 Hello and welcome thrilled to have you here excited for another episode of the nonprofit show as you can tell with our yellow background on today's episode. Today we have a thought leader episode and we're going to talk about year end asset giving strategies with the infinite giving team. So today we have Karen Houghton with us and RJ Caswell and we're going to dive deep in this conversation for year end asset strategies, and I'm really excited to learn more from both of you. Julia Patrick, thank you for creating this platform Julia is the CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group, and I'm honored to serve alongside as co host for each and every show just as RJ mentioned 626 so really excited to be here and serve in this capacity. So we have to give a shout out to our sponsors they keep us going and growing 600 plus plus strong so thank you so very much to bloom a ring American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University be generous, your part time staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader and nonprofit nerd. If you haven't checked out these companies, I encourage you to do so because they're here to help you support your mission, grow your mission and around your community. And if you missed any of our episodes, you know where to find them Roku YouTube Amazon Fire TV as well as Vimeo. And for those of you that are podcast listeners, go ahead and queue us up wherever you stream your podcast. And before we get into this RJ and carrot I'm curious. Are the two of you part podcast listeners do you listen to those. Absolutely yes, I'm a big pop desert. Although I will say post COVID I am commuting less. And so I listen less, but it's a thing to have some of that time back now having that work from home and office blend. Yeah, what about you RJ are you a podcast listener. I'll go through seasons. Okay, as somebody who probably didn't realize how much ADD is in my body until later in life. I start listening to something and either something somebody says I'll go on a tangent or I'll just be lost in my thoughts and miss like five minutes. That happens to me. Yeah, that happens to me. I can read the transcripts. Actually, episodes I'm really interested I'll go back and read transcripts because I can do that more efficiently that I often can with podcasts. That's interesting to hear. Well thanks to both of you for sharing that this episode of course will be on podcasts and maybe you can read the transcript of that. I'm Erin Houghton as chief executive officer RJ Caswell, director of business development both at infinite giving welcome back. Great to be here. Yeah. Yeah. So this is your third appearance. We mentioned that earlier and today we're going to talk about, you know, year and asset giving, but go ahead Karen tell us a little bit about infinite giving who you are what you do and how we can find you. Yeah, infinite giving is a registered investment advisor for nonprofits. So we bring investment experience we serve as a fiduciary for you as you work through what to do with your reserve funds had a best managed endowment maybe even creating your first endowment. And we also help nonprofits to receive crypto currency and stock gifts, and we do it all in one inclusive easy to use modern platform so we have some really great people a lot of highly experienced investment professionals but we also have some beautiful technology to come alongside and give you an exceptional experience. Fantastic. Thank you for that because that's really important as we talk about today's conversation you mentioned crypto you mentioned stock. Talk to us a little bit about how infinite giving can serve as that fiduciary for nonprofits and work with gifts of stock and crypto which one of you wants to dive into this for us. Karen you can jump in. But a lot of the conversations that we have initially with nonprofits is often just starting with education. Right so it's the idea of, should we receive stocks and crypto like is that really important. And sometimes we're talking about say for instance cryptocurrency. It's not a silver bullet right sometimes we were like but if I can accept crypto. But they're still in a scarcity mindset they don't have their budget covered I'm like is someone talking to you about giving you crypto, and they're like no. And I'm like, okay, then maybe you're not at a place where I would say, go pay an annual fee and sign up and do like this big financial commitment right now if no one is even talking to you about cryptocurrency. Interesting. On the flip side of that same coin, people who disregard crypto I think are missing out. How much do you think has been given in philanthropy last year in cryptocurrency if you had to guess. Oh gosh you're going to make me do this. I'm going to say a million dollars. 330 million dollars was given philanthropy through crypto last year. RJ knew I wasn't going to get it right. I was closer on the guessing how many episodes I'm just saying. You're much closer you win for sure. Million is that right. It's a lot. And so when you're thinking about that it's like the organizations who are not thinking about crypto are also missing out, because sometimes when you talk to crypto holders who are usually younger. They're actually a little bit more technologically savvy, then they're thinking about like hey, also fidelity charitable did a study that showed that crypto owners are actually even more philanthropic than the average donor. So you're you're starting to look at this kind of really interesting we've got this massive amount of wealth, a lot of its new wealth right created in a community that is pretty philanthropic and wants to give back. But 95% of nonprofits don't understand crypto don't have a way to receive it or even dismiss it. So you have to find that balance of like hey where are you, if someone came to you with this opportunity, do you have the opportunity to say yes. Do you understand like the education needed as you're talking