Dear %$firstname$%,     

Welcome to THE PLANNED GIVING KEY^(TM), a newsletter to help you increase your fundraising success with planned gifts.

Over the last couple of years I’ve grown more flexible. I think of flexibility as growth because it widens vision. At least that’s what happened for me.

My business model for Breakthrough Philanthropy, Inc. was very different pre-recession. For what feels like a long time I really resisted any change. I wanted my vision of what success should look like for Breakthrough Philanthropy, Inc. to prevail.  Unfortunately, this attitude made it more difficult for me to find new clients.

Eventually being willing to see something in a different way gave me the flexibility to bend and twist with the economy. It made it easier to serve my clients and it also stretched my outreach to more nonprofits.

Eventually I ended up creating something innovative and exciting, while still keeping true to my mission: planned giving programs for every qualified nonprofit.  Success for Breakthrough Philanthropy, Inc. doesn’t look the way I thought it would because now it includes easyPG, which might never have existed if I hadn’t been willing to be flexible. 

Working to Bring You Breakthroughs in Philanthropy,

You are the community I serve and I love to receive your questions and comments. Please send them to me at lgreif@breakthroughphilanthropy.com or lgreif@easypg.com.

A warm welcome to all our new subscribers..

     Different Views of Success

How do you envision success for your planned giving program?  Do you see it defined only as a stream of significant revenues?  I know of several organizations that even include “legacy gifts” in their budget, which makes no sense to me at all unless they’ve received a heavenly decree of some sort. 

So often board members and development professionals envision only the future result, the streams of planned gifts consistently flowing in. At the same time they often overlook how distant their vision is and how long it takes to bring a nonprofit’s program to that point. Getting a written gift commitment and the time it takes for the gift to mature is often a period of years (except possibly for life income gifts).

Before their interpretation of success can be realized, they have to work with an exceptionally strong conviction that “if you build it, they will come”, just as Kevin Costner did in the movie classic “Field of Dreams”.  It happens time and time again with planned giving but it can be hard to see. Your campaign may be booming but you may not know it’s successful because studies show that only about one in three people that have left a bequest to a nonprofit will fess up to it during their lifetime.

If you build a planned giving program, and you’re active and committed to it, even in the face of initial dead silence (no pun intended) then I think your program’s a success. If you’re always in active campaign mode, the gifts will come. And you’ll also probably get closer relationships with donors, more volunteerism and other benefits that come with this campaign.

Lots of building activities such as solicitation letters, face-to-face meetings, seminars, newsletters and e-blasts should be viewed as pieces of success.  It’s the campaign building that represents success. Like that magical baseball field in the movie “Field of Dreams”, if you’re building a planned giving campaign, the gifts will come.

September 22, 2010

Governor Patterson signed UPMIFA Legislation that will improve the ability of nonprofit organizations to spend their endowments in a prudent manner to preserve programs and staff during economic crises.  The legislation is commonly referred to as Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds (UPMIFA).

September 20, 2010

October 7520 Rate Falls to 2.0% (ties February 2009 rate – lowest in history). This extremely low rate effects the deduction and acceptability of certain newly created life income gifts so be sure to check before sharing illustrations with prospects.

Level 2 easyPG Program: Finally get the training you want and need.

www.easypg.com/system.html

Three month (13 weeks) web-based curriculum in building a planned giving campaign including gift planning tools and techniques. A high content, easy to access, easy to understand and easy to afford expert training and support with unlimited email Q&A, one-to-one calls twice a month and group Q&A calls once every week. 

Red Rooster Group – Branding Marketing and Design for Nonprofits

Howard Levy, head of Red Rooster Group is one of the smartest and most creative professionals that I know serving the nonprofit community. He’s perceptive and intuitive about his work, has loads of creative talent looks at the big picture. Just check out this blog post as an example. http://redroostergroup.com/2010/09/21/measuring-new-criteria-for-nonprofit-effectiveness/

Lorri M. Greif, CFRE, president of Breakthrough Philanthropy, Inc., and creator of the easyPG® Program has worked for more than two decades in the nonprofit community focused on planned giving and major gifts.

She has created and implemented successful major gift and planned giving campaigns for both local and national nonprofits and her skill in training staff and leadership has made her a favorite speaker at planned giving seminars and conferences around the nation. 

Her unique experience in building or re-working varied major gift and planned giving fundraising campaigns from “the ground up” sets her apart from the crowd.

Lorri is a former board member of Women in Development (WID) and is still active on committees. She is also a member of the Association of Fund Raising Professionals (AFP), the Philanthropic Planning Group of Greater New York (PPGGNY), the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning (PPP), the American Council on Gift Annuities (ACGA), and served on the National Board of Gift-Planning Consultants for Planned Giving MENTOR™, a newsletter for beginners to gift planning.