Fundraising Services: Planned Giving Fundraising

The rewards of a planned giving program (e.g. charitable trusts, gift annuities, gifts of residences, insurance, wills/bequests) can be immense for many nonprofits. Yet, few organizations are actively pursuing such gifts in an organized, on-going fashion.

Cummings Co.'s planned giving counsel is designed for Volunteer Driven Programs imparting strategy, planning, and coordination. We know planned giving and can assist your organization in:

• establishing a planned giving program;
• formulating a gift acceptance policy for planned gifts;
• preparing promotional materials;
• forming a volunteer planned giving committee;
• collaborating with the planned giving committee in the identification, cultivation, and solicitation of prospects.

Too often planned giving is not assertively integrated into the capital campaign framework, and this is unfortunate. Planned giving opportunities lend themselves perfectly to an endowment component of a case during a capital campaign (and most capital campaign cases today include an endowment feature).

In today's intensive emphasis on the advance phase of the capital campaign, more major donors are significantly increasing  their support by coupling their pacesetting outright gifts (usually paid over multiple years) with planned gifts. Although the campaign priority may rest on outright gifts, a nonprofit is remiss if it ignores the opportunity for offering planned giving options to major prospective donors.

Experience demonstrates that planned giving, far from dissipating outright gifts, actually enhances the levels of outright giving.