 I am not seminary trained. I'm not ordained. I have a business background. I have an MBA. I've been working for the Connecticut Conference and now Southern New England Conference since 2002. I do have a favorite management theologian combining both of the worlds that I've been in. I don't think he claims that title for himself. It's one that I've given him. His name is Robert Quinn. He's on the faculty of the University of Michigan School of Business. He writes books about change, including Change the World and Deep Change. One of the things he says is that we're always coming to a fork in the road. One fork leads to the path of slow death and the other fork is the path of radical transformation. To me, this is the gospel message. This is what is death and resurrection if not the ultimate radical transformation because Jesus wasn't resuscitated. He didn't come back the same as he was in human form before his death. He came back radically different in ways that he continues to be a presence today. To me, some people say why is it always a choice? Why are you always coming to this fork in the road? If you're on the road to slow death, fortunately, we continue to have the options of transforming ourselves. Even if we start down the path of transformation, it's not in my mind a single event that happens once and then you're done. I think transformation is more like fitness. You don't decide to eat, write, exercise more, adopt a healthy lifestyle and get fit and then one day you announce, I'm fit, I'm done, I can forego all those habits. You have to continue to work on transformation and staying in that new place. I think all stewardship work, what it has in common, is it invites people to a transformation in how they think about money, how they think about themselves, how they interconnect with the world and it becomes a faith practice. So that foreshadows why I think that this is a ministry and not just fundraising. I want to point you to our website. We have a section on stewardship. There you'll find a series of webinars along with associated resources and materials and that's there for you and you can share with other people. One of the webinars is on planned giving and it's a shorter version of what we'll be talking about today but hopefully still useful so if you want to share something with people in your congregation you can have a watch party. The webinars are each about an hour. They start with 20, 25 minutes of presentation followed by reactions from some panelists followed by questions and answers and you don't have to use the whole thing in its entirety you can use whatever pieces make sense and there are also lists of books and newsletters and other resources that are worthwhile some of which I'll mention. This is the outline of the webinars. We went from faith foundations to how to inspire generosity to learning from the non-profit world to planned giving. Why do we want to have planned giving initiatives? Well, Willie Sutton people might remember was a bank robber and they asked Willie why do you rob banks and he said that's where the money is and so we need to look where people have money and they have income and they have savings and they'll have their estate so we have annual pledge drives typically people give out of income. We have major gifts and capital campaigns that invite people to look beyond their income into their savings and assets and we have planned giving for people thinking about what to do with their estates so we want to find ways for for people to be generous in all these areas. Why is this a ministry? I would say the stewardship goal is not to get people to give more money it's to help people to make more faithful choices regarding what they do with their assets and in planned giving the distribution of assets when they die and it's a conversion or transformation process that will strengthen people's faith and faith in my view is not believing the right things it's behaving the right way and generosity is one of those behaviors that is faithful along with attending worship, forgiveness, bible study, intentional acts of caring and service and these and other things all have in common that they might be motivated by our faith but the practice will strengthen our faith as well. Generosity is one of the fruits of the spirit that's referred to in scripture. So why should people consider a planned gift? Well the same reasons they give to the church while they're alive it's an organization that is aligned with what they're passionate about what they care about and that they want to support. It's an opportunity to endow a pledge if you think the church is worth surviving while you're alive you can continue to do so forever through a planned gift and to me my dream job was always to be a philanthropist which is you know I hope to have enough money that I could make a living or spend my time giving it away and here's an opportunity for everybody to be a philanthropist because for most people estate gifts are the largest gifts that they'll consider making in their lives. So it also gives people an opportunity to leave a legacy to think about what the impact their life will have on the world and it adds meaning and satisfaction to people's lives and I have worked with people to help them set up planned gifts and I've talked to people who have done so and people feel really good about the choices that they make and I can cite any number of examples but Harry Baldwin comes to mind he made a generous gift to the Connecticut conference his passion was interfaith ministries and finding common ground and so he set up a life income gift to benefit the conference for that and he talked frequently about that in fact he decided to give some money while he was alive to start some of the programs because he was so excited about the idea so and I don't want to overlook some people may feel like they wish they had done things or been more generous and it's still not too late I'll send out these slides you don't need to try to write things down you can take notes certainly you'd like to but I'll be happy to send you the slides more reasons for plan giving giving while you're alive some people would say involves trade-offs some would even say sacrifices well after you're gone it's it's painless to give away the assets as they say you can't take it with you some practical considerations you can use planned gifts to avoid taxes on your estate you can find ways to increase your current income particularly your after-tax incomes there may be ways to unlock property value and this gets a little more complicated but an example would be somebody that donates their property their house to the church with an agreement that they can live in the house until they die and then the the church has the the benefit of having that asset so those are complicated sorts of arrangements but I just wanted to mention it because it might stimulate people's thinking about opportunities and most planned gifts are revocable people can change their minds and so that may give comfort to some people while they're considering a gift anyone can give away a million dollars the secret is not that life is so short it's that you are dead for so long and you know I work with endowments the oldest endowments from the historic Connecticut conference go back to the late 1700s an endowment fund was created to fund mission work in the western territories and we still have those endowment funds so how can you give away a million dollars well if you have the resources to give away a hundred thousand dollars that will generate very conservatively four thousand dollars per year so after 25 years that's a hundred thousand and after 250 years that's a million dollars and as I said we have endowments going back to before 1800 which means there are over 220 years old endowments are immortal so the giving goes on and on and on but there's other ways you could take that same hundred thousand dollars and if you said to the beneficiary don't spend any of this money until it reaches a million dollars at a reasonable annual rate of return of about eight percent it takes about 30 years for a hundred thousand to become a million dollars which is shorter than many people would guess compounding growth exponential growth people don't have a good intuitive grasp for that as the pandemic is demonstrating you don't have to make a large bequest the conference has the Silver Lake conference center and we've told people for ten thousand dollars you can endow a summer camp scholarship which would send one child to summer camp each year and that touches one person a year and after 10 years that's 10 and after 50 that's 50 and that's not a trivial thing to accomplish with your ten thousand dollars I mentioned endowing your pledge the rough rule of thumb would be giving 25 times your annual pledge so if you pledge a thousand dollars to the church give 25,000 and for many people that's not going to exhaust their estate it's not going to keep them from leaving money to their family or heirs or other organizations it's kind of like saying well I wanted to give a portion of my money to the church when I was alive I'm going to do that when I die and you know for churches from the church perspective you know imagine if people started doing this 20 or 25 years ago and maybe now you had 20 or 25 endowed pledges on top of the living members of your congregation that would make a real difference in the life of most of our churches there's lots of ways to make planned gifts you can do it through a will but it's even easier sometimes to just name a death beneficiary on a financial account or retirement account it's a one page form you fill it out you sign it you hand it to your financial institution and it's quick it's easy and it's revocable you can donate life insurance policies by either you can make the church the beneficiary the policy or you can donate the policy itself and you can donate property so on the receiving side be very careful about accepting property without carefully examining whether it comes with any liabilities but it is something that people can give I mentioned Harry Baldwin who set up a life income gift 80% of planned gifts are bequests or distribution of financial accounts about about 20% of life income gifts what they all have in common is that you make an irrevocable gift and while you're alive that gift generates income to you and when you die the residual amount goes to your beneficiary this can be very advantageous because you get a tax break for making the gift it can reduce the taxes on your income and charitable gift annuities have defined distribution rates based on your age and so you may be able to get a much higher rate of return on a life income gift than you could get on any other kind of investment available to you now so it depending on how old you are it could be you know six seven eight percent per year and some of that would be tax-free and and and with life income gifts you cannot outlive your your gift the the recipient is obligated to continue to pay you regardless these things are set up uh actuarially so that on average 50 percent of the original gift goes to the the charity and 50 ends up going back to the donor as income but that will vary a lot depending on investment performance and how long somebody lives so it's just important to know that these things exist and so i've i've i've gone through the the benefit more after tax income higher rate returns gift deductions if you've got appreciated stock this is particularly advantageous because you you get to the benefit of the appreciated value the stock without paying the capital gains and i said you can't outlive the income there is some you know important things to know the gift is irrevocable you can only specify one or two people to receive income during life recipients have to meet minimum age requirements there are minimum gift amounts and there will be some administrative fees for these things uh the united church of christ does have uh staff in new york in a law firm and united church funds which will act as a custodian of the funds so you don't have to invent anything from scratch to set this up you can work through the united church of christ plan giving is a big missed opportunity because while people are alive about 32 percent of their giving goes to churches and religious organizations that's the number one area that people support the bad news is a generation ago that was 60 percent of giving went to religious organizations but less than 10 percent of planned gifts are going to churches and religious organizations and the there's trillions of dollars at stake here so getting even a small amount of states can make a big difference and the reason why so few of the planned gifts are going to the church is that we're really terrible about inviting people to make these gifts and colleges and universities and hospitals and the boy scouts and girl scouts and all these other organizations are doing a better job and the ironic thing is that they would love to have the opportunity we have to cultivate planned gifts because we are in a close relationship with our potential donors you know a college university is trying to reach back over years and decades to maintain a connection with alumni whose experience was long ago we have in most cases current experiences with people and and at least prior to the pandemic we're often seeing them on a regular basis so we're we're missing this opportunity to set up a plan giving ministry uh in the the four easy steps and these steps come from len clef uh len uh was ordained and worked on the national staff of the united church of christ uh for many years doing planned giving and he said you need a case statement you need some policies you need prospects uh and you need to solicit or ask people uh now i'm going to give you the whole most important message of this workshop right here uh asking people means asking it's not sending a letter it's not making an announcement in church it's not inviting to a workshop on how to make a planned gift it's sitting down with somebody face to face and having the asking team a member say i have made a planned gift to the church i want you to invoke and invite you to join with me in making this kind of a gift uh that is what is really the foundation of effective plan giving programs is asking people uh and we get all wound up in education and creating brochures and marketing materials and in a way it's all way of of deferring or postponing the task of asking people and while you will get some gifts uh spontaneously you will get some gifts by reminders or announcements uh but the churches that have effective plan giving ministries have learned how to ask people uh and so we'll be talking a lot about that uh so the four things your case for support uh why are you asking uh what the world needs and what your mission is what the impact of the gift you can't assume that people will just understand uh the benefit uh of making the gift uh you need to say something about your theology of stewardship and wealth uh which might start with a statement that all that we have is a blessing from god and god yearns for us to to be generous uh with the the resources uh you can talk about extending the mission and ministry the congregation beyond the resources the living members uh you might want to feature specific aspects of your mission and ministry to be funded with planned gifts uh you may want to speak to people about sustaining uh facility and staffing models that are becoming more challenging to maintain with just living members uh although i will say some words about being careful what you ask for because uh you are creating uh in a sense of contract so your case can become a gift instrument which is if if you write something down and hand it out to people more typically with a capital campaign uh you're obligated to use the money according to the terms of the solicitation so as i said be careful what you wish for uh you should strive to inspire people to make unrestricted gifts because that's a gift that gives twice it allows uh the future members of the church to discern what god's call is in that moment in ways that we might not be able to anticipate uh today uh and when donors put a restriction on something that is legally enforceable uh and if you solicit funds for a specific purpose that's a that creates a restricted gift uh so your your solicitation becomes a gift instrument therefore you always want to give yourself some flexibility when asking for gifts for instance in a capital campaign if you have a written solicitation it should always say something like if we are so fortunate as to raise more money than the target for the campaign the amount in excess will become unrestricted gifts to the church otherwise you can be in a difficult situation and if you have a planned giving ministry you might consider setting goals we would like to generate enough of an endowment to uh be able to care for the ongoing maintenance of the building or we'd like to grow an endowment that will provide for our music ministry uh out of the endowment funds and that'll give something to give to when you're thinking about the why the case statement Simon Sinek is a speaker and author he has one of the top three TED talks of all time on his golden circle which is the center of the circle is why then what and outside of that is how and he said most organizations are very good about talking about what they do and how they do it but to really connect with donors and their passion you have to talk about why you are doing it it's worthwhile to watch this video I do want to quickly go through there's a difference between an endowment and a quasi endowment endowments can only be created by donors your paramount concern is fidelity to the donors intention you have to preserve the permanent corpus of the gift and if there are restrictions on distributions you have to observe them endowments are immortal and if it doesn't support the mission of the church you have to find a new owner for that endowment or if a church closes they have to transfer the endowment to somebody else donors create restrictions and restrictions are legally enforceable and cannot be changed without judicial approval churches sometimes play fast and loose with that but they're on shaky ground in contrast a quasi endowment is created by a congregation it's when they have unrestricted funds and they decide that it's the best stewardship of this money to invest it and treat it as an endowment why would you do that instead of spending the money all at once because a properly managed endowment over the long term will provide more money for mission and ministry than if you just spend the initial gift all at once but you do have to pay attention to those words properly managed endowment with a quasi endowment the paramount concerns fidelity to the mission of the church and so if the mission changes you should review your designation of the funds these endowments exist to serve the church the church does not exist to serve them and I say that because I've seen churches turn endowments quasi endowments into icons and you hear people say things like we can never invade the principal well that's by and large true for a true endowment but not at all true for a quasi endowment donors restrict and restrictions are enforceable congregations designate designations can be changed some people will be inspired to generosity if they can make a restricted gift and their passion for specific use or cause might inspire generosity and we don't want to close down that particular spigot but we want to be careful one way to do that is for the church to establish some broad categories and when people want to make a restricted gift encourage them to give to the fund that the church has created so that you have more flexibility so you might have a fund for worship that would include music a program fund that would include faith formation outreach that would be for compassion extended outside of the congregation this balances the donor's desire to fund something near and dear to the heart with giving the congregation some flexibility an example of an application of the why what and how is the united church of christ our why is god's vision for creating a just world for all what are we do is we welcome all love all and seek justice for all and how do we do that by loving god with all our heart mind soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves so that's one articulation and each church can come up with their own the second thing you need is some policies you need an investment policy you need a drawdown policy that's how much you will take out each year you need a spending policy which is what you will do with the money that you draw down and your policies will be specific to whether you have endowments or quasi endowments very quickly because i do other workshops on this this is the list of things that you need in an investment policy drawdown there are various approaches from rainy day funds to formulas to spending as much of it as you need to balance the budget which isn't a recommended approach but it is an approach people should know that true endowments are subject to a law called the uniform prudent management of institutional funds act lovingly known as up miffa and unless the donor uses very specific language to say that they don't want this law to apply to their endowment it governs all endowments and establishes prudence rules spending policy a pitfall sometimes churches fall into if they've got large enough endowments is the endowment will undermine individual generosity i've seen churches where a myth develops that you know we don't need to give because the church is taken care of by the endowment my guideline would be always try to use endowment resources to somehow extend the mission and ministry beyond the means of the active members and make sure that your spending policy is linked to the why that you've discerned for your congregation and for plan gifts for identifying prospects most people begin to think about plan gifts if they have children after their children have successfully been launched as adults or somehow provided for uh that adults without children are excellent prospects because they're going to give away presumably all their money i read that 19 of the 20 largest bequests made to darkmith university came from adults without children uh you want to look for people who are engaged with the congregation because they have passion for what you're doing and who are committed to the mission and ministry of the church and then you have to ask people and as i've already said writing a letter making an announcement inviting them to a workshop doesn't count as asking education may be necessary but it is not sufficient broadcasting is very inefficient and low yield uh the mantra in fundraising is you have to have the right person to ask and to do the asking at the right time the right place and to ask for the right amount of money that's a lot of things to get right and that shouldn't intimidate you but the right person to be doing the asking well among other things already have made a planned gift if a committee is asking all the members should have made a planned gift but don't get so stuck on this that you can't move forward as Wayne Gretzky said a hundred percent of the shots you don't take don't go in but if you can do your best to to think about all these right ways to do things it'll certainly help you you could consider creating a legacy society which is a group of people that have all made gifts and it becomes a little more structured way to ask people you ask them to join the society these societies usually have annual events that gather together to celebrate the people and the gifts that they have made and to induct new members into the legacy society so it provides a little more structure around the process of asking people in churches that have effectively got these things going it does make it a more routine expectation for people to make planned gifts because they see that the other people in the congregation have done that they can see all the members of the people that are in the legacy society so it is a good way to to move ahead but you still want to invite people face to join the legacy society you want to ask effectively some tips for asking up on our stewardship website under the the webinar that we did for planned giving there's a couple of resources that you can look at one is kind of an outline for how to have a meeting to ask somebody to make a gift typically you're going to send out people in pairs that's scriptural and one person is going to be the asker and the other is going to be the support person that the wing person one or both of them should have made a planned gift it's possible for the pastor to be a part of this team and that can be very effective if the pastor is comfortable with the role you want your team to do some practicing ahead of time do role playing find somebody that's friendly that they can hold a mock asking session with you want to make a face-to-face request for a face-to-face meeting this is leveraging the fact that we know our donors and see them frequently so we want to catch them that coffee hour at church or find some other way to engage with them we want to make sure we connect with these people in ways that convey to them that we care about them and not just their money so connections for the things that they're passionate about at the church that they're passionate about in life we want to be direct we want to tell them why we're there and we want to ask very specifically for them to make a gift most often giving them at least a couple of options to consider so it's not a yes no question and then after we've made an ask we need to shut up and wait for the prospect to say something I and this is a problem that inexperienced people making asks they they don't stop talking or they don't make the ask directly and so they never really get an answer because they haven't given the person the opportunity to answer so after you've waited for an answer and the answer most frequently according to studies is maybe some people will say yes right away some will say no a lot of people say I need to think about it so then you want to make sure you have a process for following through regardless of what the answer is whatever they say you're going to thank them for their time together thank them for their engagement with the church and its ministry even if they've said no and we're going to follow through if they say yes or maybe and we are going to thank everybody never overlooking an opportunity we're going to be as personal as we can be and here's a place where there are some people who are just not cut out to ask people to give money and we can encourage them we can provide coaching and resources but some people are not going to be good askers well we can ask them to be our good thankers and to find ways to make sure that people are recognized for their gifts and we want to tell our stories because people respond to stories consider having a legacy book that records all gifts as they are received and maybe you can reach back into history to try to do that so that you can not lose track of you can honor people and make sure that you celebrate the gifts from earlier generations so here we are on all hallows eve you know on all saints day make part of your church liturgy recognition for the gifts from earlier generations perhaps raising up specific people and individual gifts as appropriate that'll help us tell our story that will help people to know that they'll be remembered for their gifts honestly just a few words about capital campaigns this is a planned giving campaign a workshop capital campaigns often include a planned gift element when you read about the colleges and universities that raise billions of dollars in their capital campaigns they are counting bequests and planned gifts as pledges to their capital campaign when they get up to those kind of big numbers it's healthy for churches to have a capital campaign every five to ten years it gives people an opportunity to give out of assets or savings do not be afraid most churches find that capital campaigns are important and positive events in the life of the church and they do not reduce annual giving because most people will be giving out of savings or assets not out of income there's almost never a bad time for capital campaign except when the church has active or unresolved conflict or if the senior pastor or pastor is in the process of leaving probably not the best time to launch a campaign and consultants are absolutely worth it for major campaigns what's a major campaign usually you know two to three times annual pledging why are they worth it because you will raise more money working with a consultant than you will if you don't work with the consultant it's not that they have any magic formula the the techniques for capital campaigns are really well known you can buy a capital campaign manual from United Church of Christ but they will give you courage and encourage you to not cut corners they'll coach you about how to make asks and how to be effective the UCC has plan giving resources on their website they have a plan giving manual which you can buy in print or download from their website chapter by chapter there are organizations dedicated to plan giving there's no secret sauce or recipes the rules for instance for life income gifts are the same for all organizations defined by statute there are some great books my favorite book is a spirituality of fundraising it's really a brochure more than a book but if you are hesitant about asking people after you've read this book you will feel better excuse me Cliff Christopher is also another excellent author and he addresses plan giving in his books as well there are good e-newsletters I subscribe to several of these and the the leading ideas newsletter from the Lewis Center for Church Leadership which covers much more than stewardship always seems to have excellent articles and links in their their weekly newsletter and again we have resources on our website