Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Mastering Planned Giving for Nonprofit Sustainability
Wondering how to ensure the long-term sustainability of your nonprofit? Our latest episode with philanthropy expert Mike Goorhouse dives into the often-overlooked world of planned giving strategies. Mike joins host Meghan Speer to share his journey from a youth grantmaker to leading a philanthropic consulting company, revealing why delayed gratification is essential for securing your mission's future. Learn how to make strategic asks that promise future rewards, even when the immediate benefits are not visible. From creative approaches to measurable metrics, this episode offers actionable steps to foster estate gift commitments, ensuring your nonprofit’s future is secure. Tune in for a comprehensive guide to mastering planned giving in the nonprofit sector.
Mike Goorhouse is Founder and Lead Consultant at Inspiring Impact, LLC, a firm dedicated to helping nonprofit and philanthropic organizations effectively inspire change in their community.
He has spent his entire career in philanthropy including working with Family Foundations, Community Foundations and Youth Grantmakers while at the Council of Michigan Foundations and serving as President/CEO for the Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area (CFHZ) for 10 years.
Over the years Mike has been recognized for his commitment to philanthropy and the community. In 2011 he was named one of the top 30 Civic Leaders under the age of 30 in the nation by the National Conference on Citizenship. In 2017 he was named Young Executive of the Year as part of the MiBiz Best Managed Nonprofit Awards. Finally, he has been recognized as one of the Grand Rapids Business Journal's Forty Under 40 Business Leaders six times and three times has been named one of GRBJ’s top 200 most influential business leaders in West Michigan.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
If you're looking to maximize your fundraising efforts, donorbox's online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals with ease. Discover the world of simplified, seamless fundraising at DonorBoxorg DonorBox helping you help others.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear, and along with me today is Mike Gorehouse from Inspiring Impact. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:So we're going to dig into a topic today that I think is super important for everyone, but also maybe one of the hardest giving strategies in the nonprofit industry, and we're talking about planned giving, because yikes, that one, you know because it's not easy, right, it's not the bells and whistles, there's not bright, shiny objects to help with it, so we're going to dig into the importance of it and some strategies around it. I'm excited for this topic. Before we do that, though, mike, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit to the audience and give us a little bit of background on your journey here in the nonprofit space?
Speaker 3:Sure Great. My name is Mike Gorehouse and I've grown up in the nonprofit space, so my journey started as a high school student. I'm from Michigan and I was part of a youth grant-making council at my local community foundation for four years, getting exposed to local needs in my community, making philanthropic decisions. It was a really meaningful experience that launched my interest in the nonprofit sector. I worked in philanthropy at a regional association of grantmakers, the Council of Michigan Foundations, and then I actually was brought back to run my hometown community foundation the same place that I was a youth grantmaker which was a phenomenal experience and did that for 10 years, which is where planned giving became such a huge passion for me, and so did that for a decade and now run a nonprofit, philanthropic consulting company.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Well, I want to start us off. As we were prepping for this call, you made a statement that I think every one of us can agree with, but I would love to start our conversation by having you elaborate on this. I think what I heard you say is delayed gratification stinks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:It's not the phrase I heard.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right, you heard it right? Yeah, okay, that is the phrase and it's true for all areas of our lives. Right, as humans, delayed gratification we're not wired for that, right. We'd like to get a response pretty quickly. If you do something, you'd like to be affirmed pretty quickly. If you're stepping on the gray line, you want to find out if you're over the line.
Speaker 3:But as it comes to fundraising, you put all this effort in and you make a request and an ask and we all just want to know and this is, I think, one of the reasons plan giving is so hard. So this, in the plan giving world, delayed gratification plays out in two very specific ways. One, if you ask one of your supporters to consider including you in their estate plans, they don't have to answer in any sort of timeframe. Right, this is not a. We're going to build a building in two years. We need an answer soon. This is not a sponsor. The event, the events happening in two months. There's actually no timeline short of the end of their lifetime that they have to make that decision. So you put the work in, you make an ask and you don't know if you're ever going to get an answer or when you might get that answer. So that's hard for us as professionals to not know if we'll ever get a response to that ask. The second part where delayed gratification comes into play is even if that person turns around and calls you three days later and says we talked about it and we're going to include the organization in our estate plans. Great, now you know. But you won't receive the funds for likely 20, 30, 40 years, depending on how it all plays out. And so then your organization is happy that you got the commitment, but you won't see those dollars in packs for a long time. In fact, probably no one on your board is going to be around when it happens. It's a decent chance that no one on your staff is going to be around when it happens.
