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NO 105: The Current Challenges to the Planned Giving Sector · PGgrowth - Planned Giving podcast

• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me today on the PG Growth Plan Giving Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to pick up the conversation from our last pod on pod number 104.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking a little bit about advice and some of the experts in our field.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that was not to really take a shot at anyone.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's really the idea about seeking the right advice for you, for your organization, for you as a professional, um, and making sure that it fits with your current circumstance.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: And also that it comes from a place of what I like to call wisdom.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: It comes from a place of understanding the type of program this is and how it differs from so many other programs.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that often comes to mind when I'm asked what's an incredible resource to provide to a plan giving program, is uh years ago working with a well-known regional charity, but large, uh, one with cachet and understood and known across the country.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was asked by the CEO of that organization, what is the number one resource I can give to my fundraisers who are working in plan giving and working adjacent to plan giving?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he was at the moment a little bit surprised by my response because I didn't say they need more uh uh resources in terms of marketing materials, they don't need any more prospect research, they didn't need any more tactics being deployed.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: What they needed was patience.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that comment about patience and being able to say to that CEO who is desperate uh to increase revenue in this area, by the way, very underfunded organization should have had multiple times what they were bringing in in plan giving on a yearly basis, uh seeking uh or securing new plan gift intentions, multiple times what they had because they thought there was this instant uh you know solve to this problem.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's the one thing, what's the thing I've got that I can give them and it'll change everything, flip a switch on, everything will change.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not the case with this.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you do see, you know, call me, I'll give you the pathway to success with a lot of those who are working within the fundraising sector around plan giving.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: We see it at our conferences too.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: We see, you know, come and see how I engage, come and see how our organization, uh the two of us will present to you the best way to do these things.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the the promise there is I'm going to go and sit for 45 minutes or receive this resource or things of that nature, and I'm gonna have my problem solved.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that this is a long-term, sustained, thoughtful, patient approach to fundraising.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I call it a you know, it's the wisdom of fundraising that's embedded in this.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it's actually the wisdom of the donor that's being uh articulated in the gifts that they make.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the challenge, I believe, uh within the sector is that the advice and the push, uh the advice is coming from many very different places.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming from uh some of the people that are serving the community, it's coming from some of the people who wish to disrupt the community.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's coming from leaders who want the program to succeed.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the fundraiser's caught in the middle of all of this activity.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and um, and you know what that problem brings is uh this notion of quick solved and a little bit of thinking outside the box.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is something we hear all the time.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: CEOs, uh you know, consultants, uh marketing firms that are marketing to the to the sector around plan giving are saying things like, we need to think outside the box, we need to differentiate ourselves.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why years ago I used to say that you know, PG Growth was in the box making business.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And people thought I was crazy when I would start saying that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you mean you're in the box making business?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, you want to think outside the box.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: First, we're gonna create a box for you, we're gonna create the structure of this truly third program of fundraising.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because that's what it needs.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: It needs a structure, and that structure cannot be done overnight.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be created overnight.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: It can't, it's not on one page.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: We we have a one pager which tells you what you ought to be doing, but that one pager was distilled from a 300-page plan.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And why was it distilled?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because the CEO of the organization wouldn't read even the executive summary of a 300-page plan.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted it on one page.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, if you add color, CEOs love that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they love one page, they love color.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Simple, colorful.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's great.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you can have transition to deck, wonderful.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: They just get very excited by that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I'm not trying to diminish it, they're being pulled in lots and lots of different ways.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you just don't have time.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is that that's and that is a representation of the program.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: My great mentor, Edward Pierce, used to write program plans all the time.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: They filled binders and it followed properly.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: They were transformational in the way that they could bring dollars in the door for a charity.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, you know, it's one of these things where we want to go too too quickly on a program that takes time.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this with a lot of things that are being brought into the marketplace.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of tools out there that have a quick uptick.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, the big tool coming in is, of course, online will making.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's necessary.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: We partner with one of the organizations that has online will making out there, Epilogue.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Take a look if you are looking for that sort of a tool.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're wonderful.