Gift Planning Development provides a full range of gift planning services. Since the needs of each charity are different, we begin each engagement with a strategic discussion of your goals and objectives, timeline, available staff, and budget. We then generate a written proposal addressing your objectives and tailored to fit your needs.

Assessment & Strategic Planning
Gift planning assessment is a common tool used to determine if a charity is ready for a new gift planning effort, or how to enhance an existing gift planning program. With a significant amount of press surrounding the $41 trillion transfer of wealth, more and more charities are electing to invest significant resources in starting or enhancing gift planning programs.

Starting a New Gift Planning Program
Our gift planning assessment evaluates the current status of your fundraising efforts, including your staffing, prospect pool, annual fund, key volunteers and board and chief executive support, to determine if your charity is ready to start a gift planning program. Our report will include key recommendations and a strategic plan to assist you in your preparations, including sample gift acceptance policies.  

Enhancing an Existing Gift Planning Program
When a charity has an existing gift planning program, in addition to evaluating the organizational readiness for an expanded gift planning effort, we also provide an in-depth analysis of current gift planning staff, marketing, activity levels, stewardship and administrative issues. Our final report includes a strategic plan, as well as a series of recommendations in order to improve and enhance the program, including industry best-practices.

Search
We offer two different search options depending upon your gift planning needs.

Gift Planning Match
Have you ever wondered if there is a more effective way to build or enhance your gift planning program than simply hiring a director of gift planning using a traditional search approach? When we polled senior gift planners at major charities around the country, they answered “yes”, and suggested several ways in which the process could be improved for gift planners. We developed Gift Planning Match to meet this pressing need in the marketplace.
Gift Planning Match combines our industry leading assessment, search and consulting services into one, discounted package for the benefit of your charity. Our integrated approach starts with a full assessment of your existing gift planning effort or a review of your organization’s readiness to start a gift planning program. This effort helps us to a) identify the type of gift planning professional who would fit with the culture of your organization, b) hire a gift planner with the appropriate skill set for your charity, and c) provide the gift planner with an assessment and implementation report so he or she can “hit the ground running”, taking full advantage of the “honeymoon period” that occurs after a new professional is hired. During the hiring period, we provide coverage consulting services so that your gift planning program can continue uninterrupted while we find you the right candidate. After your new gift planner is on board, we supply an additional six months of ongoing consulting to assist in the refinement and implementation of the findings from the assessment report. This approach maximizes the benefits of the search process and ensures the new gift planning professional will succeed.

 

Gift Planning Search

If Gift Planning Match is not feasible for your organization at this time, we also offer a more traditional approach, but still base our efforts on the Gift Planning Match core values, to ensure the right fit. Because gift planning is a specialty field requiring a more technical skill set than other resource development positions, it can be very difficult to find attractive candidates who are the right match for your organization. In many cases, your organization or the search firms you typically use do not have the expertise to evaluate the skills and abilities of candidates to provide gift planning services. With our background in executive search, gift planning search, and developing gift planning programs, we can find you a candidate who brings the appropriate level of gift planning expertise for your organization and who fits with your culture.

Consulting
Gift Planning Development provides a full range of gift planning consulting services. For every charity, we are focused on impact, outcomes and sustainability. These services generally are either discreet projects or ongoing engagements over an extended period of time and cover a range of efforts from board engagement to gift planning policies and implementation to gift planning advice for individual donors. No matter the gift planning need, we can help you address it, or help you find someone who can.

Marketing
One of the core components to developing an effective gift planning effort is a comprehensive marketing program. Brian has developed state of the art gift planning marketing efforts for many charities, including his first in the industry, donor-centered program customized to eighteen different schools and centers for the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks nationally to the topic of gift planning marketing, including at the National Conference on Planned Giving.

We can provide assessments of your current marketing program and help you develop a long-term, donor-centered strategic plan and implementation program, to ensure that your charity benefits from more than its fair share of the $41 trillion transfer of wealth. Gift Planning Development sells no marketing materials, resulting in unbiased advice and plans that will produce results for your charity.

Training & Seminars
Gift Planning Development can provide a wide array of training services and seminars for you and your staff.  From single-session seminars covering the most common gift planning issues to unique training regimens designed for your staff and delivered over a period of months, we can serve as your gift planning seminar and training resource.

Seminars
We provide seminars to a wide range of audiences including

Prospects:
Most charities wish to bring the power of donor-centered gift planning ideas to their prospects, and seminars are an excellent way to share that message. The goal of each seminar is to provide interesting information and motivate prospects to include your charity when addressing their tax, estate and financial planning needs. We offer a wide range of seminars and urge you to Contact Us for a complete list or to discuss the needs of your audience.

Professional Advisors:
A strong gift planning program includes delivery of quality content around technical gift planning options to the professional advisor community, which also qualify for continuing education credits. Without a link to professional advisors, who suggest charitable giving options to a significant number of clients, your charity may miss opportunities to benefit from legacy gifts. The goal of each seminar is to educate the advisors, encourage them to consider donor-centered charitable solutions to common tax, estate and financial planning issues, and to keep your charity “front-of-mind” when they are working with clients.

Your Staff:
The single session gift planning seminar is designed to educate your staff about one particular component of a gift planning effort, or provide a general introduction to the idea of legacy gifts. We also offer gift planning training services, which occur over a period of months and offer comprehensive gift planning training for front-line development officers.

Your Board:
We offer both specialized seminars for board members on gift planning techniques, as well as present at board meetings when they are considering whether to invest additional resources in gift planning. These strategic sessions focus on how gift planning benefits the organization and the importance of the board’s support.

Training Services
For many years, charitable gift planning was a specialty area with a gift planning director working with a select group of prospects. As gift planning has become integrated with other areas of development, through a comprehensive, donor-centered approach, there is an increased need for gift planning training for all front-line fundraisers. We can provide an appropriate training program over a period of months for all of your fundraisers, to ensure that they see the gift planning opportunities and know how to respond to them.