 I'm Carol Monli and this is Education Matters on Think Tech. We define education broadly on the show by exploring a wide variety of topics. Today's program is Leaving Legacies for Hawaii and covers philanthropy and in particular plan giving or gifts after we pass away, which are more important than ever. My guest is Jeff Peterson, the Director of Plan Giving at the Foundations of Hawaii Pacific Health. Welcome, Jeff. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Great. I heard about Hawaii Pacific Health and your role in it. I know Hawaii Pacific Health is a very important position in our community. We have four hospitals. We are a non-profit healthcare system, Wilcox on Kauai, Polymomy, and of course Capilani Medical Center for Women and Children, and Straub Clinic and Hospital, all their clinics. So the four hospitals are under the Hawaii Pacific Health umbrella? Correct. And then the foundations, each hospital has a foundation that is set up to receive, raise money for, and receive gifts for that institution. I see. And what is your role as Director of Plan Giving? I work on both, mainly legacy giving. Plan giving and legacy giving is really larger gifts. They tend to be planned out with attorneys. They tend, or family members. It's more than just writing out a check, generally. Okay. So for our viewers, distinguished for us philanthropy, which is the bigger picture, and planned giving and legacy giving, at what point in time are those taking place? Generally when you look at any non-profit, there's usually three income streams to support that mission or that institution. Generally they start out with annual giving, maybe a direct mail campaign where solicitations go out in the mail and people can send in a check. Those fall under the annual giving umbrella. And so that's during lifetime? During lifetime. Right now. Like today, before April 15th, I might want to give a gift, or before year end, I might want to give a gift. You'll get home today, and in the mailbox there's going to be a number of envelopes, number 10 envelopes with your name on it, and all sorts of wonderful stories of why you should give to that charitable institution and how you can make a difference by writing out a check to support that institution, or of course today going online and making a gift online. So those typically are the foundation for most organizations fundraising efforts. They tend to be smaller gifts in terms of $10, $20, maybe $100, but a lot of them. So that's the basic foundation. Then from there, you'll have what is generally called major giving. Those gifts are a little bit larger. They tend to, large depends on the institution. At one institution it could be $500, at another institution it could be $5,000. But again, those typically are current gifts where people are making a monetary gift to support that institution today. And then plan giving or deferred giving typically comes from a person's, their assets, not what's in their checking account. It could be a gift of stock, it could be a gift of real estate. It could be a bequest or a gift in a person's will or trust. All of those tend to take more planning through advisors. They take more thought from an individual or a couple. And that's the role that I play, and I work in that area. I see. So the distinction between current versus future giving, and under future is plan giving. Yes. Or if they're larger you call them legacy. Yes. Okay, well let's take it from the side of the donor. Yes. So who am I going to choose? I know you mentioned nonprofits. But I might have interest in a variety of causes that I want to support. There's a couple ways to look at this. First is in terms of regular nonprofits that will go out and solicit money. In those annual gifts and those major gifts, that nonprofit is usually coming to you telling their story, asking you, Carol, to give them money. And they're saying, here's what I'm going to do with your money. I have to build something. I have to save something. Plan giving tends to be more, it's reversed. The institution will sit down with the donor and say, Carol, tell me what's important to you. What do you want to support? Why are you connected to this institution? Why have you been giving $10 for the last 20 years? And if it's done right, the plan giving person will listen and hear that story and find out why that person, why that donor, is connected to the institution, what their story is, and then go from there. Okay, so in Hawaii, you mentioned earlier that there are not that many directors of plan giving like you in Hawaii. That's right. Why is that? The technical position, institutions have to be large enough to afford a dedicated person to focus on this. And again, a lot of these gifts come in later, and a lot of institutions do not have the luxury of money to be able to support a person who can focus on the long term. We just, for example, received a gift on Friday from an estate, a wonderful woman. She had been a donor to Copilani Medical Center for Women and Children. Her first gift came in 10 years ago. It was $100. And the following year, she gave $1,000. But that was it, and her total lifetime giving was just $1,100. She passed away two years ago, and I've been working with the attorneys and their financial people for two years, and now we received a gift on Friday of $690,000. Oh my goodness. So she had already planned, of course, before she passed away to designate Copilani as the recipient of this money. Exactly. So that's the planned part. She did it before she died. Yes. You didn't get it until... We didn't get it until 10 years later. Until 10 years later. 