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that it's a tool.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a solve, it's not a solution to your program.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even all the collaterals around it, I love the people at Epilogue, but it's a tool for a tool.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a program.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Programs take patience to build.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Programs are also centered on building the capacity of the organization.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about donor attitudes.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's really important that we get lots of information about donor attitudes.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with the sector is we've leaned into the donor attitudes.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are donors saying right now?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is what they're saying.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is how they're giving.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is what they're saying.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's coming from lots of different places.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: The issue with the donor attitude, um uh, you know, primacy of the discussion is twofold.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: One, donor attitudes haven't changed in 40 years.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the longitudinal aspects of the various sources of research that have come over the 40 plus years that research is being done, it's pretty much the same.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Between 30 and 40 percent of Canadians would give this kind of gift if they were asked.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that's been standard, sometimes closer to 40, sometimes closer to 30.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is, let's call it one-third of Canadians would create a gift of this kind if you ask them.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that rounding makes sense.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been for 40 years.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And again, 5%, 7%, 8%, 9% of Canadians actually do.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Again, let's call it one out of every 10 Canadians actually create a gift of this kind.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy with that.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: That hasn't really changed over the 40 years that those studies have been going on.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what has um been done with that data is that we focus so much on the donor that we don't spend a lot of time focusing on the charity, and the charities need to build capacity.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing we see a lot of when we're working with charities is the fact that um capacity is built within the individual and not the organization.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: The organization ought to be the beneficiary of the program and the program structure and the program capacity, not the individual.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: We see so many organizations that have a good working program of plan giving, and it goes away when the individual goes away.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times they represent that internal expert, that internal person that is seen as the expert with you know, a knowledge uh center uh uh expert within the organization, they build it, but it's really reliant on them as opposed to the organization.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to take patient building of the organization's capacity so that we could withstand um the movement of individuals.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we see that you know, again, the the those people wrapped around the fundraiser and the program uh you know, causing issue around this.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: We had a um someone we were doing some consulting with talking about how they really didn't understand how the program at the particular organization was working and how to make it better.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we offered some of our services, but the reality was in that moment that they were never going to be able to have an outside consultant come and help them.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because leadership at the organization had said they had hired this individual to be the expert.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, that individual had positioned themselves as an expert in plan giving.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, we are all trying to get jobs.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I am not trying to put anyone down who's just trying to make a living.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're all trying to do that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think what happens though is the program itself gets a little bit of an unfortunate sidestep or back step because of this.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because they're not truly an expert.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's someone who needs outside support.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the leadership is thinking, it's easy.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just hire this expert and it'll all be taken care of.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that isn't necessarily the case, of course.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when they leave, they'll take whatever knowledge that they do have out the door with them.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll have uh an important institution in an important geographic location, which they're all important in Canada, not having a program to support it because of this.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got this trend of lack of patience, it's quick wins, it's easy.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, everyone's an expert when they're not necessarily, there's no wisdom in the approach we're taking.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're not building the capacity of the organization because we're focused too much on donor attitudes and not enough on building a true program of fundraising for the organization.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So this leads us to a lot of stops and starts in organizations around plan giving and a lot of lack of success in those same organizations.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the lack of success is built on the fact that some of these internal or external experts coming into an organization really don't have a sense of what's happening, causes disruption.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: We spent close to 18 months chatting with a major Canadian university about the appropriate way to use their CRM to guide them through the plan giving process.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: How do we capture data?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: How do we properly uh focus on that data to provide good reporting and pipeline development?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had determined that they weren't using really best practices, that those best practices had led to a lot of inconsistencies around what they were doing.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: One of the inconsistencies or problems they had was they really didn't understand the best way to calculate their average gift.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So they weren't reporting the true value of the plan giving program.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take one step further.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when we were talking about their CRM, we slowly went through various groups.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: First, the the plan giving group and then the the overall uh individual giving group and then the the advancement group, and then we went into data, um, data processing services, asking and asking and asking uh questions, providing input, and really discussing how we would go about solving the problem.