to donors if they're like hey, do you own any cryptocurrency here's some tax benefits on why you should give us Bitcoin or Ethereum. So to go really high level right crypto, think of it like foreign money right it's it's internet money right and we can get really deep into it but that's not the conversation for today is more just like is their value and the answer is yes. And is there a way for you to easily receive it. That answer is also yes. So infinite giving can do that right so we're what we do is we come alongside nonprofits and we say hey, if you need to be able to receive stock gifts or cryptocurrency, we can help you. Right and what we do is we help you receive it we create a wallet for you it's all white labeled for you it's got your name and logo on there, and you're able to easily receive cryptocurrency we liquidate it into cash for you immediately and we put it directly into your bank account. So it's a really easy process so sometimes people are like crypto is really confusing and I'm not sure what to do with it like if you hear anything it is educate yourself you don't have to be an expert to receive it. You just need to know enough to say hey, a lot of donors hold this. I mean, I hold it right most people, right. Like, most people who are a little bit younger generation a little bit more savvy in this have some kind of crypto. And so the idea of being like hey did you know that it is tax efficient for you to donate just like it would be an asset in stocks. This is a really great crypto white paper that's on our website at infinite giving calm you can download it for free. It's actually written in a way that we wanted to make sure it was really easy to understand it's like five pages and it's like what is crypto. Why is it important for us to be able to receive it and so there's a few different players in the space and and then once you're like okay I want to do this the next question we always talk people through is be aware of fees that you're going to pay make sure it's real and make sure you're at a place where you're ready to receive that and you have a donor base that you can, you know, start to educate and let them be aware of that. I love that you started by saying, do you have someone wanting to give you crypto right because if not, maybe you're not quite ready to go down that path but we can work on the education component of that, because all three of us raised and we're like, yeah, we have crypto, you know, at some level I mean I'm not, I'm not rich off of it, yet, but you know I have it and I've also heard other people refer to it as like, Pirate's booty, right. I'm not quite sure what it is but a lot of people have it and so that education component before launching into the platform of the ability to receive. I love that you distinguish that for us Karen. Yeah. I was gonna say I had quickly to I think that's exactly right what Karen said because I think it also allows, especially donor development advancement folks to be able to have conversations to even discover who does have a do you know we accept or do you know we're, we're looking to accept it, because my guess is those questions having been asked to know who holds it in the in their current giving database holds it. The other piece that I would need it for me the crypto, you know holder, how do I donate it right how are donations made because I'm going to witness to you and all of our viewers and listeners. I don't know how that works but knowing that that's an option, and I know it's an option but to make it you know a seamless transaction to where it's, you know, by a large effortless on my end, perfect, you know that's that's what I'm looking to get. And that's one of the things that giving tries to do too is we make it really really easy right because most nonprofit leaders, you, your job is to be a crypto expert that is you other things to do you have a bigger mission right you want to cultivate the relationships and leave the transactions to somebody else. And so for us what we do is we give you a link that even our implementation team can help you put the link on your website, but often it's like when you go to a website. If you see hey you can donate crypto click here, and literally that QR code, and if you're not a crypto person I may be losing you already. But it's literally like it's a link, and it pops up and it gives a QR code for the wallet, and that's how you send the money and if you're crypto holder, you already know this, you understand it immediately. You scan up your wallet, you scan the QR code and I've given you crypto, and it takes me like less than two minutes. So it's very, very easy and those people want to see it on your website. And it doesn't mean it's replacing a relationship sometimes I'll have it people and they're like, I don't want to do that because I want to talk to everybody. What are your donors one we always come back to where your donors holding their wealth, what kind of relationship do you want with them and most importantly how do they want to give. And so if that's how they want to give being able to go on to a website and just see, oh this is really easy boom done gave them crypto it took me two minutes and as a crypto holder is very straightforward and very efficient. And also one of the reasons we decided not to do transaction fees on our crypto giving so we're just a subscription rate, you're an investment client it's entirely free if you're not an investment client we allow you to do a subscription. And that way you're not saying hey I'm going to give up 5% of that gift because no donor loves to hear that right it's like there's this flat rate we've planned for it as part of our budget, and that allows all of this giving to go directly to their intent and you still get in our dashboard you still get their name and their email. So you still are able to identify that donor and be able to say thank you and have those relationship building opportunities which is which is really important. Let's