Speaker 3:And so that's the delayed gratification piece that plays out in two ways related to planned giving. That, I think, really drives so many of us to not do this work because we won't be there to see that come to fruition, and I think we need to push through that. I think we need to push through that and we need to fight that human instinct, and the reason why I think we need to do that is uh, if you're listening to this, I'd ask you to pause and think for a second. Has your organization ever received a bequest or an estate gift that that you didn't know was coming? And if you think about that, what was the feeling that you guys, your organization, had when that happened? I'm sure you were on cloud nine.
Speaker 3:What we do with these resources, cool story and all this kind of stuff Absolutely Play that out 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road. If you do, brand giving work well, now, the future, you, in your role, will be experiencing that much more frequently and think about what the organization can do to meet their mission in that environment. So my point is if you don't start doing it, you'll never actually experience the benefits of that down the road. So, yes, delay, gratification stinks, but I think push through it. You still need to make these requests and these invitations to people to consider including you in their estate plans and it's going to be worth it For your mission. Long-term, it will be worth it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I would. I agree Absolutely, but I'm going to play devil's advocate for just one second Stay, you know, because I know we have a lot of folks listening to the podcast who are executive directors or heads of development, those types of roles and they're going, yeah. Directors or heads of development, those types of roles, and they're going, yeah, but I need the money now, right I?
Speaker 2:got goals to meet and I have limited staff and I have, you know, 17 other initiatives that I'm supposed to be focused on. Where would one even start to create a planned giving strategy, or how do we even carve out time for that? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is very real, right. So you have to meet your budget this year, you need to hit those goals for that event, you need to meet that campaign, and so you're right. When it comes down to your most loyal and committed donor partners, there's a long list of things you want to ask them for, and planned giving never makes the top of that list because of this delayed gratification piece. So my, my big thing for people is to say, okay, so how many times in the last year? Okay, we're in august, we're recording this in august. So so far in the first seven months of the year, how many times have you invited a conversation with a supporter around a potential plan gift or invite them to consider including your organization in their estate plan? If your answer is zero, we don't need to set a high bar, right, the bar does not need to be that high. You do not need to go out and hire a plan giving staff member who's putting all their time and energy at this. Right, I would set a bar for you that says what does it look like for you to do? One, a quarter, one every three months? That's four for the year. That's four for the year, right, that's very doable. So this is the thing make it the vast majority of non-profit fundraising staff, if they're. If I ask them it's a dark zoom with no video they would say I the number is probably zero or one the number of times they've actually asked a supporter to include the organization.
Speaker 3:So my thing is this does not need to take over your annual fundraising. This does not need to take over your capital campaign. I'm talking about sliding it in once every three months to a conversation because if you play that out especially if you've got maybe one or two staff that are out doing that, if everyone does one a quarter maybe now we're at eight, maybe we're at 10 or 12, you don't need to ask your supporters this question every year. That's the other advantage you have when you're doing annual gifts. You actually are asking people every year. Maybe you get a month of your commitment, but you're actually asking them pretty frequently. Yeah, if you have a close donor partner, you ask them about this as eight gift ones. You aren't going to bring it up again for five, six, eight years, hopefully, if the conversation keeps going, but you don't need to make that ask very often, which makes it easier to only have to do for a year and you start to add up the number of people that fit into this.
