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NO 104: Planned Giving and the Expert Professional · PGgrowth - Planned Giving podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The PG Growth Podcast.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining me today on the PG Growth Plan Giving Podcast.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to our next series of podcasts, and look for us and listen for us every week, a couple times a week over the coming uh coming months as we start delving into issues around Plan Giving as we have in the past over our 10 plus years of podcasting.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a great journey doing this over those years, and uh it's really an interesting world to inhabit.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh taking a look at uh at the world of plan giving, kind of leaning in on my 30 years uh working in this and leaning into a lot of our guests, and we'll have more guests over the course of this series as we go along.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's actually a little bit of what I wanted to talk about today.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is that we've seen this really interesting uh trend in the sector over the course of the previous decade or more.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the trend is that we are seeing fewer and fewer real full-time dedicated plan giving professionals in the country.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is something I talked to uh some of our leads, like Grant Monk and Peggy Kleen on an ongoing basis.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, why is it that we don't have those dedicated individuals who really truly understand plan giving and are experts in it?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got a couple of thoughts about why in a minute.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And but let's just talk about what it means to be an expert.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was at a dinner recently and we started talking about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And for those that don't know about that, Malcolm Gladwell from Almyra, Ontario, not far from where I am today, wrote a book called The Outliers in 2008.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And within it, he postulated, frankly, that to become uh a uh you know a world-class expert in something to complete the skill acquisition, the knowledge acquisition.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, research shows that it's about 10,000 hours of deliberate direct practice in that area.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we thought about that and defined it, we went around the table and said, What are you an expert in?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: What can you actually say that you have 10,000 hours of working in?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: That would make you an expert.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I said a lot of things because I think I'm an expert in a couple of things, but but one of them, of course, was plan giving.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And over the 30 years, you know, plan giving is like those other uh pursuits that Malcolm Gladwell was talking about, whether it's sports, whether it's entertainment, musicians, uh, medical practice, things of that nature, being a true plan giving expert, being truly engaged and understanding that uh how to run both a plan giving program and being a gift planner, which are two different things, but wrapped up in the same expertise, it does take a long time.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: It takes dedication.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so let's start with that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with how you become an expert.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we also know in plan giving, this isn't this is really hours of work.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And why is that?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's partly due to the fact that there's not a lot of uh academic pursuit that you can take, which might accelerate your activity.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to actually work at plan giving for years, decades even before you can get to that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you want to become a business person or lots of MBA programs that will accelerate your experience.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, if you want to become a doctor, a dentist, a veterinarian, there are literally hours and hours and hours that are put in the classroom, put in practical work that brings you to that expertise.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a system there that produces these individuals.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Same with sports, same with um music uh and dance and various other performance arts.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Plan giving does not have that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of someone who was the professor of plan giving at the Humber College uh fundraising management course, we were given very little time over the course of um that unit on plan giving.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my students would uh dedicate in-class hours of about 21 hours.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's all.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then there were, of course, uh lots of assignments and things like that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So let's round it up to 40, even 50 hours.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can see that taking an academic course in plan giving gets you only a small uh way towards 10,000 hours.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there isn't that aspect.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's going on and a trend in Canada right now is that there aren't really many full-time plan-giving professionals and truly proactive plan-giving programs.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let me take you through a little bit of history around that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Years ago, uh, one of my great mentors was Dr.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Edward Pierce, who uh was a defining character in the uh plan-giving world.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what Dr.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Pierce talked about, and this was at a CAGP conference perhaps 20 plus years ago, uh, he talked about how many truly proactive plant giving programs there were in Canada.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: He asked me the question, how many do you think there are?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I did not know, and I guessed, and he said, Well, maybe there's a 100, 50 to 100 plant giving programs.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is 2002, uh, 2003, sometime around that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So um, we have not accelerated truly proactive programs by a thousand percent or two thousand percent.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: We have maybe doubled them over the course of that time.