dive into the power of brokerage accounts and RJ can you tell us a little bit like let's just go baseline. What's the definition of a brokerage account like you know let's just let's educate everyone here so that before we talk about one of them let's figure out what are they. Sure, sure brokerage accounts in my words. You know I've talked about trying to just use regular language and Karen can jump in and probably add a much more technical definition, but brokerage account is basically an investment account it's an account that's able to hold stocks, bonds, mutual funds. So it's similar to a bank account but it's specifically for investments. How many, how many people do you think have a brokerage account for nonprofits. Well just in general yeah I'm curious. I would think a majority of us have a brokerage account because we have a 401k or 403b right and so that account is a brokerage account and so you might have Robinhood or wealth front or betterment, or you might just have a 401k through your employer those are all in brokerage accounts you might be a day trader or really auto invest and never touch it but those are all through brokerage accounts. Okay great and now let's talk about the power of them now and how they can support and really advance the missions of nonprofits. Sure, it's a key piece as Karen was talking about with crypto you have a wallet but for stocks you need a brokerage account to donate them or to receive the donation. And so that I'll be honest with you that has been a barrier for a lot of nonprofits, especially small and medium sized nonprofits, because in the past, starting a brokerage account can be a headache. I just talked to a nonprofit earlier this summer, they actually opened a brokerage account it took them six weeks, because it's still a lot of paper, and a lot of printing, and going back and forth to open up a brokerage account and so we do have new players in the companies. We're really thrilled to be one of those and think we have a great product that's using technology to automate a lot of those things to open a brokerage account so we can reduce the friction for nonprofits to open a brokerage account, because we do believe and we'll talk about strategies I know in a little bit, but brokerage account is really a critical piece for asset giving, because nonprofits that accept stock are going to have higher gifts. So I think crypto's new stocks have been around for a long time, and high net worth high capacity donors want to give stock. They just do. And most development people already know that. And so Q4 you mentioned is a critical time to have a brokerage account if you don't have one already. That's right I had mentioned that, you know, for the majority of the US 30% of all operating dollars are raised in the fourth quarter of every year so that season of giving October number December which is right around the corner for us that's the majority of dollars fill in, you know, 30% come in for nonprofits, and you're right RJ I think that stocks have been around, but I guarantee you, you know, while they're known now, there was a sense of this crypto, you know, like, well, why should we take stocks what our stocks are really kind of that newness that we're experiencing now with crypto, I guarantee you stocks had the same news, you know, when when that was first rolled out. And even today, 90% of nonprofits don't have a brokerage account. Whoa. And the reason that's important and yes it's a complete pain to open one or it used to be infinite giving, we take 20 minutes of your time and three business days on our end and we can have your brokerage account open. So we've solved that for you. So that is no longer a pain point but when you think about high wealth donors so when we're looking at asset giving. And there's an asset giving is like right you're looking at these high level gifts, high wealth donors, if you think where are they holding their wealth. It's not in cash. Right. Like, that's not where wealthy people hold their money in cash and the reason they don't hold in cash is because you're constantly losing value when you look at inflation. So if you're looking at capital preservation or growth which high wealth people do because that's how they have money. And so when you're holding all that wealth in assets, yet you're a nonprofit that's saying, we just want cash gifts, what you're requiring that donor to do is you're requiring them to go sell all those stocks. They're going to pay taxes on it is going to be a liquidating event. They get penalized for that and then they're going to have to turn around and then make a cash donation to that organization of their choice. That means they have paid a large portion of their money in taxes, and the nonprofit gets a smaller gift so it harms the donor it harms the nonprofit all because you've said I don't have a brokerage account we want cash. If you're able to say, we have a brokerage account we receive stock gifts. The beauty in that is that as a donor I avoid long term capital gains taxes. It also means that I am able to have a larger claim on my taxes because I've donated a larger amount to you. Right and then as as the nonprofit. If you're a partner like infinite giving receiving stock gifts is super super easy, and then you ultimately are still getting cash right so they they're gifting new stocks, and then you can choose do we reinvest our stocks do we liquidate our stocks all of that but we actually receive it liquidate it and reinvest it for you. If you're able to do that and you're benefiting the donor, you're getting a larger gift, and that's where you're starting to get these average larger gifts so the average stock gift is $8,000. The average crypto gift is $10,000. I did not expect your high wealth right so like everyone on here if you're able to get large gifts and yes like you built relationships with people who are willing to write us to configure check. If you're one of those you're really lucky by the