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Never Sell Through the Close: Lessons from a Life in Planned Giving w/ Joe Bull
64 Plays3 months ago
After decades in fundraising, Joe Bull has seen nearly everything—from million-dollar surprises to the conversations that quietly define a donor’s legacy. In this episode, he joins Tom Dauber to share the stories, near-misses, and timeless lessons that shaped his approach to planned giving and donor relationships that last a lifetime.
In this conversation, Joe and Tom discuss:
- How one sponsorship pitch turned into an eight-figure gift—and a career-defining lesson in silence
- The stewardship visit that safeguarded an $11 million estate gift
- Why fundraisers lose legacy donors simply by forgetting about them
- How to spot hidden wealth and reframe your assumptions about “who gives”
- The emotional power of connecting donors directly to the impact they’ve created
- What awkward mistakes (including a very ill-timed voicemail) can teach you about accountability
- How patience and gratitude form the foundation of every successful planned giving relationship
For anyone serious about legacy fundraising, this episode distills forty years of experience into stories that remind us why planned giving is both an art and a calling.
Website: philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com • Email: joebull@philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net
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Transcript
Introduction to Abundant Vision Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a first-time fundraiser, we have the advice you need to take your next step toward major gift mastery. I'm your host, Tom Dauber, President of Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting. Last week's conversation was a blast. I'm so excited to have you with me for this next segment.
00:00:30
Speaker
Let's get back to the show.
00:00:33
Speaker
I've got a few non-planned giving specific sorts of
Career Reflections
00:00:37
Speaker
questions for you. want to just Just things that apply to anybody in the fundraising world. As you think about your career, looking back, is there a problem that you ran up against that you wish you could have had a do-over on?
00:00:52
Speaker
That's a really good question. So, of course, my mind goes immediately to donor stuff, but it's like, you know, i think I think if I think about any most of the things that I would like do-overs on, it'd be more like, like stuff that happened internally in the organization, you know? Yeah, that's fair. And um not necessarily with donors and some of it's donor related and stuff. And it's, um, just, I think anybody that's a little bit competitive.
00:01:19
Speaker
I mean, I think a lot of us are competitive. They get into this business. I think that's part of it kind of thing. And if you have a colleague that kind of, um, throws a shot across your bow or whatever kind of thing.
00:01:33
Speaker
And sometimes if you just like, if you react in the moment without taking a deep breath, they say, maybe I shouldn't send
Email Etiquette Advice
00:01:41
Speaker
that email. You know, there's four, there's a half a dozen emails I can think, I can still think of today that I sent that I said, you know, I wish I hadn't hit the send button. You know, that's great advice though.
00:01:54
Speaker
that That's fantastic advice, Joe. I mean, you know, we've got folks that listen that are a lot of them, you know brand new fundraisers, still figuring things out. And ah if they can preserve their career a little bit longer by being just a little bit more thoughtful about.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yep. the The greatest thing you can do is like respond to the email, but take the person out of the to line and send it back to yourself and then read it the next day to see see how it weathered over the last 24 hours. Right.
00:02:22
Speaker
Right. Oh, that's that's great. Love it. Love it. All right. Next one. This would be a little easier. Tell me your best discovery slash qualification or even disqualification story.
Early Career Story on Donor Interactions
00:02:35
Speaker
Could be anything that was unexpected or an interaction that was especially memorable with the donor. You know, it's interesting because I spent most of my career in playing giving, um you know, playing giving marketing ends up being the discovery mechanism for playing giving because people do respond to your marketing stuff. I mean, that's one thing they do do.
00:02:56
Speaker
So a good cultivation story. Yes, this is really. again, this goes back to the beginning of my career. and you're just trying to figure hear this stuff out.
00:03:12
Speaker
One of the things that I learned pretty early on, and I have this notion that most of us that get into this work are not, you know, 10 percenters or 5 percenters or 1 percenters or, you know, we're pretty we pretty solidly middle class or or even, um ah you know, middle, lower middle class, you know, to get into this kind of work.
00:03:33
Speaker
And if somebody is a 5%er that does this, God bless you. I'm glad you're right this isn't this is not I'm not saying I'm not I'm not. This is not a pejorative thing. I'm just saying where most of us come from.
00:03:44
Speaker
And the first time I held a check in my hand that had two numbers, a comma and three zeros behind it, I about dropped my teeth.
