A Deferred Gift Leads to Outright Gifts

Stories That Stengthen Donor Relationships

Transcript: 

JEFF: Greg, you were telling me stories about donors who, once you kind of get into the concept of impact and what is possible, all the other [technical] stuff goes away. Do you care to share that with the group?

GREG: I’ve been just lucky enough, or fortunate enough, to work with some donors who, you know, it always starts off as that very sort of traditional, stereotypical thank you. “Thank you for including XYZ in your will,” (if they’ve already raised their hand). Or, if they’ve responded to something, then it’s really starting to dig down into the why. So, you ask, “Why are you considering? Why are you responding to this particular mailer?” 

And then you start getting the stories. 

Some of my most recent ones were on the higher ed side. You hear the stories, such as, “Well, you know, I received a scholarship, and I got to go here. So, I just figured that, you know, we’d like to put something back.”

It’s been fun for me. I really look at it as though it’s a sliding scale. There are annual gifts, major gifts, and planned gifts. And somebody can be at any point on that sliding scale at any time.You can get these planned gifts. And once you focus on the emotive side of it, it really gets people’s minds thinking, and that’s what it’s so much fun.

They start to think, “Oh my gosh I could impact kids like that.” And I have been fortunate enough that once they’ve opened the door and allowed me to talk about the impact they can have, and how the mission of the organization has been stable for 150 years, 147 years. Then they start to realize, “This can really go out into the future. I can really impact a lot of kids.”

Then the fun part is that a lot of these individuals end up selling themselves back on outright gifts. So I went there to secure a deferred gift and get them excited about what they were doing, but then I watch them just get so excited that they make that deferred gift but then they end up making multiple outright gifts as well because they’re just focused on that emotion, and that goodness, of being able to change the world in the right way.

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