way, right but it's also this element of like well what if you said hey donor. We automate it right so they fill in their name and they get the DDC instruction we've automated kind of the donor experience to be really beautiful and easy it's a link that you send them. You also put it on your website so it's not like we want to cash gift and you're asking for $1050 $1,000. So, so all that to say stock gifts are a crucial part of asset giving that if people are you're not talking about it and you're not educating donors you're not letting them know it's available. It's both harming your donors and it's harming your organization, especially with large size gifts. It's really important so we talk about the power brokerage accounts. It's not just receiving crypto, it's allowing you to receive large gifts in a really great donor experience, and it's benefiting them financially, it is benefiting you by being able to receive these gifts easily and quickly without any additional effort. And you said that was stocks and 10,000 in crypto. So how do we, how do we market this, you know, market the opportunities to our donors and RJ I'm going to go back to crypto because you made a comment and I had to bite my tongue and hold it for this section. I mentioned, you know, like how many of your donors hold crypto. How do you suggest and recommend that we find this out with our constituency base like what are you seeing your clients do to find this data. So I mean, I go to try and true for any development office which is phone calls, lunches, coffees, zooms, where you're especially again we're looking at high capacity donors for the most part. So hopefully you have a really good CRM that you can start dissecting some data looking at different ranges of givers. Most likely, if you don't know them well, then goodness you have a little bit of time to start this conversation really quickly. Get to know them well. Yes, that you're starting to make phone calls knowing what they've given in the past how they've given. Do they have options to give different ways. If we had these things so I think a lot of it is really old fashioned relationships out there that you can do some surveys I'm sure you can do some different things with data and use technology to help you. And I think when you're looking at is Karen reference we're looking at high capacity givers. They want, they want that relationship. And so I think it's a great opportunity to add that to your questions and your feedback when you're meeting with them phone calls coffee lunch, all those good, very old fashioned ways. And I love that because for those of you, if you haven't seen the previous episodes with RJ, and or Karen RJ before infinite giving was in development and he's, he's been in your shoes he's done this he's had these conversations. So I love that you bring it back to that relationship because that's really really as we know where where it lies. Karen can you talk to us a little bit more about how you've seen your clients really market these opportunities to their donors. Yeah, it's, you have to talk about it right and so so much of it is education and opportunity it's kind of like your donors are out there but if you're not making the ask, are they giving to you. In the same way, we, we've made it really easy and we encourage folks be like when you're doing end of your campaigns. When you're looking at your giving strategies and these donor relationships. It is talking to them about all these different opportunities and different ways to give. So that stock gifting that's crypto. Maybe that's even seeding and endowment or gifting a micro endowment. It's being more and more popularity and that people want to have financial sustainability so so having education on you don't have to have you have to be an expert in all these but being able to talk to donors and just say hey, I said giving is going to be an important part of our strategy. How are we having these conversations and a big way to do that. Sometimes people are like well yeah it's all relationships and the website no one really gives to the website and I'm like, Have you looked at your website. Yes, when when I'm going to donate like what are you talking about and so of course cash cash is important right of course you want that that's your lead that's a quick click. But when you're talking about high wealth donors like do you want 10 $50 donors or do you want one $10,000 donor. So it's a relationship yes but it's also like in each email campaign, are you mentioning stocks and click. And you have to say it more than one time you can't just be a flash in a pan and be like we accept stocks done. So one of the things that we often encourage is, and we give different ways to do buttons or an entire giving page like there's different ways you can do that, but on a website. I look for alternative ways to give you know what I mean and it's and if you're like oh we already received stocks, you click on that and you got to call this person and download a PDF. It's a PDF. Yeah, like it's a very very manual process and that's probably the reason you're only occasionally giving gifts of stock or receiving gifts of stock. So we're like how easy can you make it for the donors. How, how much education are you providing them what how many times are you giving them the opportunity. Right so it's like putting it in front of them making it really easy and telling that story is really important so if you don't mention any of these other alternative ways of giving on your website. That's like the easiest place to start adding it into conversations like RJ said with relationship building. It's like hey just so you know, gifting stocks like if you happen to hold that that's the most tax efficient way for you to give. Like organization hey also if you're if you hold crypto we're now able to receive that just click here click here. So I think having it on your website, consistently communicating the opportunities to your donors and educating them