00:03:57
Speaker
You know, it's like, you know, actually, it was the first time I held a check that had three numbers, a comma, and then three zeros behind it, right? I remember holding a check for $100,000 and I thought, who in the world has this much money that they can just give away this much, right?
00:04:14
Speaker
It was beyond my comprehension that somebody had then that had that much money to do. And i think that's the most, in the early part of my career, that's the most, I think i think your ability to try to put yourself in their shoes again and see the world that, okay, I do have a hundred thousand dollars like money.
00:04:39
Speaker
Right. And don't put your own. I think that's the heart. And that was really hard for me to do because i would, I mean, intellectually I'm thinking, okay, well, yeah, this person's going to give us, you know, couple hundred thousand dollars or whatever. And I, but intellectually I could say that, but like internally I'm like, well, how the world they doing that?
00:04:58
Speaker
You have to get yourself beyond yourself. Don't allow your interactions with your donors to be locked down by your own perception of wealth.
00:05:08
Speaker
you know You have to view wealth from their perspective and not your perspective. And the longer you do it, the more comfortable you will get with it. And so I think that's the most important thing for somebody early on their career is you have to, if you're from a middle-class background, you have to figure out a way to get comfortable with wealth.
00:05:27
Speaker
That's great advice. Well, tell me about... Your best cultivation story, a time where you really deepened engagement in a way that impacted the donor's sense of connection to your mission.
Donor Engagement at Ohio State
00:05:42
Speaker
ah When I was working at Ohio State and the way we had playing give the plan giving office set up in that point, we were a service unit to everybody. And so there was a donor I was working with that was very interested in cancer research and had given a little bit of money to a specific researcher and was working on a kind of a blended gift like an outright gift and then an estate gift except for this researcher and they did not live in town and they came to town and we took them to the james and we took them to lunch and we had lunch with the researcher and the researcher took her to his lab to her lab to her lab the researcher took her to her lab and stood
00:06:25
Speaker
stood a few feet behind the donor off on an angle to see the whole thing and just to watch her face and to have that researcher say here's what we're doing here's where we're trying to get to here's the successes we have here's a challenge we have here's where your funding makes all the difference in the world and to watch that person take that in and just Not that they weren't going to give the gift before you were talking about cementing something.
00:06:56
Speaker
I mean, it was, you know, she walked away and she goes, man, I wish I could do more now, you know? And so it's, you know, and I've had a few experiences like that where you, you know, in higher ed, you have this wonderful ability to, particularly people that want to do scholarships and stuff, to actually meet kids that are getting scholarships, you know, and to have that connection, you know?
00:07:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And to have a donor say, you know, you remind me of me when I was your age. kind Have those connections. I mean, those are the ones that just really. Or, you know, at the Nature Conservancy, when you take somebody to ah to an area of the world that has been preserved and philanthropy has helped, you know, buy that property so that it can be preserved and stuff. And you see, it's, you know just I think anytime that you can get it in, anytime you can get a donor to like,
00:07:48
Speaker
live the experience of your organization that's that's you know i had that personal experience but i've had it in so many different formats you know in different places and we had a donor at the zoo uh who uh was deaf well i wasn't wasn't deaf but was very hard of hearing and just from birth she had ah son who was deaf and was ah at Gallaudet College in in D.C., the the college that teaches everything in sign language. and
00:08:22
Speaker
Mostly deaf people go to Gallaudet. um There was actually a gorilla at the Columbus Zoo that was deaf. And to see the interaction, like, wow, they lived the same experience kind of thing.
00:08:35
Speaker
they It was really amazing just to kind of see that, just that, almost unseen connection between those two people. Were they able to communicate in ASL?
00:08:47
Speaker
i The gorilla could not communicate back, but people at the zoo did try to communicate, you know, like with signs, not necessarily ASL, but, you know, ah and so it was obvious that the gorilla knew that this person was, you know, it was just fascinating to watch. ah yeah that's That's so cool.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I think one of the advantages we live, but we have is living in a highly technological age. I think about, and I don't get paid ah for endorsing these folks, but I think Thank Few, if you're familiar with that platform, is so wonderful. I mean, we would we would kill ourselves trying to get dental students and pharmacy students, you know, write thank you notes. And we'd bribe them with pizza and everything. and And we probably got about 60, 70% of them in the door.
