Sep 13 2018 9:15AM
Survey Says . . . Know Your Donors – It Pays to Ask
Learn answers to common questions planned giving professionals are asking about survey tools and how to put them to best use in growing their planned giving program. No matter your nonprofit’s size or sector you’ll gain valuable information:
1) Why should your organization survey? What should you expect from surveying your donors?
2) Who should you be surveying and what’s the best format? How should you decide who’s in and who’s out?
3) How often should you send surveys? Can you survey too much?
4) How can the results of your organization’s survey impact your planned giving program?
Sep 13 2018 10:45AM
The Soul of Gift Planning: Connecticut’s Vital Role in Professionalizing American Philanthropy
Hartford, New Haven, and other Connecticut sites played essential roles in the history of American philanthropy. Yale professor Benjamin Silliman and NY attorney Peter Jay were the earliest known gift planners, successfully negotiating the first known gift annuity contract in 1831. Colonel John Trumbull of Hartford funded the annuity with his best paintings of the American Revolution, but Daniel Wadsworth nearly convinced Trumbull to share his paintings with a new museum in Hartford. The gift to Yale would not have been possible but for the cooperation of Trinity College (then known as Washington College). Yale’s annuity contract became a template for other American nonprofits over the next 100 years. This session celebrates three events that are central to our profession: the planning that saved the best images of the American Revolution through a gift annuity; a lawyer’s influential defense of nonprofits promoting, issuing, and managing life-income gifts in 1848; and the professionalization of charitable gift planning resulting from the introduction of actuarial science. New complexities of gift design, tax calculations, and fund management required well-trained experts. The profession of charitable gift planning was born!