2009, we had a nice lunch. She said she would like to do something in her estate. She connected me with her attorney. We worked through some paperwork. We put a provision in her trust, and over the years, we visited her. We had lunch with her. We spent a lot of time with her, just as a donor. And yeah, and now, here it is in 2017, the gift comes in. So mechanically, you mentioned you, as the director, worked with her before she passed away, and did the tax work and the paperwork, but what if she changed her mind before she passed away? Can she do that? Oh, absolutely. It would be unusual for a person to make an irrevocable gift to a charity. Usually they want to retain the right to change their mind. And that's the donor's prerogative, and that's the way most people do it, absolutely. So what percentage of the donations that you receive every year are based, are current gifts, and what percentage are the return on this future gift? Well, I'll give you an example. Just with this lady, and also normally for Hawaii Pacific Health, we process, we have wonderful donors, probably 18,000 plus gifts a year are given to support the hospitals of Hawaii Pacific Health. So the four hospitals get about 18,000 gifts a year? 18,000 gifts. Small and large? Small and large, $10, $100, $1,000. Those annual giving campaigns or initiatives and efforts will generate anywhere from $4 to $5 million to support the institutions. So there we have $4 or $5 million, and then all of a sudden one woman decides to leave us in her estate, and we get 690,000. So it's kind of lopsided, and yeah, that's why institutions look at plankeeping. I see. So now, of course, we're talking about health care, and there's so many other nonprofits in Hawaii, and is it the same procedure then for, in general, if someone was interested in another cause to create a man-giving? I've given examples of what I'm familiar with in terms of our institution, but what I have shared with you would be across the board, from universities to churches to any of the non-profit institutions. Nice. Yes. So I understand there, but aren't there different approaches to? Oh, very definitely. So through this whole world of legacy planning, as we get into that, there's different ways to approach what I just shared with you. Some institutions will take a more technical approach. So you may sit down with a plan-giving person at a university. They may be more focused on the technical gift vehicles, charitable trusts, charitable annuities, and really talking about how these different types of instruments, their benefits, the way they can help. Tax benefits? Tax benefits, yes. And they may approach plan-giving in more of a technical, mechanical, a lot of paperwork. Yes. Absolutely. There's a lot of paperwork, but they'll approach it that way. Now from my perspective, I've been doing this for a number of years. I have found that my approach is more legacy planning. I really start with the families and their values. And what is it that they are looking to accomplish? And then those technical vehicles are mere vehicles of solutions once we figure out what that family wants to accomplish. So how small, though, because we're talking about families and kind of big supporting hospitals, but do you have to be rich to do this? No. And how do you define rich? And how do you define rich and everything? But years ago, you would think of a planned gift or somebody in my position working with millionaires who are making million-dollar gifts today. People can make a big impact, and you may not need to have a million dollars. You can make a big gift with $50,000. Now, $50,000 is a lot of money, and at the same time, in today's society, it's a really nice car. I mean, it's not $50,000 isn't what it used to be. And yet $50,000 for a lot of institutions will make a big difference. Yes. Great. So you have some more stories about some of the donors that you have. You mentioned the $650,000 one. Do you have stories of maybe smaller donors? Oh, absolutely. And it's really not so much about, from my work, I mentioned the $600,000, whatever, $90,000. Because it gives some context to the role of plan giving in a fundraising effort. But when we sit down with a family, it's really talking to them about what is important to them. And typically, you know this, you have a family. You have families and friends. Generally people want four things I have found. The first is they don't want their family to be destitute. So whatever legacy planning we do, we start with the family, recognizing that the family is first and foremost in terms of what you're going to do in terms of leaving money to your children, or the heirs could be nieces or nephews. You don't want them to be destitute. The second piece that we find is they want families. I want this as a parent. I want to provide opportunities to my children and grandchildren. I want them to be able to, whatever they want to do, whether it's go to school or whatever, they want opportunities. I have worked, I just thought of the fact that when I started doing this, I worked with a lot of World War II generation guys. And I remember a gentleman who said to me, he said, Jeff, I landed on the beaches of Sicily. I lost a lot of my friends on the beach. He said, I want to give opportunities to young people to do things because I didn't have those opportunities. And so we look at providing opportunities. And then thirdly, we have families who say, I do not want to promote a nonworking lifestyle for my children. So you don't want to give them everything? You don't want to give them everything because they recognize that they don't want them sitting on