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So perhaps there's 200.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there's 200 truly proactive programs, which individuals can actually be involved in and work towards this mythical, this notion of 10,000 hours.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, lots of people don't stay in one place.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so they don't stay in that that office for for long enough uh to kind of get to that that accumulation.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Another reality is that there's actually been a decline in full-time plan giving professionals.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Most professionals working in plan giving are doing it on a part-time basis.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: This comes straight from the CAGP.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the Canadian Association of Gift Planners have said over years that they're seeing a decline in full-time plan giving individuals and increase in those people who are doing as part of their job.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Again, what's the pathway to 10,000 hours?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I'm seeing, and what a problem of this trend is, that we are losing a lot of this basic expertise that we require to truly advance programs in plan giving.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I think that's something that we as a sector need to think about.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how do we engage with professionals so that they can start accumulating this important knowledge to help uh advance the missions of the charities that are doing their best to make the world a better place?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we do that?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and right now there's an additional problem in the sector.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that problem is that a lot of the courses that have been uh the bedrock of academic learning, including the Humber College fundraising management course, no longer exist.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or they have been folded into some other program.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so we don't actually have a direct um uh a direct program that people can engage in.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Neither do we have, and this is troubling as well, those programs that remain are actually being offered and presented by people who I don't, you know, frankly, don't match this 10,000-hour rule.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there are lots of people for lots of good reasons, uh, that are presenting uh and uh you know, at places like the CAGP above plan giving, who have three years working in the sector, five years, seven years, um, and maybe not even full-time.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why is that?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: CAGP has lots of and and others like the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy, they have mandates.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: They want to bring in new people, they want to be bring in regional people, all sorts of different realities uh to represent the sector as it is, as opposed to just the senior people.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Totally understand that and agree with that.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: But we do have right now a trend where there are consultants, there are experts that really haven't established themselves in the world in the way that we would like them to before they offered their services out.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's problematic because um if you pick a good mentor, a good counsel, uh, someone who is an expert, who's done the work, who's run the program, who's uh developed um you know, uh an expertise over their their time working as a professional, then you'll learn those expertise uh moments, those skills.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: You'll learn uh how a program is operated.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh oftentimes, though, we don't look for the expertise in the consultant.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We look at the consultant's shingle, as they say, the thing that's hanging over their virtual door, their website, and what they claim.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so there is uh a problem there where we don't necessarily have uh some of the best teaching the sector.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have those wanting to teach the sector, teaching the sector.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're really lucky at PG Growth, I must say this, because we've got not only do we have people who've spent the 10,000 hours running plan giving programs, uh, we also have people with 10,000 hours doing specifics in the plan giving program, you know, specific expertise within the expertise.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I'm surrounded by those folks all the time.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the takeaways I will often say to new people entering into plan giving is to seek out that expertise, to engage with it, to use it as mentors, to to uh work towards getting your 10,000 hours working away at this.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Build slowly, um, take the time, be proactive, look for opportunities that are presented from the right sorts of institutions, expertise that will really drive your program forward and you as a professional forward.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, this this is something that's coming up.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna examine this issue over the coming weeks.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how is it that we can get back on track to really develop this growing number of professionals with expert skill?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I look forward to sharing that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have special guests throughout that.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're going to be talking a lot about innovation, we're going to be talking a lot about fundamentals, we're going to talk a lot about case studies, uh, and then utilizing this as a pathway to initiating you becoming uh better at this and hopefully with enough hours, according to Malcolm Gladwell, an expert.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, thank you so much for taking a little time today.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Look for more of these podcasts in the coming weeks.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if you have any questions, feel free to email me at pggrowth.com.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, go to our website, sign up for our uh our eblast, uh, we look forward to chatting more in the coming weeks.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the PG Growth Podcast.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for more resources about planned giving, or just hoping to learn more, we recommend checking out PG Growth's new membership space, PG Commons.
• 13:34
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