on why this is a better experience for them in for you I think it's really meaningful because ultimately those people that are you're having conversations with they want to help you right. They're so philanthropic. They're here to help you succeed they want to be generous. How easy are you making it for them and how many different opportunities. Are you giving for them to to share their wealth with your organization and your mission. Yeah, and I would just add to I think you're the high net worth the high capacity givers the ones are able to give a lot typically give assets. They're meeting with their CPAs and their accountants at the end of q3 beginning of q4, looking at their whole picture and going. What should I be giving and we want to give to these organizations what's the best way to do that. So if you're not to Karen's point getting information education through email campaigns, writing letters whatever it takes. You're missing an opportunity because I guarantee you these folks are meeting with their CPAs and their accountants at the end of q3 and q4 looking at their end of your giving. What are they going to give how are they going to give where they're going to take it from. I'm glad you mentioned that RJ and I'm curious because I had two questions Karen answered one when it comes to the website so thank you for going down that path. Do you recommend RJ that we, you know, have a, I don't know, a group of CPAs that we as a nonprofit build relationships with so that they could potentially advocate for the mission, or are you seeing the individual already who want to to give their assets, simply go to their own CPA, and that CPA directs that because I'm wondering if we should market these opportunities to the accounting firms. That's probably a great strategy. You probably have to look at right. What's mission critical in that phase do you have capacity to do that. Most of these donors and I could be wrong. Know where they want to give or have an idea. They're working with their accountant and CPAs on how to do it right how to limit their and their accountant honestly is probably looking less at where they're giving and how to reduce their taxes. So it's kind of putting those two together you have the donor wants to give. And how do I do that where do I take it from and then you have the CPAs going, we need to reduce these taxes and this is the best way to do that. And so I think anytime you can build relationships with people who are in those seats is a really good thing. I think more times than not my hope would be the donor comes with an idea where they want to give and that's not always the case. It really, it really benefits their taxes and Karen you had mentioned early in the show like, you know, if they have to withdraw their assets, liquefy it turn it into cash like they're then getting penalized for this and that's not what we want so so much information wrapped into such a short amount of time. One really quick thing on that is that sorry, I can't help myself but they they're not going to go to their CPA to make that too so CPAs are wonderful partner we work with CPAs all day, they love us. But that donor is going to their broker, or their investment advisor. So that's how that transaction is occurring. And one of the ways that we automate that is we put, we put the order in writing rather than the manual calling brokers don't want to are, you know, they're not wanting to let go of those assets. Sometimes they make it difficult for the donor so when you have a broker making it difficult for a donor and a nonprofit making it very manual, right, then there's a disconnect so the CPA is always like yes do this. The ones making those connections. So it's very important for the organization to have the tools in place that make it really easy and that and that's one of the things we do is we automate it in writing so that donor clicks forward. And once that broker receives that order in writing, there's none of that manual back and forth they have to act on that because SEC requires it. So it's not making it a great donor experience. Infinite giving makes it a phenomenal donor experience and I definitely appreciate you adding that into the conversation Karen. This has been fantastic. I always share with each of you, you know before we go live that this is not my zone of genius so I always learned so much from you. I've been a director 20 years and I still am learning exactly you know how to take these gifts asset stocks crypto, all the new fun things so Karen Houghton chief executive officer and RJ Caswell director of business development at infinite giving. Thank you so very much for those of you that might have questions or want to do business of course with RJ and Karen please check them out infinite giving.com is their website. I know I'm going to produce that again I've been on it before but I'm going to take a look at it again. I'm so much amazing information as we move into Q4 of this year. I just want to make sure that we educate and we have these conversations with our donors so thank you so very much it's been a wonderful conversation with each of you today. We of course want to say thank you to our sponsors that allow us to have such informative conversations like the ones that you just heard here with RJ and Karen. Thank you so very much to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University be generous your part time controller staffing boutique nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. These companies keep us going and growing just like the conversation you just heard with Karen and RJ today so again if you missed any of this conversation, or it was over your head like some of it was over mine. You can go back and listen to it. And again, both of you thank you so very much. I wish you well. And as we end every episode we want to remind everyone and ourselves to stay well so we can all continue to do well. Thank you both I appreciate your time. Great to be here as always.