Our colleague Jeff Wadley (Camp Bays Mountain, Holston) attended the 4/21/21 webinar hosted by the National Council of Nonprofits. Jeff helpfully shares the highlights:

LEGACY GIVING 

Presenters: Joe Tumolo, Tim Sarrantonia, and Amy Silver O’Leary

National Council of Nonprofits

April 21, 2021

This workshop was not specific to faith-based nonprofits or camps, but was a generic briefing on Legacy Giving; however, the presenters offered a few items that were helpful in my setting and likely for yours, as well.

What is Legacy Giving? 

Legacy Giving is one part of a total integrated financial plan including annual, capital, operations, etc., but is one that can produce huge dividends and is often overlooked by those in the nonprofit sector, simply due to not knowing how to begin the conversation.

There are two types of planned giving:

1. Current outright (transfer of assets during the donor’s lifetime such as from a Required Minimum Distribution from an IRA Qualified Charitable Distribution)

2. Deferred Gift – testamentary (will/estate gift after death) or life-income arrangement (Charitable Gift Annuity)

Why should my Camp/Retreat Ministry add Legacy Giving to our fund development portfolio? 

The majority of your donors’ wealth is not cash-in-pocket but delayed/invested assets.

It is statistically proven that once a donor names a nonprofit in their estate plan, their annual contributions also increase.

How Do We Ask?

The key is to ask a potential donor if they would consider a contribution to camp as a legacy gift that would not interfere with their current cash flow, retirement plan, or family obligations, but would have an enormous impact after they are deceased.

The “ask” can begin with the question, “Are we in your top five charitable gifts?” and if so, ask the donor:

• Why do you care so much about us?

• What would you like to do with your assets that would enrich other people’s lives?

• How would you like our camp to help you do that?  This is where the donor and asker can develop a plan of intention in the form of a letter or formal declaration of intent in their will.

Planning Our Asks & Identifying Potential Legacy Givers

For a Development Officer, Director, etc. who is leading the asks for your camp, it is helpful to set goals in terms of behaviors and results (# number of planned conversations or # amount of a financial goal).

Make a list of your top ten current donors who are interested in the camp, who are invested in the mission, etc., and simply ask for the opportunity to sit down with them and have a conversation about legacy giving and how you could help the donor think about their legacy and how camp could benefit as well as the donor.

Other ways to ID potential givers:

• Who are people who have been affected positively through camp?

• Who shows up to help at camp?

• Who are your main volunteers?

• Who are frequent givers?

• Who are the largest givers?

• Who promotes camp?

• Who is loyal to camp and has no children?

• All Board members

The bottom line is that Legacy Giving (as well as all other giving) is dependent on the notion that people are generally philanthropic to what matters to them. All philanthropy rests on the principle that people have a desire to give to things that make a difference.

At Camp Bays Mountain, we offer a person the opportunity to transfer their financial resources as an opportunity to assure that their values live on after they are gone.

This goes beyond what was shared in the webinar, but here’s how we are implementing Legacy Giving: 

• Simple Will – The camp receives cash, property, or a percentage of the donor’s estate after death.

• Trust Accounts – Camp is the beneficiary of the remainder of a trust account after the death of the donor. There are many types of Trust accounts.

• Charitable Gift Annuity – A monthly payment is made to the donor until their death from an annuity and the remainder value is retained by the camp.

Camp Bays Mountain has just started in the past couple of years with planned giving. We have five planned gifts currently; one of those was a Charitable Gift Annuity which after our donor’s death resulted in the camp receiving a substantial remainder gift. The other planned gifts are estate percentage gifts. Our goal is to double our planned gifts by the end of 2021 with a total of ten estate gifts and continue to set these up each year.

The Holston Foundation is our custodian for stock transfers, charitable gift annuities, and other estate plans. Your conference foundation can assist you in starting a planned/legacy giving plan.

Contact Jeff for more details: Jeff Wadley, Camp Bays Mountain (Holston Conference)