The Pentera Blog
Webinar offers "Cliff's Notes" on Simple Gift Plans and How to Help Donors with Assets
Pamela Jones Davidson, an attorney and experienced planned giving consultant who has presented nationally, will conduct a Pentera Webinar on Wednesday, Oct. 30, providing a "Cliff's Notes" version of gift plans.
The 90-minute session titled "Simple Gift Plans All Charities Can Understand and Promote, Most Without Administration" begins at 1 p.m. The Webinar is designed for planned giving professionals, board members of nonprofits, and key volunteers. Registration information is available at www.Pentera.com/Webinar
The most likely gifts
The Webinar will provide practical tips and ideas on working with donors–how to help them analyze their assets and how to explain in the simplest terms gift plans that can at first appear complicated.
"This session will provide 'Cliff's Notes' of the most likely planned gift options that all charities can understand and promote with most if not all prospects," Davidson said.
The gifts can be used by staff, board members, and volunteers to actively encourage prospects to consider how to best use assets that either now or in the future will be a problem to dispose of–and to do that analysis within the context of an oftentimes highly advantageous charitable plan. Beneficiary designations of qualified retirement plans will be featured, along with all other lifetime options, both revocable and irrevocable.
Helping donors reevaluate
Davidson said many donors don't recognize that as their circumstances change they need to be reevaluating how their assets are working for them. Often that means considering divesting themselves of an asset–which is where charity may come in. She gave CDs as just one example.
"There are many people who have loved CDs all their life–after all, they are the second-leading investment choice in America. But CD rates now are so low that people are impoverished by their love of them," Davidson said. "At some point for every one of us, our assets don't work for us any more."
Many donors are converting CDs when they mature into charitable gift annuities and receiving a much higher rate of return. And of course they are funding a cause they believe in–without anything coming out of pocket during life.
Davidson said the key in working with donors is to begin by really listening as they describe their assets and then help them figure out what they truly want to do with an asset: hold it, sell it, give it to family, or make a charitable contribution. Such an asset-by-asset analysis–of real estate, stocks and bonds, business interests, life insurance, retirement plans, and other investments–really helps donors clarify their thinking.
"We need to ask people, 'What do you wish for that asset, what are your goals?'" Davidson said. "When you always do right by the donor, good things happen."
Key topics
Davidson plans to present a "universal language of assets" that planned giving professionals can use when working with donors. She said the Webinar will be practical and understandable. "You will walk away with things you can use right away," she said. Discussion will include:
• The new paradigm shift in the approach to planned gifts.
• Which planned gifts get the best results.
• Ways to get your message out there.
• What conversations you should be having with donors, right now.
Expert speaker
Renowned as a dynamic speaker, Davidson leads the consulting firm Davidson Gift Design in Bloomington, Indiana. Her company specializes in gift planning, planned giving program design and implementation, and training. She is also a senior vice president for Thompson & Associates, offering estate planning services to nonprofits.
Davidson was with the Indiana University Foundation for more than a decade, advancing to the position of executive director of planned giving. Early in her career she was an attorney for the IRS. She has served as president of the National Committee on Planned Giving (now Partnership for Philanthropic Planning) and was on the board for six years. She graduated from the Indiana School of Law magna cum laude.
