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Why Planned Giving Thrives When Everything Else Slows Down w/ Joe Bull
65 Plays4 months ago
Economic downturns test every fundraiser’s patience and creativity—but Joe Bull has seen enough recessions to know that generosity doesn’t disappear, it just shifts form. In this conversation, Joe and Tom Dauber unpack how planned giving holds steady when annual and major gifts tighten, and what leaders can do now to build resilience before the next market slide.
In this episode, Joe shares:
- Why donor motivation doesn’t vanish in bad economies—it only changes timing and form
- How planned giving bridges short-term uncertainty with long-term commitment
- Data from researcher Russell James showing why nonprofits that accept non-cash assets raise significantly more
- Lessons from Joe’s own Carnegie Mellon analysis revealing estate gifts often triple lifetime giving
- Practical ways to start a planned giving program with almost no new budget
- The myth that “planned giving is only for the wealthy” and what every fundraiser should actually know
- Why patience, stewardship, and curiosity build the kind of donor relationships that survive any recession
If you’ve ever wondered how to stabilize fundraising when the markets stumble, this episode will leave you with perspective, proof, and a few next steps you can take tomorrow.
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 Fundraising 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.
Staying the Course During Economic Crises
00:00:33
Speaker
You've been fundraising through all the big ones, you know, nine eleven you know, the the tech bubble that you talked about, 2008. um two thousand and eight And there's probably a few more in there i'm not even thinking of. but There was like Black Monday in 1989 where the stock market lost like 12% of its value in one day kind of thing. It was the largest single day.
00:00:54
Speaker
drop in the stock market since the Great Depression. This is like 1988 or 89, something like that. What advice might you have to fundraising leaders, whether they're executive directors or chief development officers, or even just frontline fundraisers? What advice do you have for them about getting through one of those rough spots in the economy?
00:01:16
Speaker
It's really easier to say than it is to do, but you kind of just have to stay the course. It's people's desire to support organizations that have made a difference in their life doesn't change depending on what the economic circumstances are.
00:01:35
Speaker
Their ability and their timing on how to do things is what changes. And so I know it's hard when you've got metrics and you've got numbers that you have to hit. I mean, I know that becomes incredibly difficult and it's, and again, like I said, it's easier said than done, but stay the course. i mean, people still want to give.
Understanding and Integrating Planned Giving
00:01:53
Speaker
And so, yeah That's where I think Planned Giving comes in to help if you if you think about it. and if you think Because I've always looked at Planned Giving as much more inclusive than exclusive.
00:02:07
Speaker
We used to have a joke at it Carnegie Mellon that there was a period of time when people thought that the Planned Giving office was just major gifts for old people. And ah no, that's not really what it is. And there are things in Planned Giving that Every major gift officer ought to have in their portfolio and have in their arsenal or their quiver or whatever analogy you want to use.
00:02:34
Speaker
You don't have to be an expert. and I try to tell major gift officers all the time. I think if if you can become an enlightened generalist, you're going to raise an awful lot of money and really have a great career and put yourself in a really good situation.
00:02:46
Speaker
but Boy. Yeah, that's certainly the truth. I've seen that in my own career. I think we've talked about this before, but Colleen Garland sent me off to Robert Sharp's training back in 06, like in my second year on the job, I think, with OSU. And it really helped me and set me up for a lot of success ah years back.
00:03:07
Speaker
Now, many executive directors and and CEOs and nonprofits out there, they're just trying to meet budget. The idea of spending time and resources on revocable deferred gifts that may not come in for 20 years can be a hard sell for some of them.
00:03:23
Speaker
Make the case for why a planned giving program is important for a strong fundraising program. i And again, that's one of the things I do in my in my current my current role as a consultant and helping people to show why that's important.
The Impact of Non-Cash Asset Donations
00:03:41
Speaker
There is a a professor at the at Texas Tech University, a fellow a fellow by the name of Russell James. And Russell has done, over the last decade, decade and a half, has done a tremendous amount of research in this whole area. Now, Russell actually, truth be known, started out as a fundraiser. He started out as a fundraiser, then he became a plan-giving person, and then he became a very young college president at a very small place.
00:04:06
Speaker
And then he decided that he'd rather just teach research and research and left a small college and went to Texas tech. And he's a tenured professor and everything, but Russell has mine a ton of like IRS data and Russell can prove conclusively statistically that organizations that actually accept non-cash assets, whether it's stock or real estate or a Steinway piano, a classic, uh,
00:04:40
Speaker
you know, 1965 Mustang or whatever it is, organizations that accept non-cash assets raise significantly more money than those that don't. fundraisers that have the ability to talk to their donors about making gifts of those assets raise more money than those that don't.