Speaker 3:I would also say that your universe of people that you are having this conversation with is not your biggest universe. So, at the end of the day, my experience and I should just quickly pause and get people some context. I said that my time at the Key Foundation in Holland, michigan, was where I cut my teeth on plan giving. On plan giving, we did an estate plan giving campaign in which our goal was to get a hundred new estate gift commitments in a three-year period of time. We met that goal and over those three years I asked just shy of 200 individuals and couples to include the foundation in their estate plan. So, just if you do the quick math, I was averaging more than one ask per week for three years to get there.
Speaker 3:I have done a lot of conversations around Thanksgiving, but my point what I, what? That's a big, there's a volume that has added up. That kind of lets me give confidence to this. But what I'm then translating down to make it easier for people is you don't need to. This does not need to be rocket science and complicated, right? So all of those conversations, not once did I mention the charitable remainder trust or charitable trust. Not once did I mention the charitable gifts, annuity, all this kind of complex stuff. That's out there. That's not what you need to be doing Now. If you're a big university, blah, blah, blah. Whatever else, fine, but that's not most of us right.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, what you need to be doing is taking your closest supporters, your longest supporters, the folks that have been on your board, been giving for two decades, that come to everything that care about your mission. They've probably seen you almost like family, right, they're that close to care about you. What you need to do is to say, hey, you have been supporting this mission for so long You've been in this mission. Have you ever thought about including this mission in your estate plans? Yes, just just ask them that. That that's it. You can have an hour-long meeting. You can spend 50 minutes on everything else you need to talk to them about and at the very end you can just say have you ever thought about that? We have other close supporters who have included us in their state plans and they're really excited about the impact they're going to be able to make beyond their lifetimes. Have you ever considered doing something similar?
Speaker 3:And what will happen is that the individual will respond by either saying that the best in this area would be like you know what we have and we do have you included. Then you're like great, this is awesome, this is wonderful. Some will say, we haven't thought about it, but we will, we'll consider that. And then some will just say it's a little awkward and well, we don't really have a plan for that and that's not really our thing. Okay, you will not lose.
Speaker 3:I can't promise, but I can almost promise that you are not going to scare away your close donor who's cared about you for two generations and been on your board and all this. They're not going to run away and never put you in check again because you've simply asked the question if they had ever considered including the organization in their estate plan. So we're more scared on the staff side, frankly, than individuals are on the other side. I've never been punched, I've never been physically harmed, I've never lost a donor. So all those things that we're so worried about, they don't happen. So my encouragement, then, is do all your normal stuff, and if you can successfully make one invitation, a quarter for your entire career, I bet your organization will yield significant results from a 10 to 15 minute investment in a conversation once a quarter. So that'd kind of be my response.
Speaker 3:You don't need to be transformative with hundreds of these things, you just need to be actively playing the seat and then and I will say, some people who are listening are going to say, well, well, we put it in our newsletter. Nope, doesn't count, I'm just sorry it doesn't. That is not how you get planned gifts. It's good to keep it live. It's great to tell stories in your newsletters of individuals who have included you in their estate plans. Or if you receive a gift, those are great things. That does not count towards the fore. You need to sit down and look someone in the eyes and have that conversation. This is a very meaningful conversation for an individual. This is not a personal postcard Correct.
Speaker 3:That's not how you do this, right, and so so if you think about it like that, depth of conversation deserves an invitation when you're, you know, looking someone in the eye, so that's, don't let the other stuff be here.
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Speaker 2:I recently maybe within the last four or five months or so received an email from an organization that I'm a longtime supporter of because they were going to be hosting a like an estate planning workshop ultimately, the goal of which is to get people to include this organization in there. They had a financial planner that was coming in to talk about some things to consider or how to start that process. How, how do you feel about that? Is that personal enough, or is that maybe a little too much at this point?
