MyPersonalizedPhilanthropy

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Steve Leimberg on Personalized Philanthropy and the Killer Apps (PDF)

Posted on April 15th, 2016

Rebecca Rothey’s Review of Personalized Philanthropy in Planned Giving Today ... Crashes the Matrix

Posted on November 5th, 2015

"Meyers encourages us to push ourselves, to own our practice, and to personalize it."

"I believe that to be successful, we fundraisers must find our own language for communicating with donors within the context and confines of the institutions we represent. To learn to do that requires that we engage in sometimes scary, often messy (as the book’s author emphasizes) conversations that push the limits — not only what donors are willing to consider, but how much we are willing to explore all possibilities with them."

Download Rebecca’s full review here

About the reviewer, Rebecca Rothey.

Rebecca Rothey, CFRE, CAP® is Johns Hopkins University and Medicine’s director of gift planning and senior philanthropic advisor. Rothey graduated summa cum laude from the Notre Dame of Maryland University. She is past president of the Chesapeake Planned Giving Council, on the boards of Creative Alliance and Baltimore Estate Planning Council, and a member of the Editorial Board of Planned Giving Today. rrothey@jhu.edu

Personalized Philanthropy: Crash the Fundraising Matrix

Charity Channel http://bit.ly/personalized-philanthropy

Amazon Personalized Philanthropy: Crash the Fundraising Matrix

amazon.com/author/stevenmeyers

Download PDF

Steve Leimberg on Personalized Philanthropy and the Killer Apps

Posted on June 14th, 2015

Steve Leimberg on Personalized Philanthropy

About the Author - Steve Leimberg

Stephan R. Leimberg is CEO of Leimberg and LeClair, Inc., an estate and financial planning software company, President of Leimberg Associates, Inc., a publishing and software company in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and Publisher of Leimberg Information Services, Inc. (LISI )which provides e-mail based news, opinion, and information for tax professionals.

HOPE THIS HELPS YOU HELP OTHERS MAKE A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The author of this groundbreaking book, Steven L. Meyers, PhD, is vice president of The Center for Personalized Philanthropy at the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. His book Personalized Philanthropy, may well revolutionize the way charities raise large amounts of money in the future. His outside-the-box mind makes possible the previously un-imagined.

COMMENT:

I usually bend over a page in a book when I want to come back to (or steal) an idea or concept. When I finished reading this book, almost every page was bent over – most with X’s to high light concepts I wanted to share with others.

Let me put it another way:

THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD

As I was growing up, my father repeatedly gave me lessons and told me stories that he hoped I’d learn from. Many times, he said to me,

"Only a fool learns from his own mistakes" and followed that with...

"A wise man learns from the mistakes of others!" One day he told me of "The Smartest Man in the World."

"It wasn’t the man who created the cash box nor the man who invented the adding machine.

It was the man who put them both together and called it the cash register!

It got me thinking about the new suitcase I own. How long was it that we moved clothing we were taking on a trip in a trunk and it took two people to grab it by the corners? And then, someone added leather handles. And years later, someone else added two wheels and an expandable handle and called it a suitcase (must have been an inventor attorney – the same person who invented the brief case). And then someone added four wheels! And I always wondered, why did it take so long to make these improvements and why were we so oblivious to what could be a blindingly simple, workable, and elegant solution?

Steven Meyers takes readers interested in innovative philanthropy through this same thought process – shaking us and making us ask – over and over again – "It’s obvious! So why didn’t we see that solution – before?"

Meyers shows us what’s wrong with our philanthropic large gift raising thinking – and empowers us to break out of the tyranny of the traditional. His book should be purchased – and read – over and over – by development officers, would be and current philanthropists – and by every estate and charitable planning attorney, CPA, insurance agent, financial planner, and wealth manager who is willing to work with an open mind and create what Meyers calls "The right gift, for the right purpose, for the right donor." These are donor-focused (fully engaging with the donor’s needs or desires) integrated, full spectrum holistic gifts.

Meyers three jaw-dropping simple/powerful moving beyond convention concepts of "Virtual Endowments," "Equity Gifts," and "Step-Up" gifts are game changers.

Here’s one example:

Most of us, when we purchase a home, don’t have all the cash necessary (or if we do, we may have a better alternative use for it) to plunk down the money and move in. So we obtain a mortgage and pay off the principle over time. We don’t have to wait 20 or 30 years to "move in."

Meyers suggests that the same principle can be applied to a person who wanted to have a chair in her name, say at Villanova Law School, or have a library room named in her honor at, say at the Library at Fernandina Beach, Florida. Assume she could not – or did not want to - make the outright gift today of (let’s assume, $1,000,000) necessary to establish the endowment.

Suppose she had given the Villanova Law School or Fernandina Beach Library $1,000,000 today – and the charity had invested it – and withdrawn 5% each year as its "spending rate." It would have $50,000 a year to spend.

