It’s Not About the Money . . .

When I was 26 years old and new to the field of fund development and (in particular) planned giving, I attended a conference where various moderators hosted round-table discussions on a variety of topics.  I chose the table focused on charitable trusts, as I was extremely curious yet knew very little about how these tools worked. 

A Planned Giving Director from a local college led the discussion.  He spoke about how he recently had a conversation with one of his donors who inquired, “How much do you need to stick in one of those charitable remainder trusts to get it to work?”

He replied, “About $100,000.  Less than that amount and it would likely make sense to use a charitable gift annuity.”  He went on to explain to us that the donor did, indeed, create a CRT with a corpus of $100k.  “I should have told her it took $200,000!” continued the Planned Giving Officer, of which the people around the table chuckled and nodded their heads.

His response bothered me, as you can well see since I’m writing about it a decade later.  With a little research at the time, I learned that the Planned Giving Officer was technically correct in his response concerning CRT’s and CGA’s.  Yet something seemed to be missing.

It took a few years, and many discussions with donors, and I discovered what was wrong.  The gift officer answered a question that the donor really didn’t ask.  So, instead of responding with the technically accurate response of “$100,000”, what if he responded with a much more strategic, much more donor-focused response:

“That depends.  What is it that you would like to accomplish with this?”

If he had responded that way, I suspect the ultimate size of CRT would have been significantly larger than $100,000.  Even significantly larger than the $200,000 level he mentioned in jest.  With this more strategic response, the donor would have been motivated by the end result of the gift, rather than the mechanics of the gift process.  I also suspect that this same donor would have realized her desire to give more right now, rather than waiting until the CRT matured at the time of her death.  Or both.

This experience ingrained in me the belief that transformational gifts are never based upon the monetary size of the gift.  They are based upon the impact the gift will have.  In other words, it’s not about the money, it’s about what the money will do!

As a fund development or gift planning professional, evaluate your own strategies.  Are you overly focused on dollar value?  Do you spend significant time in meetings talking about giving levels and donor societies?  Are you focused on selling various charitable products?  If so, you might be too focused on the need of your organization to receive, and less focused on the needs of your donors to give.

Rather, focus your thoughts and your donor conversations on the end result of their potential gifts.  Let the needs of your donor to impact your organization become the motivating factor in their decision making process.  Most important, allow the impact of the gift to drive the gift value, not the other way around.

Advertisement