00:09:36
Speaker
But I had the opportunity my last year, one of my last years at OSU, to get all these incoming pre-pharmacy students to do the thank-view. And it was such a more normal experience for them. They all feel comfortable sending a video thing. And of course, you get to edit it first and make sure it's okay.
00:09:55
Speaker
So powerful. I'm watching them crying because these are students who just, this was a need-based scholarship. We were topping off some made from the general ah university undergrad program yeah to make it so they had no expenses. It was such a powerful experience.
00:10:12
Speaker
stewardship experience, but just to your point, anytime you can connect them, it's beautiful. And I've seen, I've talked to people that are on the receiving end of those, and those are not only, it's powerful for both ends. It's powerful for the student to do it, and it's even more powerful for the donor to receive it.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, but we're getting close to the end here. Tell me your best solicitation story. Doesn't have to be the biggest, but it the one that's most meaningful to you for any reason.
00:10:41
Speaker
This is one of my all-time favorites. So we were put, and this is philanthropy, but it's not philanthropy.
Corporate Sponsorship Success
00:10:48
Speaker
So when when I was at the Columbus Zoo, we realized that there was a huge opportunity corporate sponsorships.
00:10:58
Speaker
You know, like if you go to a baseball stadium and there's, you know, like Budweiser and, you know, the bank and everybody else has signage up and you go to almost, you know, there's opportunities at a place like the zoo to And so it's not philanthropy because it comes from marketing, but it's the principles on how you solicit something like that is exactly how you would solicit a major.
00:11:22
Speaker
And we were going to ask Nationwide Insurance for a really big number, ah one that had two comments in And we were going to ask for a five-year commitment of that amount a year for five years.
00:11:39
Speaker
So we're talking a get eight figures. And at the end of the four years, it's eight figures. And so we ended up getting the CEO of nationwide insurance at the zoo.
00:11:51
Speaker
And we put together this presentation on why we were doing it and why nationwide should be part of it and how we, you know, we actually had a puzzle because at that point they were, they were supporting several different pro sports teams. They were supporting, uh, Ohio state. They were, they had, uh,
00:12:11
Speaker
um a PBS show that they sponsored kind of thing. And we said, look, you're missing a gap here. And we, we complete your puzzle. We complete your marketing puzzle. And we were walking out of that and we worked like crazy. I mean, it was just a whole team of us worked like crazy. I happened to be the front guy to present it.
00:12:30
Speaker
And I thought, I thought, man, this is going really good. You know how sometimes when you're doing something, I got this is, And so we're walking out and we are going to go to the next building. because We stopped in our tour and this is the CEO of nationwide shirts, a fortune 100 company. I think maybe I think they're a fortune 100. They may be a fortune 200, but they are certainly okay.
00:12:54
Speaker
Right. We're walking out of this building and the guy puts the guy kind of gives me a man hug around the neck, you know, kind of thing. And he says,
00:13:05
Speaker
I wasn't expecting to get sold today. and then he picked up his pace and walked about two steps ahead of me. And I thought to myself, oh my Lord, he just said yes.
00:13:18
Speaker
And he did, he had, he just said yes. i i didn't know what I didn't know what to do at that point, you know? And so so we this was like two thirds of the way through our tour.
00:13:32
Speaker
And we had one more, we had, we were like, Like, no, we were 80% through our tour. We had one more stop before we got back to the office. And so I'm thinking the guy just said yes. The guy just said yes. But I've got these people waiting in they and they're taking time out of their day.
00:13:48
Speaker
I got to just stop in at least for 30 seconds so that these people don't think that I blew them off. I mean, the internal zoo people, you know, and like I'm asking people to take time out of their day to do a presentation for the CEO of Nationwide.
00:14:00
Speaker
And I'm thinking to myself, Okay, he said yes, we're just going to stop for like a minute, two minutes, and then say, oh, we got to move along. And that way i you know, I'm trying to keep peace with, you know, trying keep everything. So we do that.
00:14:14
Speaker
And it was not more than, couldn't been more than two minutes. We go back, we go back, we had golf carts, we go go back to the vehicles. he stops and he looks at me, he says, do you know what I tell all my salespeople?
00:14:25
Speaker
I said, no, sir, what do you tell all your salespeople? He said, never sell through the clothes. oh He just put me right in my place. My instinct was, okay, let's go straight back to the office. He just said, yes, there's no need to belabor this. He just said, yes, let's go right back to the office.
