Take one healthy planned giving program, in place for five years and successful. Bring in an outside expert to review it top to bottom and recommend changes. Result: one even healthier planned giving program, now also attracting high levels of major gifts.

This was the experience of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, which historically had by default benefitted from the tendency of its clients and supporters to leave it money in their will. In the mid-1990s it decided to take advantage of this tendency to unorganized windfalls by establishing a fullblown professional planned giving program.

It hired planned giving directors for eastern, central and western Canada and set them to work with the more than 60 district offices to develop warm and productive donor relations.

“After five years of working in this direction, working with professional allies and volunteer planned giving teams,” says Ron Finucan, National Manager, Planned Giving/Major Gifts, “it became obvious that as the program grew and increased its revenue, CNIB had to review its service to its large donor base.”

Too much for three

The weight of dealing with the growing donor base and the need to service it and the large increases in bequests and other planned giving instruments became too unwieldy to be managed by three directors working nationally.

Enter the EH Pearce and Associates Planned Giving Consultancy Group in 2000-01, which set up a team of three, led by Ed Pearce, to undertake an indepth audit and review of the national program.

Following the recommendations from Pearce and his associates, Sherry Kushner and Sharon Gregory, the CNIB restructured its program, transferring its prime direction from the national office to the divisions and hiring greater numbers of gift planners (now 12, scheduled to rise to 18 by end/2004), who were also given responsibility for soliciting major gifts.

The organization also invested greater resources into intensified donor relations, establishing a separate donor relations department, and into further development of its donor database and reporting systems.

Materials enhanced

Planned and major gift promotional materials - brochures, donor newsletters, donor mailing programs, donor events and donor recognition - have all been enhanced, says Finucan, and a major direct mail campaign is in the offing.

Gift planners, fund development staff and executive directors are all benefitting from increased training and communications programs designed to keep them informed, updated and versed in donor changes, planned giving/major gift vehicles, and tax and policy changes, he says.

“Since the inception of the planned giving program as a separate and sophisticated entity, CNIB has doubled its bequest revenue and tripled its once almost non-existent major gifts program, and has created a serious donor-focussed outlook and future for even better and stronger results,” he says.

A byproduct of the review and the new elements put in place has been enhancement of the teamwork enjoyed by the planned giving/major gifts personnel, suggests Finucan, who also stresses that “thanking and showing the donor appreciation and respect” has always been the cornerstone of CNIB’s fundraising, and always will be.

“CNIB recognizes that without building the donor relationships and treating your donor with appreciation and respect, no matter what kind of sophisticated planning giving program you put in place will fail miserably.”

Web site sophisticated

A visit to the organization’s web site shows a sophisticated level of approach in that arena. More than most charities, CNIB has singled out planned giving by name as a major opportunity for donors to support it.

CNIB, it tells visitors, “relies upon the help of our Friends for Life who include CNIB in their will and estate planning. Each year these important legacy gifts account for nearly one-quarter of your total fundraising income”.

Because a planned gift, it says, “offers tax benefits and is made at a time that makes sense within your own estate plan, it allows you to make a significant contribution without putting a strain on our current lifestyle. A carefully planned gift can meet your charitable objectives, provide support for CNIB and reduce your taxes.”

The site points out that although bequests are the most common form of planned gifts, choices can include gifts of marketable securities, charity gift annuity, charitable remainder trust, life insurance, or endowment funds.

Each alternative is explained in clear, unambiguous, donor-friendly, non-legalistic, language other gift planners might want to check out and emulate.