Now suppose, going back to our real life example, the potential donor didn’t give $1,000,000 today – but instead committed to giving annual gifts equal to the spending rate of $1,000,000, i.e., she committed to giving $50,000 a year for the rest of her life. And she simultaneously committed to a "balloon gift" of $1,000,000 at her death (perhaps through assets she owned or maybe even better, funded with life insurance the charity would own on her life and that she would pay for).

In other words we link two gifts ((1) a multiyear pledge for annual gifts based on the life expectancy of the donor in the amount of the spending rate the charity would have used had it received the endowment up front and (2) a separate pledge or contact to include a gift by bequest or life insurance contract of the original endowment amount) under an umbrella plan.

Knowing that this irrevocable combination pledge will accomplish essentially the same overall benefit as an immediate gift of the lump sum, the Law School or Library could recognize and honor the donor today – and the donor would have the immediate pleasure of seeing and realizing with certainly the impact of her gift.

So simple, so elegant, so workable! It’s like putting the cash box and the adding machine together and making a cash register – or putting four wheels and handles on a trunk and making it into a suitcase.

Like so many concepts in this book, you’ll say to yourself, "Why didn’t we think of this – before?"

CHAPTERS:

1: The Two Cultures of Fundraising: Crashing Your Matrix

2: Matrix-Killing Apps of Personalized Philanthropy

3: Radically Rethinking Endowment: Examples

4: Beyond Conventional Solicitation: Personalized Best Practices

5: Counting, Numbers, Value, and The Big Picture

6: Being the Change and Making Your Own Shift

Personalized Philanthropy can be ordered through

Charity Channel http://bit.ly/personalized-philanthropy

Bruce Bigelow in Partnership for Philanthropic Planning [PPP]

Posted on June 9th, 2015

A Must-Read: Steve Meyers on Personalized Philanthropy

Posted on May 28, 2015; Reviewed by Bruce Bigelow

"Should result in bigger and better gifts, in

more engaged donors, and in richer relationships over many years."

Personalized philanthropy is the fundamental principle of Steve Meyers’ new book, Personalized Philanthropy—Crash the Fundraising Matrix (CharityChannel Press).

As he so aptly suggests, just as holistic medicine has moved to treat the entire person over a lifetime, so should holistic philanthropy characterize the new paradigm of charitable fundraising. Steve encourages us to move beyond transactional fundraising, in which we focus on the institutional needs of the moment, to a process in which we engage our donors in building a life plan for their philanthropic aspirations. We should move, he posits, from fundraising as negotiation to fundraising as collaboration, in which the donor is a partner in an on-going, sometimes unpredictable but fully organic process.

Steve presents us with three new ways of thinking about fundraising, all of which should result in bigger and better gifts, in more engaged donors, and in richer relationships over many years.

· First, he suggests a new organizational paradigm, in which all fundraising staff are engaged with donors and the traditional silos of annual fund, major gifts and planned giving, should no longer determine who acts and how we interact with donors. All members of the development staff should see their associations with donors as part of the evolving life-long process; everyone should understand the on-going conversation with the donor; and everyone should be aware enough of the range of giving opportunities (even though the technical aspects of some of those options may remain the purview of experts) to keep the donor conversation going over time.

· Second, he calls us to adopt new processes, especially in the ways we count, report, and acknowledge gift commitments. When Steve and I served together on the PPP Task Force on Counting and Reporting Gifts, we, along with our colleagues from around the country, developed a new perspective on counting that focused on the donor and on building transparency into the reporting process. Steve views this new counting process as so fundamental to his new ways of thinking that he reproduces the entire PPP report as an appendix to his narrative. More and more, this new paradigm has come to characterize fundraising campaigns, and Steve’s continued eloquent focus will move the process still further toward universal acceptance.

· Finally, he gives us a set of three new and quite flexible techniques, his "killer apps." These new ways of thinking about donor commitments allow us as fundraisers to work with donors in new ways, to help donors to realize their long-term objectives even as we work with short-term resource limitations. These "apps" are by no means exhaustive, but they demonstrate in concrete and easy to understand ways how personalized philanthropy can work for the betterment of all.

Steve gives us practical tools and a clear conceptual model. His book is, as a result, both an inspiration and a guidebook. His suggestions build on his own significant experience and his understanding of the new trends in charitable fundraising. Even though my own philosophical approach to fundraising closely mirrors Steve’s, he reminds me of why I find myself drawn to personalized philanthropy and how I can enhance the relationships with donors. We can all learn from his insights, and in the process become more effective fundraisers and build more meaningful relationships with our donors.

About the Author:

Bruce Bigelow is founding partner of Charitable Development Consulting, LLC, and a leader in the gift planning profession for 30+ years. He was a co-founder and president of the Chesapeake Planned Giving Council. He has served as NCPG (now PPP) conference chair and chair of the Research Committee. He has supervised two national gift planning research efforts. Bigelow was chair and chief author of PPP’s Guidelines for Counting and Reporting Charitable Gifts.