00:14:45
Speaker
But I stopped and I sold through the clothes. And I thought, oh my gosh, I've just had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in about a three minute span of time.
00:14:57
Speaker
you wow Wow. And so of course they said yes. And it went on to blah, buth buth buth blah, blah, blah. But obviously, it's something I've never forgotten. And it was, you know, it's it's a great lesson. that's That's a fantastic lesson, Joe.
00:15:13
Speaker
I'm so glad that that didn't get in the way. Again, follow your gut. Follow your gut. If your gut says you just did it, I knew he just said yes. And I knew we just needed to get this over with.
00:15:25
Speaker
Let's get back to somewhere where we can start working on paperwork, you know. And no, I didn't. I kept selling. So don't. All right.
00:15:36
Speaker
Well, you know, we follow a natural progression with these questions. Tell me your best stewardship story.
Stewardship and Personal Relations
00:15:44
Speaker
We had a couple that lived a couple hours away from Columbus and they didn't have any children. They were both only children.
00:15:56
Speaker
And my recollection was that their parents were all only children. So but they're like third generation, second generation, only children, and they had no children. So it wasn't like they had nieces and nephews. i mean, there was just the two of them and they had done incredibly well for themselves.
00:16:14
Speaker
And they wanted to leave the majority of their estate to a specific program at Ohio State. um He didn't. Everyone expected her to die first because she was very frail.
00:16:29
Speaker
He ended up with cancer and died before she did. And the attorney for the estate said, look, I know this is what they want to do, and I know all the vultures are going to come out. And so they had enough money that she had care her.
00:16:45
Speaker
And so anytime a representative from another nonprofit showed up, they would call the attorney and the attorney would go and say, did they have you sign anything? what did they do? kind of thing and just stay on top of it. And so we would go, again, it was two hours away from Columbus. And so it's not like you just go there every day. So we would go a couple of times a year, three times a year, and we would take her to lunch.
00:17:06
Speaker
And, you know, her, her joy in the fact that we would, we took the time to do it, you know, and because, you know he was, again, he, they were a traditional couple. He was kind of, it was his business and, you know, and he was in charge. And so she's kind of in the background and, and, and, and her genuine gratefulness that we actually took the time. Cause she's like, this is a long way through, you know, I'm just little me and you're coming all the way up here to have lunch with me, you know, kind of thing. And just,
00:17:43
Speaker
you know, but it's one of those things that she needed to know. Well, it ended up being like an 11 million gift, but you know, when she passed. Right. So, I mean, it was definitively worth the time, but even if it was only worth it, it was only a hundred thousand dollars. You know, it was one of those, it's just the notion, right.
00:17:58
Speaker
That we took the time and I'm grateful that we were able to do that because that's one of those ones that do you really get any metrics credit for that? No, because she's already made her gift, right?
00:18:10
Speaker
get no metrics You get no metrics credit for that. She's already made the gift. but it's the right thing to do a and B. Um, and this is not related to this, but this is another one of the statistics things. There's some, you know, giving USA did a plan giving study right before COVID.
00:18:27
Speaker
And they had a professor at Seattle university do it. And, and they talked to people that it was statistically significant stuff, but it was people that already had a charitable organization in their estate plans.
00:18:40
Speaker
And one of the questions was, have you ever changed it? And then a bunch of people said, yes, I've changed it and said, why do you change it? then Because people forgot about me. Right. And so this is where our metrics get in the way of doing the right thing.
00:18:51
Speaker
Right. So if somebody says, I've got you in my will when they're 65 years old you don't get any metrics credit for going to see them and you don't go see them for 10 or 15 years and they go to rewrite their will, which they do.
00:19:04
Speaker
And like, well, these people don't care about me anymore, but this other organization, I like this other organization. So, you know, I mean, you know, i mean, every business in America will tell you that your, their best next customer is a current customer except fundraising.
00:19:20
Speaker
You know, I mean, are you going to walk away from a 10 million gift because you don't have any metrics credit for that? Sometimes. Sometimes, right? And it happens. But is that right?
00:19:31
Speaker
No. So anyhow, it's it's the right thing to do. Right. ah Take the time to go thank these people because it is their their final gift kind of thing.
00:19:41
Speaker
So anyhow, that was great. So then one time we took her to a this is a Christmas time. We took her to a place and it was an old monastery that had been converted into a restaurant.