the couch watching TV, drinking beer, and not doing anything. They want them to be productive human beings and contributing to society. And fourth, the families not fighting. We want to create an estate plan that allows families to be working in harmony and not at each other's throats are estranged. So we start there. And then we move forward to figure out how to do that. Well, let's take a second on that, and we're going to take a short break. We're talking about Legacy Giving with Jeff Peterson from Hawaii Pacific Health. We'll be right back after this short break. All right. This guy looks familiar. He calls himself the Ultra Fan, but that doesn't explain all this. He planned this party, planned the snacks, even planned to coordinate colored shirts, but he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house, so don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Welcome back. This is Carol Monley with my guest, Jeff Peterson from Hawaii Pacific Health, and we're talking about plan giving, a very important topic for our viewers. So when we, just before the break, we talked about the four factors that you go through with donors to make sure that their families are covered, which are very important. So once that's been done, and assuming an individual has more resources than are needed to cover the needs of their family, but as you said, not give them so much that the family, the children become... They need to be productive members of society. Right. So here is now the next step of where you come in, right? I would typically sit down with a family and talk to them, talk story with them and find out what their background is. As I said, why they're connected to the institution, and then their life story and how they made their money, what that means to them, their values. We also talk about their, if they have children, their children. Can their children manage money? Many parents, while they love their children, find that they may not be able to manage large sums of money, and that maybe a trust would be better. So we look at some of those factors. And then, from our perspective, we ask, we do general legacy planning, meaning it's not just for the hospital. So if a family says to us, as we sit down and we say, what's important to you, Carol, and the donor might say, well, I'm involved in the symphony, and I went to school at this institution, and I might volunteer at some other non-profit, and in our case, hospital. There might be, generally, when I work with families, they usually have at least four or five charities that they are connected to. And so you help. We help with that. But do people find you, though, through their interest in one of the four hospitals? Yes. Okay. Yes. And then you might step in and talk about their possible. Their general legacy planning. We do not go out, and I'll use these sales terms, cold call on people, and say, hi. Hi, Carol. You don't know me. You don't know Capulani. And do you get a commission? No. That's the thing. No, this is true across all foundations. Plan-giving people are really a great resource to talk to. And many times they are. Let me use the word honest broker in the sense that they're not selling anything. They're not selling insurance. So the one thing you pay is the public. No. So you're not selling anything, and you're not being paid by the donor? By a commission or a donor. There's nothing like that. Plan-giving people get a salary. It's an ethical consideration in terms of the plan-giving field. You get a salary. There are no commissions for a big gift. There's no bonuses for... Sending, diverting the money to one hospital over the other. Oh, absolutely not. I think there's even federal... I think I could go to jail for that or something. So no, we don't do that. So you get an honest... What I'm able to do is sit down in a confidential way and talk to people about their wealth and their families in an unbiased way because I don't have an agenda. Somebody said to me, well, you want their money. I'm like, yes, but I only talk to people who come to me first and say, I want to do something. I'm not sure how. So we're in alignment on trying to figure out the best way to come up with making a gift. Right. And so what about tax benefits? Do you talk to them about that? We certainly would. Our role is to provide education. We don't provide legal or tax advice. But what we do is we bring in their advisors. So then my role is to sit down almost as a quarterback, if you will. And we will bring together all of the advisors around the table at the same time. The attorney, the financial advisor, the insurance broker, whoever there might be in terms of the advisors. And we'll say, here's what the donor wants to do. These are their values. Here's what they want to accomplish. How do we go about doing this? And we'll come up with some recommendations. And then from there, if the donor says, yes, I'd like to set up a charitable trust. I love these institutions. I have assets that would be good to fund this trust, maybe real estate that we're not using anymore. And then we would work with the advisors to set everything up. So are those my advisors as the donor or are they your advisors? Oh, they're your advisors. They work for you. Absolutely. There would be a fiduciary responsibility for them to work in your best interest. Yes. Right. And I appreciate you mentioned this is all confidential. It is highly confidential. And I know you do house visits. All the time. The work we do, I sign the same confidentiality agreements that your doctor would when you go to the hospital. I can be fired immediately for sharing confidential