Speaker 3:if you're just starting the conversations, so there's two schools of thought on this. So I've been a part of a number of these kind of seminars and workshops where you invite people in and if you have a state planning attorney or a financial advisor, that can be really helpful, particularly for people's first wills. That's often the age demographic that you think about, that, hey, you're starting to think about this for the first time. Here's some things to think about. Maybe here's some people you can work with. So I think some individuals have found that very helpful. Just the oh. This is a resource for me as I think about this huge thing that I need to do with my life. I think about this huge thing that I need to do with my life. I don't really want to talk about it. Think about, and, of course, if you're being hosted by a nonprofit, the odds that you're going to include them go up. They make their pitch, so I don't dislike that. I think that works for some organizations. I think it's worth people considering. Even that takes more work than what I'm suggesting most listeners need to do. Even that takes pulling it together, inviting people to come out. This is even simpler than that. So so that's good, but I'd say that's even like level three or level four, like I'm talking level level one here is literally having the words come out of your mouth four times a year.
Speaker 3:Would you ever consider including our organization and our mission in your estate plan? Yeah and hard pause. You don't need to do a lot, but I do like those. So I've been a part of them. I think they do actually work. I think it can be helpful. But I like this other as a more personal touch point. That is almost a little transactional. You're lending value to them as they think about their world. As a more personal touch point right, that is almost a little transactional. You're lending value to them as they think about their world. This is a little bit more emotional, right, it's a little bit more. There's some depth to this conversation that you're doing one-on-one that you probably wouldn't do in a group. So that'd be my sense on that.
Speaker 3:One thing that I would encourage folks that I've learned on this is so when you have that conversation and you make that invitation, what I'm hoping people maybe listen and do, if the donor turns around and says, well, if we did, what would you do with the resources? That's a very fair question. So my second kind of key piece of advice for people is have a plan or a policy for what you do with estate gifts. Oh, okay, just have a plan. So if an estate gift comes in, what are we going to do with it? So there's a wide range of ways to think about it.
Speaker 3:Some people, some organizations, say well, we're going to put it in an endowment. It's a one-time gift, it's not going to come again. We don't want to use it for annual operations, so we're going to put it in a long-term kind of sustainable endowment. Some say we're going to put it in an operating reserve. So maybe not a permanent endowment, but we're going to put it in our savings account and use it for a rainy day. Some kind of do a hybrid. They say we're going to take 25% of it and put it in our operations and then 75% of it for some sort of rainy day or a special project or whatever it may be. So what I encourage folks to do is have some sort of plan One. It's helpful for your organization to know what you do when that moment comes.
Speaker 3:But two, if you're going to invite a donor into considering this, it's a very fair question to ask what would happen if they did it, and you need an answer. If your answer is, I don't know, well, that's not a very compelling gift, right? That's not the way we fundraise anything else. So part of it is then having an answer that says well, we've received endowed gifts in the past. We've used them for special initiatives or launching a new initiative, or we use it to build up our endowment or whatever your policy is. And if you have an example or two, that's even better. If you can say we received a gift four years ago it was a surprise and that allowed us to open that new site that is now a thriving site for our mission, or that allowed us to pilot a new program. That we did this, or because of three of these gifts in the last decade, we have an endowment now that's worth a half million dollars and it's generating ongoing revenue for us. Whatever it may be, just be prepared to answer that question, because it will be a very fair question for someone to ask now.
Speaker 3:The other thing we all know is estate gifts can be designated just like during life gifts, right. So during life, someone could say I want to support just this program or just this thing. The state gifts could be the same. So if you had a donor that didn't, let's just say your policy was that it went into a long-term endowment. But this donor didn't like endowment. That wasn't their cup of tea. They they can easily say we want this gift that's going to come in our estate plan is to be used for a special initiative or special project. We'd like it to be used within five years of you receiving the gift. That's great. So you? The goal here is why are we doing so? So donors, donors love supporting our missions like. We believe. That this is not. We're not trying to hoodwink anybody. This is not like trying to scam anybody. People like supporting the missions that we're working on. If they like supporting it during their lifetimes I'd make a strong case they're going to love supporting it beyond their lifetime.
Speaker 3:You might think it's cheesy to say that, but let me tell you this this isn't true for everyone, but there are a lot of people who end up passing away with more resources than they thought they were ever going to have. So what a perfect time to share some of those resources that they've worked hard to earn or being fortunate to invest well or whatever it may be, with mission and causes they care about, because at the end of your lifetime there's no more saving for the future. There's no more. I need to make sure I have enough resources for helping to have an end of my lifetime. There's no more helping saving for a rainy day.