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: We've eventually got to the lead in the advancement office and we presented all of our findings, all of our steps, and why we felt we needed to go to what we believed, and it truly is the best practice of using the CRM to track the pipeline.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We were told at that time that they had indeed had that in place, but an expert had come in and said, Oh, we should change that.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why should we change it?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because people weren't using it.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's not because it wasn't the best possible approach, it was, and one would expect a university that had that capacity to be able to utilize that.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: There was no compliance with it.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: This was a fundamentally a management issue, had nothing to do with the program, and and the expert in reviewing it uh didn't really understand the nuance of that situation, that this was a management situation, managing of talent, managing of the fundraisers internally.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we see that all the time.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we were just counseling another client to not move away from best practice into something else, how they use the CRM, simply because uh people weren't actually operating the system.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: That means we need more training, we need more patience, we mean we need more nudging, we need more handholding to get people to utilize the system.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: We need to reevaluate exactly how we're using that best practice, but it's there, let's stick to it.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wisdom tells us to try the best possible um uh approaches to this, not ones that we're thinking up on the fly to a certain degree because we've had a little experience here and there, and this isn't working, so let's try something else.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, one of the things about fundraising, and I teach this at the AFP Fundamentals course, and I taught it at Humber College when I was the professor of plan giving there, was as an academic pursuit, um, fundraising does have standards.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It does have uh an academic language, it has um a system by way the way it approaches it, it has um known structures that are that uh you know can be taught, and a professional code that allows us to operate all of these with the best possible outcomes and held to the highest standards by the donors that we have in the organizations we work for.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: For some reason, unlike some of the other areas of activity, including teaching, including accounting, including various other financial uh engagement uh areas of profession, we don't take those seriously in fundraising.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it causes a lot of problems.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And my guess is we don't take it seriously because not a lot of people really understand them and don't have the patience to understand them.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a disruption, not a disruption, but a fracture in the plan-giving fundraising world because we're having a lot of voices trying to reimagine, think outside the box.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just put this together.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, uh, this is how I did it in this place over there, so it could work anywhere.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the case.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we need to take a moment as a sector, learn the fundamentals, and that will really help us to ensure that we're establishing a capacity of the organization to operate this program.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of our um wonderful senior counsel uh uh uh individuals at PG Growth is Grant Monk.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Grant Monk is in Vancouver and just posted recently uh an article uh with the CAGP Canadian Association of Gift Planners Vancouver chapter, where he recalled his great mentor, Frank Minton, who is also one of the founding voices of plan giving in Canada, and how those kind of baseline fundamentals of a truly proactive plan giving program and the capacity it requires and the patience and wisdom it requires was developed through that relationship that Grant had with Frank Minton, much like I had with Dr.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Edward Pierce, um, leaning on these true experts, leaning on these sort of original originators of the program.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's so wonderful that Grant is passing on his wisdom now to so many, so many others in the sector.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that comes through time and effort and understanding the basic structures, basic uh positioning, and a basic understanding of wisdom and patience when we're thinking about plan giving.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are challenges that we're trying to run too quickly uh with a lot of these programs.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: What that's opening up is opportunities for others outside the charitable sector.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I won't get too deeply into some of those competing interests from the not-for-profit sector, but they exist now.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: They exist because there's an opportunity.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: The opportunity exists because we haven't really done our job over the last few years.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and even some of the people charged with doing the job for us on our behalf are kind of left the stage to a certain degree to pursue other ways of engaging with the sector.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone again can go off and do the work that they feel they need to do to satisfy themselves, both uh spiritually and monetarily.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So no complaints about that.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: But as a sector, what we need is we need to retrench, to level set, to start with the fundamentals, and to provide patience, and that requires uh that wisdom and that understanding.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I hope over the course of the next few podcasts, we're going to be able to tease that out even further and start explaining what that really means.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's it mean, wisdom and patience in terms of fundraising?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh I hope you listen along.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks as we kind of move through this thematic sense of uh how do we uh get back to the basics, get back to the fundamentals and the wisdom and the patience that's required for true success in plan giving.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Join me along the way.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Again, if you want to send me a note at ed at pggrowth.com.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Always here to hear your comments.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you disagree with me, I'd love to hear that too.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh take a look, subscribe to us on Apple iTunes or sorry, podcasts, not through iTunes, through Podcasts, and of course through Spotify.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: We look forward to chatting more over the course of the coming weeks.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the PG Growth Podcast.
• 21:13
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• 21:22
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