Planned Giving is a Foreign Language

Planned giving is a foreign language. Not because it relies on obscure, technical terms, such as charitable remainer trusts, gift annuities, values, heritage, legacy. It most certainly does employ those terms (more on this in a later post). No, planned giving is foreign to most major gift officers because of what it speaks to: a different mindset, a different timeline and a different set of motivations than most major gift conversations.

When a major gift officer meets with a potential donor, the objective is to make something happen now. Major gift officers are used to speaking of immediate needs, immediate projects, immediate impacts. There is a building campaign going on. The school needs new facilities to further its role as a provider of state-of-the-art education to students now. The words and focus that the major gift officer uses convey a sense of urgency.

• Impact
• Now
• Specific Project
• Matching
• Transform
• Invest
• Commitment

The major gift officer’s language is action oriented. It speaks urgency, energy, and enthusiasm. It conveys excitement and momentum as the donor is invited to join in a collaborative joint venture, and the gift is framed as an active investment. A major gift timeline is usually 0-5 years.

Planned gift officers, on the other hand, are future focused. Rather than stress the immediate needs of the institution and the immediate impact the donor can have on existing students, the planned gift officer appeals to the potential donor’s sense of legacy, of heritage, of how she wants to be remembered. The words and focus that a planned gift officer uses are

• Legacy
• Vision
• Endowment
• Future
• Values
• Memory
• Heritage

Planned gifts are about the donor’s long-term vision and her final statement of values. Planned gifts are often as much about values that the donor wishes to convey to her heirs as it is about helping the university. A planned gift timeline is 10-40 years.

I once spoke with a long-time donor who supported her university faithfully for decades through annual gifts. When the conversation turned to a large gift, perhaps an endowment to honor a favorite professor or a parent, she said, “I wish I could do that, but I just don’t have that kind of money right now.”

What she did have are appreciated assets that, coupled with her deep desire to honor a favorite professor, led to a planned gift that created an endowment in his name. The breakthrough came through reframing the conversation from what she could do today to what she wanted her life to say.

Each year, between 70%-80% of Americans engage in some form of charitable giving. However, only 5% of Americans have a charitable gift plan.

There are many reasons for this discrepancy but one of the main ones is that major gift officers are speaking the wrong language when they approach a potential planned gift donor.

Too often, donors who are well-suited for planned giving hear messages of urgency, of immediate impact, or of making an investment, even if it’s couched in terms of an investment in the future. This language sounds transactional and time bound.

As I discussed in a prior post, the Loyalty Index, guiding a donor to a significant planned gift requires years of cultivation. Trust must be established. The donor cannot be made to feel rushed. The donor must come to view the planned gift officer as a trusted advisor, on par with her attorney, financial planner, or accountant.

The goal isn’t to replace major gift language with planned gift language. Rather, it’s to become bi-lingual and to recognize when to switch languages.