Speaker 3:This is the moment where people can actually be quite generous. For most people, the largest gift they make in their lifetime is in their estate plan. So why would you want to be a part of that conversation? If that's when they're thinking transformational, I think you'd want your mission to be at the table in the conversation for that. Otherwise it's going to go somewhere else. If you think no one's asking for this, I'm just going to tell you some people are Not many, but some are and those that are getting a much larger share of these if you're not asking, you're unlikely to get them.
Speaker 2:That's a great point, because I do think it's one that maybe not as many people are going after. But that money has to go somewhere right, it has to go somewhere, so better to help folks direct it to things they're passionate about as a service to them. I think that's a great call out.
Speaker 3:And I think that's another way. So to build on your point there, megan, so this is funny. But so when you go ask a donor for a gift during their lifetime and you ask for a $25,000 of significant gifts to a kid, they have a lot of things they could do with that $25,000. They could spend it, they could save it, they could spend it on kids or grandkids or whatever it is. There's lots of options. When you get to the end of your lifetime, there are three places that your money can go. One is the government, and that's not usually what most people choose. Two is family or friends kind of other people. Or three is charity. That's it. There's three options, one of which is not most people's favorite, so you're down to two.
Speaker 3:Now the family is a default option for most people, but what we, what we forget is that there are a lot of people that are interested in leaving some resources to charity without disinheriting their children. So if you have three kids, they could leave 30% of their estate each of their three kids and still have 10% left for charity. There are some people this is a really cool concept that you may be familiar with, but during my time with all these families. About this, you hear so many different philosophies. There are some families that think about charity as another child. So if they had three children, they actually call it a child called charity, right? So this, instead of dividing their estate three ways, they divide it four ways. So 25% for each of their children and then 25% for charity as the adopted child, if you will, or a child called community.
Speaker 3:These concepts are in people's minds, right? This is happening. So so that, to build on your point, these dollars, I think, are going somewhere and there there's some portion, go to charitable organizations, and we know from our day-to-day fundraising that you don't receive a gift if you don't ask. That premise is true for estate giving as well. So all the reasons that you have not to make an ask for a planned gift are all the same reasons. The charities around the corner are asking and your other charities doing work in your field aren't asking. So it's a fairly open market in my experience. So why not be a part of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's another phrase that you used again as we were prepping for today's conversation that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1:might ruffle a couple of feathers but that's okay, we're going to let it go.
Speaker 2:And that was to avoid advisors around this topic. Did I hear this correctly? I picked up some phrases, Mike, and some of them were interesting. That was one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I said don't worry about professional advisors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go. So that's just me probably trying to rouse some feathers up a little bit. What I mean by that when I say that is, I think, as folks in the nonprofit world think, that they have to work with three professional advisors so estate planning attorneys or financial planners or CPAs to have these conversations around planned gifts. And my encouragement to people is you don't have to, they can be great partners. I'm not saying that you shouldn't, I'm just saying don't worry about it, right? If that is stopping you from having this conversation, don't let it, because the individual is going to make their own choice. Their estate planning attorney has to help write into their plan, but the estate planning attorney is not telling them what to do with their resources beyond their lifetime. The individual is making that choice. So you can have this conversation directly with the individual. You don't have to have their financial planner in the room or their CPA or estate planning attorney in the room. But I think people I've heard people get caught up on that, which is why I bring up the phrase. People think they have to have all those folks involved in the conversation. No, you don't. Look if they're going to do a real complex transaction, take some property and donate it into a charitable lead trust and do all that. Yeah, then bring those other folks in the room. You aren't the one driving that. That's not your job, I will tell, will tell you.
