Lead Newsletter Articles

As nonprofit fundraisers, we often focus on identifying, cultivating and soliciting traditional prospects, such as the individuals, foundations, or corporations. It may be beneficial to consider expanding this focus to include professional advisors—those people who have access to the wealthy individuals who could become the future volunteer leaders of your organization and might even contribute major and planned gifts. What’s in it for the advisors? By building alliances with your organization, advisors may learn how to better meet the needs of their clients, and the advisors may reach new potential clients.

The Professional Advisor Community
 
These advisors may include: estate planning attorneys, accountants, bank officers, trust officers, financial planners, wealth management officers, real estate agents, art dealers and insurance brokers.

How to Meet Professional Advisors

• Seek out those advisors who are already part of your organization’s family of friends and donors.
• Ask your donors and board members to introduce you to advisors they know.
• Reach out to the executors, attorneys, or trust officers representing bequests and trusts in which your organization has been named a beneficiary.
• Network in the advisors’ professional worlds—go to their professional association meetings, attend their events (i.e. estate planning councils, real estate board meetings, etc).

Help Advisors to Help Their Clients
 
Fundraisers should encourage advisors to, at a minimum, bring up the topic of charitable giving or estate planning with their clients who may have an interest in one or more causes. Clients will appreciate that their advisor is looking out for their personal goals, not only their financial ones. This will help build long-term trust, and, as a result, clients are more likely to continue to do business with advisors they trust, and will likely recommend their advisor to their friends, family and colleagues.
 
Depending on their area of expertise, advisors may simply have other more urgent topics to discuss with their clients than charitable giving. In some cases, advisors may not be familiar with the benefits of charitable giving or estate planning. By providing advisors with specialized resource materials on this topic, such as brochures, sample gift calculations, sample gift documents, fundraisers can increase the likelihood that charitable giving will be discussed.
 
Many clients give frequently to charity but may not be aware of the many benefits they can receive through charitable gift planning and planned gifts. They may be pleased to learn that they can create a legacy and save estate taxes for heirs through a bequest, supplement their retirement income with a gift annuity or a trust, and reduce their income through some of these ways of giving. Charitable gifts may also be appropriate for a client who wants to honor or memorialize a loved one. A client who just sold a home or business might benefit from a tax deduction that a charitable gift could provide.
 
In addition, by working closely with nonprofits, advisors can help clients who want to be more visible in the local social or business community. By getting involved with a nonprofit as volunteers, committee members, or board members, their clients can simultaneously meet their business networking goals and be of valuable assistance to the charitable organization. It should be clear to the clients that neither the fundraisers nor their organizations are endorsing any particular advisor. Also, it should be clear that networking or volunteer relationships with advisors do not guarantee any business relationships with the nonprofit. Educating the clients and prospects about the concepts of charitable giving is the main objective of the relationship.

Be Sure Your Organization is on the Radar
 
While advisors may introduce the concept of charitable giving as a component of their client’s financial planning, it may not be appropriate for advisors to suggest a specific organization for a donation. If however, some of their clients have a particular interest in the mission of your organization (i.e. art or cancer), it is always helpful if advisors have some information in their files to share with their clients about your organization’s mission and what giving options it can provide. Make sure that advisors know that you are available to meet with their clients to provide them with more detailed information about your organization. Always mention that the information you are providing is of a general, educational nature, and that clients should discuss their own particular situations with their independent professional advisors.

Cultivating Advisors
 
Build relationships with advisors the same way you would with individual donors.

• Call, e-mail, and phone them regularly.
• Meet with them—a personal visit over coffee, lunch or dinner is one of the best ways to build a relationship.
• Invite them to your organization’s special events to meet some of your organization’s leadership staff, volunteers, and wealthy donors.
• When needed, seek the financial or legal expertise from those advisors who can help you to explain the nuances of a sophisticated gift vehicle to a potential donor.

Recognition for Advisors

• If advisors have been helpful to your organization, thank them and recognize their contributions.
• Create a special recognition society for advisors.
• Invite advisors to join your Planned Giving Council to help market estate and charitable giving and guide policy.
• Invite advisors to speak at your special events, board meetings, or donor financial seminars to demonstrate their expertise.
• Partner with advisors on sponsorship for cultivation events for high-level donors or allied professionals.

Summary
 
Building relationships between professional advisors and nonprofits can enhance the productivity and success of the other by benefiting the nonprofit organizations’ boards and donors, as well as the advisors’ clients.

Lisa Lager is Senior Director for Planned Giving at the American Cancer Society, Eastern Division. As of August 2006, Lisa will become the Senior Director of External Affairs at The Hereditary Disease Foundation.

This message is part of this month’s newsletter, which is available online. Please click here to read Fundraising News.