00:19:52
Speaker
And they didn't have all the elevators. So they had this like one these like little outdoor elevator things. And she was in a wheelchair. And so you could just barely see the top of her head. And these right as we were getting done with lunch, it just started snowing. Those big flakes that are like as big as your hand. You know, there's just those big flakes of snow.
00:20:10
Speaker
And we put her in the thing in the elevator and it starts going down. So we have to walk down stairs to meet her. So we watch her coming down and you can just barely see the top of her head and it's just snow going in And it gets to the bottom and there's this, it makes this strange noise and it starts going back up again.
00:20:28
Speaker
And it's really slow and it goes all the way up and it stops. And then it comes all the way down and we get her out. But she's in this elevator for like two minutes and her hair's just like got all this snow in it and stuff. And she actually thought it was funny. So it was good. But in any of event, it's <unk>s that's That's a great stewardship story. It's just she really, you it meant a lot to her that we did. Yeah.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But it did. So last question for you, maybe second to last. Tell me about the most awkward moment you've had with a donor and how did it resolve?
Resolving Miscommunication with Honesty
00:21:08
Speaker
This is going date myself. So I was working with a donor. who was a retired CEO of a Fortune 500 company. and in And he still had an office in the building and he still had his longtime secretary assistant.
00:21:24
Speaker
And he was going to make a gift in honor of one of the deans at Ohio State who was leaving to become a provost somewhere else. And so this is one that had like some definitive time sensitivity to it because you know the guy announced him gonna be the provost and i'm goingnna I'm leaving in three weeks. And so there was just some, and the and the guy says, I really wanna do something for the dean. And um so you know you've you've you've got a fairly tight time window.
00:21:49
Speaker
And this is before um there were so this is before cell phones were, mean, this is in the 90s. People had cell phones, but you know he didn't. you know And so there was a very specific question about the gift agreement and about the stock he was going to give. And I needed to get an answer to him. And again, like we're like within 10 days of this.
00:22:12
Speaker
So I called the office and he wasn't there. And I talked to his assistant. She'd been his assistant for like 25 years. And if you think about that, I mean, those people know the person better than the spouse does in some ways, right?
00:22:23
Speaker
And I said, I've got this answer. I know he needs to get it. I said, ah she goes, we'll call him at home. I said, if he's not at home, Do you think it's okay if I leave the information on the answering machine? And this is before there was voicemail when they still had the box voice machines, right?
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah. And so she goes, oh, sure. That won't be a problem. He wasn't home. I left the message. Mrs. Donor got home before Mr. Donor did. And she listened to the voicemail and she didn't know anything about the gift.
00:22:52
Speaker
And this was a seven figure gift. He was going to an endowed chair in honor of the deed. I thought I was going to get fired. thought i was gonna get fired this guy happened to be on the university's board of trustees.
00:23:08
Speaker
It all worked out. He got over it. You know, he was mad for a day. i went to my, I went to the, I went to our, our vice president. I said, i think I really screwed up.
00:23:21
Speaker
Here's what I did. So that's the other lesson is, you fess up to it, you know, fess up. And that's one of the things he said. He said, look, you came to me before anybody said anything and you fessed up and said, here's what happened. He goes, that goes a long way mind And so I said, I think I screwed up.
00:23:35
Speaker
Here's what happened. And he's like, okay, I'll call him. So the vice president called and everything got all worked out. It all was fine. It all ended up being fine. But ah yeah that's the one that kind of oh like, holy smokes. yeah but That could have been a disaster.
00:23:54
Speaker
Oh, that. Well, Joe, you've you've been so generous with your time here for us. One last thing I want to ask you. If we have listeners ah that need help with planned giving and want to talk with you about it, how do they track you down?
Contact Information and Planned Giving Advice
00:24:09
Speaker
ah ease and it's um You can go to my website and then like yeah send me an email because the email is on the website. or right i think there's a I think there's a contact me thing on the website. I don't remember. but What's your website? but The website is www. And the name of the firm is Philanthropy Advisory Council.
00:24:28
Speaker
And so it's all... I didn't... It's not... abbreviated. So it's www.philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com. Excellent. Excellent. I'll make sure I do that. And my email is joebowl at philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com. So somebody can send me an email directly.
00:24:46
Speaker
I'll make sure we get that in the show notes. Joe, thank you again. This been a real masterclass. Thank you. Thank you. Loved it. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider.
00:25:01
Speaker
I'm your host, Tom Daubert. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards major gift mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.