip.
“Stock-market gains are only on paper until the stocks are sold or converted into an income stream,” notes Joshua C. Karlin, director of planned giving at the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island.
Mr. Karlin says that he plans to make that point — and mention the recent market dips in a December mailing to about 500 contributors — all of whom have previously donated securities.
On the following pages are year-end appeals that charities have used in the past — and plan to use again this year in the hopes of attracting a bounty of gifts.
