Coaching for Planned Giving Fundraisers and Development Directors
Practical Solution Announcement 9
JEFF: Hi everybody this is Jeff Stein, President of Planned Giving Marketing, here for a another installment of our PSA’s–our Practical Solution Announcements. And as always I’m joined by our friend and colleague, Greg Wilson. Greg is the Senior Major and Planned Gift Officer at Good Shepherd Rehab Center in Allentown Pennsylvania.
Today, I want to explain why the 15-year-old marketing plan—with prescriptive information about what month to do what type of gift—is maybe not such a bad idea. And it’s not because the author of that plan knows better, or guessed right, but a plan is a plan.
And if we’re having a conversation about consistency and the challenge is that a lot of organizations have in sticking with a plan, then the “CGA in the fall” and the “Bequest in January”—or whatever the rationale was—look there’s been a lot of research about when things happen. That’s partially valid… but if you need a reason to believe in a plan, then maybe that’s not such a bad way of looking at it. It fosters consistency, if nothing else.
GREG: I would say on that part, any plan that’s above the functionality line is a good plan and better than no plan at all. But the biggest part in my opinion of having a planned giving marketing vendor is somebody externally holding you accountable for the things that you know you need to do.
It’s why teams have coaches. Every player knows what they need to do… By the time a person makes it to the NFL, for example, they are able to read what an offense is portraying fast enough that they know what sort of defense to run. They don’t need a coach to call it.
They need the coach to keep them accountable to be ready for the game.
JEFF: That’s a great analogy. There are great books written on the difference between coaching and training. The training is what you do to prepare for the game. The coaching is the guidance you need to do it on your own. Every now and then the coach needs to tap you on the shoulder to remind you what you’ve learned.
As a planned giving marketing service provider, we’ve had to have coaching conversations. A lot of organizations wanted to completely retract their marketing. We’ll get them on the phone and say, “Hey, look, I understand your trepidation. But as a marketing coach, we need to get back to consistency because while you’re trying to figure out the perfect thing to say and the perfect time to say it, your donors are forgetting that you even exist.”
Without consistent marketing… their attention will get focused on other priorities and other organizations that remain consistent.
As hard as that is for a lot of us to believe, we’re caught up in a lot of stuff right now. Without consistent marketing and consistency of communication, their attention will get focused on other priorities and other organizations that remain consistent.
We’re not here necessarily to tell you what to do, but to remind you why you hired us in the first place, and why it’s important to hire a planned giving marketing service provider to coach you through these things so that your marketing does the job that you expected it to do—and the investment in the marketing pays off.
The email that sits in the outbox and never gets sent is not working for you. That’s not marketing. The trays and trays of postcards and newsletters that are at a mail shop right now—that are not getting delivered to the post office because we’re afraid—that’s not helping with the marketing.
A marketing plan, no matter how simple, creates consistency. A marketing partner acts as a coach, holding you accountable to that plan and ensuring your message stays in front of donors—especially when fear and uncertainty might otherwise lead to inaction.