PGgrowth - Planned Giving podcast

In this second pod focusing on our webinar series Driving PG Forward from the Fall of 2023, Ken Ramsay - noted planned giving expert and data guru - gives one of the best arguments for understanding your organization's data and planned giving opportunity I have ever heard – and I have heard Ken talk about this many times before. 

It is all about the gap. 

The gap is the space between your current planned giving successes and your planned giving potential. Until you take the time to understand the true revenue potential that is within your stakeholder base, it will be difficult for your organization to chart the necessary path to maximize success. It is a fundamental next step after determining the characteristics of the type of program you should be operating. It will help drive your program forward.

The first of four pods excerpted from our webinar series in the Fall of 2023 titled DRIVING PLANNED GIVING FORWARD. This episode looks at determining organization type and what best practices are the correct ones to implement and follow. What does your organization need to consider when establishing a program? How do you measure success? It is where an organization must start to ensure predictable and sustainable planned giving growth and success.

In May of 2020, with the pandemic officially taking hold of all of our daily lives, PGgrowth held a Town Hall to examine fundraising in the ear of lock downs and economic unknowns. Now, 3 years later, we look at the after-effects of COVID, lessons learned - or not - and what to do so that your program is ready for the next economic down turn, whether it is caused by a pandemic, a bad economy or some other un-expected factors.

Working with charities across the country, we do find one common thread when professionals discuss their ability to - or inability to - launch a truly proactive program: leadership commitment. While the rational and the data continues to support proactive engagement of supporters to increase giving in the way, organizations continue to hesitate, missing the important leadership imperative to launch a program. In the end, this hesitation is simply a decision to 'leave money on the table'. In this discussion we hear from Doug Earle, current CEO of the West Park Hospital Foundation (Toronto) and former CEO of Fighting Blindness Canada about the leadership decisions and steps he took to launch a program and position his organization in transformational success in the area of fundraising.

This one is from the archives and firmly focused on the future. My colleague Katherine Blake is regularly talking about the coming transfer of wealth - one that we know of well in planned giving - and the fact that charities need to get involved now in planned giving or risk missing the opportunity. This reminded me of a conversation I had with Ken Ramsay a few years back. It was about the charitable giving circumstances of the time and how they had made that an important time for charities to launch a planned giving programs to ensure their future financial security. Everything old is new again and planned giving - accelerated by the pandemic - is entering another 'Golden Era'. For more Planned Giving Podcasts and to sign up for our regular updates, please go to www.pggrowth.com

Any marketing tactic to engage your donors about planned giving needs both a preparation and a follow up plan. Otherwise, the cost and work put into the initial contact is not only wasted, the trust you need with your donors so they will create a planned gift will be eroded or even lost. In this first episode of season 8, we will explore the basics of preparing for direct donor lead generation and the necessary 'next steps' to make the process worthwhile.

Why and how should your charity examine in a deep and meaningful way, its data and donor bases to find its best prospects for Planned Giving. Ken Ramsay brings his decades of experience leading programs asking hundreds of thousands of people across North America for Planned Gifts has provided him with a 'one-of-a-kind' knowledge and expertise in mining data for your best prospects, He is experience is unmatched and his insight is extraordinarily valuable to YOUR Planned Giving program.

Ed Sluga is joined again by planned giving thought leader Ken Ramsay as they discuss the most important asset of any organization's fundraising program - their data base. Using data effectively for the advancement of a planned giving program is fundamental to long-term and sustainable success. Ed and Ken discuss the rationale for regular data review and the steps necessary to use your data base to its fullest effect in your program.

Janice Meighan - in a conversation with Ed Sluga - describes the purpose, process and outcome of a fulsome review of your Planned Giving program. Put simply, it is difficult to start a journey to greater success when you don't know where you are starting from. Janice discusses policies, metrics, reporting and more in what she describes as a 'business unit' of your fundraising program.

Ed Sluga is joined by long-time senior hospital foundation executives Colleen DeJager and Jane Jamieson to discuss the unique approach the hospital foundations must take in developing and benefiting from planned giving. From community hospital to research juggernauts, the role that the hospital plays in the life of the community means planned giving must be approached in a unique and thoughtful way.

In this first episode of the seventh season of The PGgrowth Planned Giving Podcast, host Ed Sluga discusses the new reality of planned giving programs and their importance to overall fundraising with legacy giving expert and innovator Ken Ramsay. Planned giving as a fundraising channel has gone from a niche secondary funding source to an important main focus of every development program. BUt what are organizations doing about this new reality and are they ready to lead or be left behind.

As there continues to be an evolution of giving - particularly individual giving - to charities, organizations are forced to confront a growing new reality of the nature of gifts. Most if not all of the larger gifts from individuals can be viewed through the lens of Planned Giving. It is a new perspective that major and campaign fundraisers must understand to continue to do their important work in gathering community support for our increasingly 'in need' not-for-profit organizations.

Ed Sluga, CFRE and Ken Ramsay discuss the new reality that to truly engage donors as partners in your mission, all personal philanthropy - Leadership giving, Major Giving and Estate Giving - can and should be considered part of a larger Planned Giving program development.