00:04:59
Speaker
Statistically proven, this isn't like some old guy just saying, well, you know I've kind of observed. No, there's statistics show this. And so... One of the things that I did when I was at Carnegie Mellon, and I'm trying i'm trying to i'm not trying i'm develop a little bit of a database myself, and it's not quite to the point where I can have where i have like what I would consider to be statistically significant data.
Potential of Estate Gifts vs. Lifetime Donations
00:05:27
Speaker
One of the things that I did at Carnegie Mellon and I'm gathering more data on is looked at the behavior of people that have actually died and left a charitable estate gift And so I went back and I said, how far back can you go in the database of Carnegie Mellon?
00:05:42
Speaker
And they could go back. um They could only go back to 1993. They made a system change in 93 and they didn't have enough money to get all the data converted. And it was back in the day when you had to keystroke a lot of stuff and they didn't have enough staff to keystroke everything. And so they kind of drew the curtain started 93. it goes to 1993. And in that period of time,
00:06:03
Speaker
and in that period of time and we It was, 252 people had died and left Carnegie Mellon in their estate plan. This is like from 1993 to 2020. So And the amount of gifts from estates was a factor.
00:06:25
Speaker
So then I went back and asked the question, how much did each of those people give while they were alive? And I want to compare how much they gave while they were alive with how much they gave out of their estate.
00:06:36
Speaker
and the estate gift the totality of the estate gift was a factor of three x i mean it was three the estate gifts were three times bigger than the totality of the of the lifetime and so then i went back and we divided it up into gifts of i stratified it just in a thousand and above a hundred to a thousand and 99 and below and
00:07:04
Speaker
47% of the people that left Carnegie Mellon a gift in their estate have lifetime, cumulative lifetime giving less than $1,000. Now that means that 53% had more than $1,000, but still, I mean, you're talking 50-50.
00:07:18
Speaker
And the amazing thing to me was a full 20% of the people, the only gift they ever gave to Carnegie Mellon was their estate gift. They did not give one red penny during their life.
00:07:29
Speaker
Really? and And so then, so then took the people that had given more than a thousand, a thousand or more. And I asked the question, okay, what was their single, what was the single biggest gift that they made in their lifetime?
00:07:48
Speaker
And that could be a pledge, you know, not just in one, not just a one-time gift, but like well their biggest pledge that they paid off over multiple years was the single biggest gift they gave during their lifetime.
00:08:00
Speaker
and compare that with how much they gave to the institution in their state. 67% of the people, two thirds of everybody ah that left Carnegie Mellon in their will that had over a thousand dollars of lifetime to giving the biggest gift they ever gave to the institution was theirs.
00:08:14
Speaker
So if you ask the question, why should I have a plan giving program? Are you willing to walk away from two thirds of the people making their biggest gift through their estate? Now you have to have the time and the patience and the energy to wait for these people to die.
00:08:27
Speaker
But you know, I mean, i know many people have been to San Francisco, or at least you've seen it, you know, Transamerica has that beautiful pyramid shaped tower in San Francisco, Transamerica is a life insurance company. I mean, you go through, well look at the John Hancock building in Boston, in, in, in, in Chicago or the Prudential building in, in Boston, you life insurance companies build big buildings because actuarial science works.
Patience and Strategy in Successful Planned Giving
00:08:55
Speaker
And if fundraising organizations would allow actuarial science to work on their behalf and have the patience to do that right but the problem is i need to cash today that's the challenge if you have if you have the ability to have a long-term view and i have the ability to wait a plan giving program will produce significant amounts of revenue for your institution it's just a matter of how much what's your patience level what's your
00:09:26
Speaker
You and I know some organizations need it today. I'm not I get that. And and and so honestly, i don't know that a plan giving program is for every organization. I mean, if you're really struggling to make ends meet, you know, you need the money today.
00:09:42
Speaker
You don't need the money tomorrow. If you're in a pretty good place, you're leaving money on the table. I mean, what is every fundraiser's biggest fear? I've left money on the table. I asked them for 50 grand and they said yes without even thinking about It's like, damn, I should ask them for 100, right?
00:09:57
Speaker
Right. Every fundraiser's biggest fear is leaving money on the table. And if you're leaving money and without a planning program, you're leaving money on the table. that was a pretty strong case ah but for why a planned giving program is important there, Joe.
Personal Impact and Motivating Estate Gifts
00:10:12
Speaker
Now, as you're out you know consulting with organizations about improving and growing and establishing planned giving programs, I'm sure you're seeing a wide variety of organizations who are different places in their maturity.
00:10:28
Speaker
The ones that you're seeing who are struggling, they're not doing a great job of pursuing estate gifts from their donors. What are the top barriers to success there? What are the things that getting wrong that you're seeing?
00:10:40
Speaker
They're not. So I'll go back. Let me go back and just yeah id go back and and set this up a little bit. So um when I was in law school and I took a class on with like writing Wells of Trust and estate planning, the professor said, this is great. Obviously, I've remembered it all eight years later. He said, you know, when you leave this world,
00:11:04
Speaker
um and you've spent your life and you've accumulated whatever you've accumulated. Some people have accumulated more than others, but whatever you've accumulated, when you leave this world, you can only leave those assets to people and organizations that help people.
00:11:21
Speaker
And then he would go into this. You can't leave it to General Motors or General Electric or General Mills or General Dynamics or General Foods. You can't leave it to a corporation. You have to leave it to a people or organizations that help people.
00:11:33
Speaker
And you just mentioned Robert Sharp. At the risk of sounding like I'm dropping names, you know, Robert passed a couple of years ago. And in the last five or six years of his life, ah Robert and I became pretty good friends and talked a lot. And I always really appreciated, you know, his viewpoint on things.
00:11:55
Speaker
And one of the things that that that Sharp Company did in their seminars, all the way back to when Robert's father founded the company, is that they would say that if you think about your own estate plan or your own will, who do you leave money to? You only leave people, you only leave money to family and and loved ones that have the equivalent status of family.
00:12:17
Speaker
You don't leave it to your next door neighbor. You don't leave it to perfect stranger. You don't leave it to your office mate, unless that office mate is a loved one that has risen to the level of a family member. So if somebody leaves an organization, it leaves your organization money in there. Well, they've elevated your organization to the status of it.
00:12:34
Speaker
So then so if you if you look at that and then you back off and then it's like, so why would I leave money to a charity? And I would leave money to a charity because they made a difference in my life or they made a difference in the life of someone I love, whether it's a hospital that saved somebody's life, whether it's an educational institution that provided me the ability to do this, whether I am.
00:12:55
Speaker
a historian and the local historical society, that is one of the things, whether I'm an animal person and it's the zoo or the humane society or whatever it is, or whether it's I am, my faith is the central tenet of my life and I want to help the church out after I leave.
00:13:13
Speaker
Whatever that is, whatever that spark is, that connection point, that's what organizations are missing. I mean, we're looking at, I need $50,000 gift today.
00:13:25
Speaker
forget about the fact that that person, and I work at a hospital, and you forget the fact that that person's interested in talking to you because you saved his mother's life, right? And so that's how, I think that's what organizations miss. It's interesting you say this. I have two clients that are really interesting. One is an organization that's 148 years old, and it's an organization that has changed people's life. and Their donors will tell you in a nanosecond what this institution meant.
00:13:56
Speaker
I have another organization that is only 40 years old, but they are developing an amazing plan giving program because they provide a service that people just gravitate to. This makes a difference in my life. They're only 40 years old.
00:14:15
Speaker
So it doesn't matter how old you are. It's what do you do to impact people's lives? And if you impact people's lives, then that's when people will start giving you money in their estate plan. And so that's what people are typically That's a long way around to answer your question, but that's what's missing.
00:14:30
Speaker
That's great. Yeah. I mean, it's it's very simple with major gifts. you know Are you making impact? Do you have a great vision? Those are the same sorts of things. Right. So if I'm a nonprofit leader, other than working on the impact piece, which you've already brought up, what are some simple steps I could take today to begin moving towards a healthy planned giving program?
Starting a Planned Giving Program
00:14:54
Speaker
There are some things that you could do. um One of the things I try to tell people is there are a lot of things that you can do to have a plan giving program that's not going to cost you a dime, right?
00:15:05
Speaker
Because if you're that type of organization that you were just talking about and I was just talking about that makes a difference in people's lives, you're probably in somebody's will and you don't even know it, right? Because you've made a difference in somebody's life, right?
00:15:18
Speaker
And the other thing is, if you look at the demographics and you look at birth rates and stuff, the number of people that don't that don have children are increasing rapidly. And so where is that money going?
00:15:30
Speaker
Right. So one of the things you could do really simply is take your annual fund card, take your annual fund pledge card and find and find space on your annual fund pledge card for two checkboxes.
00:15:45
Speaker
One, I've included you in my estate plan. And two, I'd like more information on including you at least. You add those two things to your annual gift pledge card that you're already printing.
00:15:58
Speaker
It's not like the extra ink for that checkbox is going to cost you any more money. Now, you might have to pay a designer to redesign your pledge card. But other than that, it's not going to cost you a penny. And you've got a play giving program.
00:16:11
Speaker
You don't need to worry about annuities and trust and all that stuff. I mean, if you're just starting from scratch, that's where you need to start from. And it's as simple as that. And then everybody has websites and ah brochures or magazines or publications and stuff. It's really simple to put a little thing in, ah just a little blurb here or there.
00:16:33
Speaker
Again, it doesn't cost you any money because you're already doing it. it All of sudden, you have plan giving program. That's fantastic.