information. So what we talk about is, it's all just, yeah, I can't, you know, it's your family, it's very confidential. Yeah. And I've also read that the larger group of donors are women. Absolutely. And tell us about that. Well, you know. Is that true for Strop? For us? Oh, in all the institutions I've worked with, you know, the guys tend to not live as long as the women. The guys tend to, these are all stereotypes and generalities, but many times the guys are more, they want their name on a building. I see. So they're giving... They might be giving for other... Less charitable, but more maybe self-interest. I can't say that, because all our donors are just wonderful. Of course. Okay. But I find that women, for the most part, they really want to make an impact. Yeah. And I will say that for plan giving, men and women, they're the best people I've ever worked with in my entire life. They are caring. They say things like they are stewards of these gifts. They want to open doors for others. They are not interested in the naming opportunities, as maybe a major gift donor might want to do. Which would be, like, naming a building would have to be, the gift would have to be during lifetime, probably, right? Generally, you say it that way, because usually an institution will have a capital campaign and they'll say, name our campus or our wing or something like that. My role and most of plan giving roles is really not so much naming because we don't know when the person's going to pass away, so it's not naming for this capital campaign. Therefore, most of the money goes into endowments to support research, to support whatever the donor wants to support. They tend to be more endowment driven. Scholarships, endowments, chairs, supporting professors. Scientific research. Scientific research. Cures to cancer. Absolutely. We have a number of donors that support both us and organizations like St. Jude's. Because we also do pediatric cancer research. So they'll say, I want to support research. I can use her name, a wonderful woman passed away a little while ago, Betty Funiyama. Her husband had been cared for by the hospital and she felt that her husband had six additional years of life because of the cardiology team at the hospital. And so she said, I don't know what I want to do. Then my role was to sit down and talk, listen to her story. And we finally developed a plan where some of the money would go into support the cardiology team today with current equipment and needs. And part would go to an endowment in his name for cardiology research. That's what we do. So we talked about gender. Let's talk about generally what's the right age. And I do see millennials in that frame of mind to begin planning or is it mostly ... Well, I tend to deal with a little bit more senior folks. But ... The baby boomers are really ... The baby boomers are the ones right now that are really looking at ... We're working increasingly with families, baby boomer families, who have businesses. And over the next 10 years, there's going to be a huge transfer of ownership on family businesses. Because of the ... The baby boomers are retail. The World War II guys came back. They worked for 40 years. They came back from the war in 45. By the mid-80s, they were selling businesses. They were bought and started by baby boomers. And now today, 40 years later, the baby boomers are looking at what are we going to do. My role is simply to say, what's your plan? And many of them don't have a plan. So we talk about their values and help them with the succession planning. Because if they're charitable inclined, that is where they can have significant impact in creating a gift to Hawaii, to give back to Hawaii. Create a legacy. To create a legacy. To benefit Hawaii. Yes. Do you see a growing interest in philanthropy now? Oh, absolutely. I think for us, certainly on the plan giving side, people tend to reach a point in their lives where they're reflective. And they're saying, what do I want to do? What meaningful thing do I want to leave behind? Those are the people that I work with. Right. Well, we just have a minute. All right. And I know that you have an upcoming seminar. So is that program something that's open to the public? And maybe you could tell our audience, look right into the camera too, about this program. We have this Thursday, we have a few seats left. We're going to be at the Hawaii Prince Hotel. Values based estate planning. Dr. Wendy Hirsch, who is a child psychologist, therapist at Kapilani, and I will be speaking there. Our number would be 535-7134. And we've got about five seats left if people would like to come and look at values based estate plans. Is there a charge? No charge, and we'll feed you lunch. Okay, wow. I know. So that's a wonderful way to end our show, to invite people to attend the program, learn more about plan giving, and in particular about Hawaii Pacific Health in your hospitals. Yes. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Jeff. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. Well, this brings us to the end of today's show. I'm your host, Tara Monly. Our guest has been Jeff Peterson from Hawaii Pacific Health. And we've been talking about plan giving, leaving your legacy for the benefit of others. So thanks to our production engineer Ray Sangolang and our floor manager Cindy Monofukai, and all the people who contribute to Think Tech Productions. If you want to see the show again, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com or YouTube.com slash Think Tech Hawaii, where there will be a link to more shows just like this one. Thank you for watching, and aloha.