Speaker 3:Of the hundreds new estate gift commitments that we got in this three years as part of this campaign, not one of them was that kind of technical and complicated. What they are is a conversation around. Would you consider including in this case the community foundation and our community in your estate plan? Would you want to give to the to this, ensure this community thrives well beyond your lifetime? And if they answer yes to that question, they will work out the details with their estate planning attorneys, epas and financial advisors. What, what the hump is that you're getting over is the next time they meet with those folks, which might be every year. It might not be for five years. How many of us start to work state funding attorneys every year? Right, that's not very common.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:What will happen is the next time they meet with those advisors and the advisors say let's pull out your plan. Let's look at it. Hey, you've got some charities in here. Do you want to keep those? Is that the right ones? What they're going to remember is the conversation they had with you Were you invited into this? And they're going to say, actually, no, I really would like to include this other organization in the plan. Attorney says great, let's write it in. So your job is to invite people to consider this. They will work with their advisors to make any sort of that kind of stuff happen.
Speaker 3:That's why I say don't worry about professional advisors. If you have a program that engages professional advisors as an ally for your organization mission, that's great. So that's a good thing. That's a level three or four thing. I just encourage people to get to level one and level two because it's everything to do with plan giving. My experience is it's the worries about level three and level four and level five that stop people from doing level one and level two activities. I'm on a mission to have more nonprofit folks just feel willing to do level one and level two.
Speaker 3:So anyways if you're a professional advisor listening to this, I'm not discounting your role in this Level one and level two. So, anyways, if you're a professional advisor listening to this, I'm not discounting your role in this. I'm just encouraging more nonprofit leaders to at least bring up the conversation directly with folks that they know care about their mission. That will lead us back to you eventually and it cuts you out. I just don't think we need to wait for them to come in the room to have this conversation.
Speaker 2:That's a really good point for them to come in the room to have this conversation. That's a really good point. So, with all of this and I really love the idea of, because it's true about everything in life you're never going to get to level three, four and five if you don't start on level one. We can't dive in. At the time that we are recording this, we are in full-fledged Olympic mode, right? The Olympic athletes did not just walk onto the field and go be the fastest man in the world, right? These are things you've got to work on, and it's true in this as well. So I appreciate that call out.
Speaker 2:But we very much live right now in a culture, especially in the non-profit culture, where everything has to be measured. Right, we've got data for everything. We've got all these kpis that we're trying to hit when it comes to outside of. I love the suggestion of like just one conversation per quarter, because that is an easily trackable thing. Did I do this yes or no, straightforward? But are there other goals or KPIs or metrics? Or how do we keep track of all of this to make sure that it's still like part of the plan and we're succeeding in it?
Speaker 3:yeah, so okay. So I'm a math major, loves numbers and data, and so when we started to think about doing this big campaign when I was at the community foundation, this question, megan, drove me nuts because I was sitting here going. How in the world are we going to do a clinical campaign on a state gifts when I could ask a thousand people and they don't have to ever tell me ever if they're making the gift? We might not find out for decades. So how am I going to measure whether we're doing anything? So the creative solution we came up with, which others don't have to do, but just I'll share it in case it sticks with others. So we actually I went out and asked the donor if they would be willing to give $10,000 for every new estate gift commitment that we were able to get as a part of this campaign, provided that the individual or couple signed a commitment form. So we didn't just see their trust, we didn't just see all that. But then they signed a commitment form saying yes, yes, we've included the foundation in our state plan. And for me, what I did that for two reasons. One, it then allowed me, when I made this invitation to an individual or a couple asked them to include us in their plans. I could say and if you tell us, if you make that commitment, we actually get $10,000. People are like, wow. So for the individual it was a little incentive, but with much more of the incentive because these are big gifts. People aren't getting that incentivized by $10,000. What they were incentivized to do was to tell me they may have gone back and made the decision and even updated their plan and not told the organization. So in this case, the only way we got the $10,000 was that they actually signed the commitment form and I had a three-year period to do it. So that meant that they at least had to tell me within three years and then I got an answer one way or the other.