Simplicity in Estate Gifts
00:16:43
Speaker
I've been told that might've been the sharp training that I went through that where I learned this, but I'd love to just hear you confirm it.
00:16:51
Speaker
About 90% of all estate gifts are like simple bequests or beneficiary designations. I'm not sure it's that big. It might be, but it's not that far from being wrong. I mean, it's, it's, it's, I'd say 80, 80 to 90, 80 to 90% of those are just, you know, it's this, the simple bequest.
00:17:09
Speaker
And, and then, You know, it's, I mean, every once in a while you'll pick up, you know, well, nobody picks up the newspaper anymore, but a news article will come up about the janitor that left two million dollars the school that but he worked in.
00:17:27
Speaker
the The single janitor that nobody knew had two pennies to rub together and he had million dollars state and he had nobody to give it to. And all of a sudden he makes two million dollars. You can't make a living on those kind of people. But the point is that you just don't know where.
00:17:42
Speaker
you It never ceases to amaze me how many people have way more assets than you think they have because they just don't show That's very true. You know, the first organization I worked for, first nonprofit, they almost shut their doors, i think in the 80s.
00:17:58
Speaker
And they were like 24 hours away from the board of trustees making the call. And the lady died and they got a call.
00:18:09
Speaker
Instead of calling to close the the the nonprofit down, they got a call from the trustee and it gave them just enough capital to keep the place open until they could ah you know ah get the fundraising up and going.
00:18:21
Speaker
And there you go, right?
Case Study: Rescuing a Nonprofit with Planned Giving
00:18:23
Speaker
But the funny thing is, is for the longest time, They didn't solicit or seek ah planned gifts, even and despite that being in their history.
00:18:35
Speaker
And, um you know, I still stay involved with them a little bit. And I kept poking the director of development. And finally, finally, i'm I'm so proud of them. Not only do they have a planned giving program now, it's named after, it's the the Society for their Planned Giving Donors is named for that lady.
00:18:54
Speaker
That's great. Great. That's great. sort The woman that kept them, the woman that kept their doors open. Right. Yeah. I have a similar story. I, client of mine, who was a small college in Ohio and they had a donor that was an alum and this donor lived in Southern California and you know, you know, a hundred dollars, hundred dollars, one hundred dollars. And then, you somewhere in the nineties, it jumped up to a thousand dollars and it was a thousand dollars every year, just like clockwork.
00:19:24
Speaker
And One day, a letter came and it was just addressed to the college. It didn't have anybody's name on it. It was just addressed to the college. And it was like one of those little envelopes that we all have that just barely, a check will just barely fit in. You know, those envelopes you buy, you know, they're not they're not like they're not like letter envelopes or that next size down that a check fits in.
00:19:44
Speaker
Just an envelope like that, name of the college, stamp, no note, a check in it. You open it, you pull a check out and it's a check for a million And the people in gift processing thought it was a joke.
00:19:57
Speaker
And it took him a couple of days to get hold of the person. in in and And he said, of course, this is brief. What do you think? And so, of course, then the VP and the president, everybody, oh, we'll fly out to San Diego. And the guy says, no, do not come and see me.
00:20:13
Speaker
This is a test. I want to see how you do with this because I have other stuff I'm thinking about. Okay. Don't come see me. Nobody went to see Because he said, do not come.
00:20:26
Speaker
I do not want you to come. And but they talked on the phone and email, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah Guy dies about four years later. And it was a it was a 20 million dollar estate gift.
00:20:38
Speaker
The guy had bought apartments in Southern California in the 1950s. And there you go. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so. That's the same kind of thing. It's it's you just don't know.
Identifying Potential Planned Giving Donors
00:20:53
Speaker
You don't know, A, what people own and B, you don't know how those annual gifts, the stewarding of those just consistent annual donors. I mean, I think to your point about how do you have a plant giving program?
00:21:06
Speaker
If you go back and you look at everybody, this is one of the things I do with my clients. I go back and say, OK, let's get a list of everybody that is given 10 consecutive years or longer. And then let's get a list of people that have given in five of the last 10 years.
00:21:20
Speaker
And then I want a list of people that gave for at least 10 consecutive years at some period time and they quit. Because a lot of times those people that give every year and quit are people that um have gone into like a nursing home or something like that. And it's not that they don't have any money. It's just that they don't, they're out of their rhythm kind of thing.
00:21:45
Speaker
You know, if you if you just if every organization would just run those three lists and then, of course, you kind of age categorize it. You don't want to go to somebody that's 45 and do this. But but, you know, you age categorize it.
00:21:58
Speaker
You've got a plan giving list without even thinking about it. That's all the time we have today, but be sure to tune in next week to hear the next part of this exciting conversation. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider. I'm your host, Tom Dauber. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards major gift mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.