Speaker 3:So what ended up happening was that idea was so well received. We actually had two donors that made that matching commitment, so we were receiving $20,000 for every new estate is commitment that we had up to a hundred. It was unbelievable and it was just totally, totally crazy. So that that little match allowed us to then actually get time horizon answers. So we got answers from folks, we got commitments and it allowed us to track our progress. So we had a little. We track your progress to 100. Every month we put out there kind of how far we were, new ones that got made. We took a little area of our community and we, every time someone made a commitment, we put a brick on this little path with their name on it. If they're willing to, let us have them named.
Speaker 3:So we really rallied our community around this idea. It was very visual. We could track it. That's not what's going to happen all of the time. Right, that was a moment with a campaign where we did three years, but the concept is still there, right?
Speaker 3:So if I'm an organization out there listening to this, you could think about a similar concept, right? So if you decided you wanted that, you believed you believed my pitch here that you should be asking more people to include your organization in their estate plan and you had a nice plan for what you do with those dollars, you could maybe go to one of your most generous supporters. If they bought into that vision as well, they could do something similar. Not necessarily have to be in a time horizon, but you could say we have a donor who's generously agreed to give us $5,000 for every new estate gift commitment that we receive. It's an open-ended thing, but they believe so strongly that this mission is going to be important for the long-term not just today but tomorrow and long in the future that they want to help us have these conversations and you can even joke a little bit as a staff member. So I did this with a few couples. When they got a little squirmy about the fact that I was asking them about an estate gift, I could say, well, hey, I've got 2 million bucks sitting out here and I got a lot of it, so you make it a little fun. But anyway, that could be something.
Speaker 3:If you have someone who's really bought into this and if you think about this, if you're having to answer honestly to me right now that you're only making zero. Or one asks a year right now and you went to a donor and said, would you be willing to give $5,000 for every new commitment that we got? And they say, well, how much am I going to be in for? Well, you can tell them well, we're getting zero to one right now. So maybe, best case scenario, we're getting four or five commitments a year, so that person's going to be putting in $20,000 to $25,000. That's not a huge commitment on their part. But think about what that does for you. It gives you a little incentive to go out and make that ask. It gives you another reason to bring it up with that donor, that one that you're scared about, because you just asked them for an annual gift and a sponsorship and a campaign gift. You could say you've been so close to us.
Speaker 3:Can I just add one more thing? We actually have this cool thing going right now that we get $5,000 for every new commitment that we receive too. So, anyway, that's the long answer to your question, but that little bit of a match incentive I found was enough. It helped me scratch the edge of being able to track it, quantify it, that we made progress and so we were able to get to 100 and everyone's happy, and so that's just one idea. There may be other things that you can track, but I do want to acknowledge that the crux of your question is still a dilemma, because delayed gratification stinks right. So the crux of your question is still there. It is one of the hardest things to track the value on because it's such long-term payback, and so I want to acknowledge that. But if your board and your leadership is bought into a long-term vision, I'd hope that you could carve out 2% of your time a year. I mean, I don't think this needs to take over a half day a week. I think this is quite minor actually.
Speaker 2:That's great, mike. Thank you so much. This has been really interesting and not a conversation that we've had on the podcast before, so it's exciting to dig into that specifically. So thank you for that. If somebody wanted to follow up with you, if they had more questions on planned giving and estates and all of those pieces, how can they find you? What's the best way to reach out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the program has a website. It's inspiringimpactcom. There's a dash between inspiring-impactcom and so if you go there, my email is on there, but it's M-Gorehouse, m-g-o-r-h-o-u-s-e at inspiring-impactcom, so feel-D-A-S-H-I-M-P-A-C-T-D-O-T-C-O-M, so feel free to email, reach out. Yeah, I love this stuff, love talking to anybody about Planned Giving, and if it's just a little encouragement, you need to get started. Or if you just want to, you can listen to this and be transformative for our sector. Every fundraising professional made one request a quarter. So send me an email when you do it, tell me how it goes.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love that, mike. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciated the conversation and I think it's going to be encouraging to a lot of our audience. Again, our guest has been Mike Gorehouse from Inspiring Impact. Thank you so much, mike. We appreciate you being here today. Thanks for having me, megan, my pleasure. Guys, have a great day. We will see you next time on the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast.