Gift Hub

Always Be Closing Planned Gifts

I am here on a mission of mercy. - The man from downtown

Steps to Success

1. Meet with donor
2. Gather 2 facts (donor age 65 owns appreciated property) 
3. Gather no goals
4. Assume goals are tax reduction and income
5. Suggest Charitable Remainder Trust
6. Wait several days as donor consults advisor
7. Express surprise when deal is rejected
8. Go back to step 1 with new donor
9. Repeat until deal is closed and quota met
10. Write paper on best practices for National Committee on Planned Giving.

How to Fail Miserably

1. Get to know donor as human being
2. Gather through open-ended conversation the donor's goals for self, family, and society
3. Encourage the donor's best instincts
4. Help donor weigh the joy of a gift now or gift later or at death
5. Help donor weigh inheritance to kids versus philanthropy
6. Help donor weigh the benefits to children of a philanthropic inheritance, or a family tradition of current gifts, or through a foundation or donor advised fund
7. Help donor reduce goals, including but not limited to philanthropic goals, to talking points for advisors
8. Serve as resource to advisors as overall financial, giving, and estate plan is created
9. Express gratitude as massive current gift, or legacy commitment, is made to your organization
10. Abandon this process when it comes out that the donor also made a massive gift to some other organization
11. Slap yourself for having helped society, donor, family, and your organization
12. Return to proven Steps to Success listed above.

I am not sure planned giving as a career option can be saved. But there are jobs open in the financial services bidnis pitching product. If you are a planned giving officer who is finding Charitable Remainder Trusts a hard sale these days, I would be happy to line you up with a financial sales recruiter.  If you are going to play pitch and putt to meet a quota you might as well at least have a decent commission structure, along with basic sales training. If you knew how to answer objections you would not be in this mess. There are only four objections to any financial product or service, including a Charitable Trust. Master the answers and you will succeed like a champ.  I will cover these answers to objections in another lesson. By way of preview: The fourth and hardest objection to answer in any sale of a financial product or service is "No Confidence." The No Confidence Objection is best met by wearing an expensive suit. You can rent one if you cannot afford to purchase one.

Forgive me.  Don't rent the suit. You would do better to buy it on a credit card with a good low teaser rate.  Remember, no one will do a Charitable Remainder Trust with a planned giving officer in a cheap suit.  Stay away from Glengarry plaids too. 

Building a Community of Giving

Jeremy Gregg: 

All fundraisers should read Phil Cubeta's article, "Fundraiser as Philanthropic Advocate in Our Commonwealth."

Related posts here, here and  here.  Now, from theory to practice. What holds us back from collaborating as funders, fundraisers and advisors dedicated to the common good?  ("What is in it for me?" "What is in it for thee?" And,  "What is in it for we?")

Inspired Philanthropy: Collaborating for The Commonweal

Competing or Completing? Beyond Planned Gifts as Transactions

In 2002 Robert Sharpe wrote an interesting article for Trusts & Estates, "Competing or Completing? Balancing the roles of various professionals in planning charitable giving maximizes the benefits for all."  I would like to second the spirit of his piece, while recommending that we as diverse professionals go beyond collaborating on specific "gift transactions" to collaborating on an overall legacy planning process of which the specific gift transaction is but one tactic or strategy. My sense is that such a collaborative process would transform our field for the better, move more money, and make our donor clients much happier and more fulfilled. In the process we advisors and gift planners will do ok too.

When we think of planned gifts as  specific  vehicles, like a donor advised fund, or a charitable remainder trust, offered by both nonprofits and for-profits we might ask, as Robert Sharpe does, whether the two distribution systems are competitors or complements.  Considered in that way, a life insurance agent "selling" a Charitable Remainder Trust payable at death to charity Y is competing with charity X who might have written the CRT payable to them. Likewise, Fidelity might compete with a community foundation for donor advised fund assets.  But let us say that the topic is not promoting a specific gift vehicle, or making a sale, but helping the donor client create an overall plan that is both prudent and inspired. (Prudent means a plan that takes care of the client and the client's family come what may. Inspired means having a positive impact on the community.) How then do the players arrange themselves around that program or process?  A case study may help us get the issues in perspective.

Case Study: Beyond Transactions to Prudent and Inspired Collaboration

Mary and John are worth $10 million, most of it in their closely held business. They are both 55. Both are active in the business and own 100% of the stock. They have two children, Alan and Marcie. Alan is a painter in NYC, barely getting by. He is single. Marcie is married with two children. She is the Comptroller in the family firm.  John and Mary are active in Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago where they live.  They have thought about spending more time working with the Church and less time in the business.  They dream of devoting their lives to working with disadvantaged children, instilling faith and character in children at risk.  Not only would they like to do more volunteering, they wonder if they might fund or endow a program and a facility. A local competitor has been making overtures to the family to sell the business.  Here are the questions on Mary and John's  mind. (These questions have been elicited in part by their lead advisor and in part through their own reflections.)

Questions

• Should we sell, retire, and spend more time on volunteer work with the Church?
• If we do sell at the proffered price will we have enough to live on for the rest of our lives?
• Are we protected against major downside risks (death, disability, falling markets, liability, lawsuits, sickness, long term care needs, property and casualty losses)?
• If we both die tonight, we owe what in estate tax? $3 million?
• Can we reduce estate taxes in favor of the Church?
• If we sell out to the buyer, where does that leave Marcie? Will she be out of a job?
• If we sell to the outsider what will be the capital gains tax?
• Should we find a way to keep the business in the family?
• If so should it go to Marcie? And if so what do we give to her brother, Alan?
• Should we divide our estate half and half for the kids? Or should Marcie get the bulk of it because she has helped us build the business?
• If we let Marcie run the business when we retire, and she pays us some consulting fees so we have money to live on, and she then runs the business into the ground where does that leave us?
• Can we afford to do more for Holy Name today? If we sell? At death?
• How can we structure our affairs so we could do more now, later, and at death for Holy Name, minimize income tax and estate tax, while also taking care of ourselves and our children?
• How can we balance all this?
• Where do we start?
• Who can help us?
• Should we ask Marcie and Alan what they think? (If only they ever agreed about anything!)
• Who should be at the legacy planning table when we sort all this out?

Exercises

1. Check the questions you think need to be answered by someone.  Put a Y by those you can answer all by yourself from your seat at the table.
2. Ask yourself which professionals are needed to do justice to this fact pattern? Attorney, CPA, Financial planner who can do a comprehensive financial plan,  financial product salesperson, planned giving consultant, banker, business valuation expert, other?
3. Is there a logical order as among: goal clarification, fanning philanthropic intent, running financial scenarios, explaining planning concepts (including but not limited to giving opportunities), communicating with children, finalizing the overall plan, implementing products, legal documents, and gifts?
4. Is the logical order the order you employ in your work with donor/clients?

Observations and Suggestions

• Most financial salespeople and most gift planners working for nonprofits "pitch" rather than plan. They lead with a solution before understanding the pertinent context. ("Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.") We as a field have to get past this package sale mentality for larger client/donors who have complex needs and whose potential gifts merit lots of tender loving care.
• The family above might need a charitable remainder trust, or a foundation, or a donor advised fund, or a charitable lead trust, or an outright gift, or a bequest, but it is way premature to pitch any of those. We have not even finished the fact-finding and goal setting.
• Well over half the challenge in working with complex situations like the one above are the human dilemmas, not the financial conundrums.  The issues in the case above are those of love and money, of fairness, and the push pull between self interest and giving, between playing it safe for self and family, and doing something wonderful for the Church as soon as possible.
• To resolve such dilemmas good planning will run scenarios and quantify the possible consequences of all the permutations and combinations of tools, tactics, and techniques, but in the end the family must wend its own way in this "dark wood" of moral and prudential choices.
• Some family decisions are made with advisors. Others on our knees in prayer, or in the dark of the night, tossing and turning. What is at issue here is the trajectory of many lives.   
• The family needs an open ear. They need someone they can trust, not just to run the numbers, do the legal work, plead for the needs of the Church, sell financial products, or close various aspects of the "case." They need a friend with an open ear, who will listen as they feel their way through this dark wood.
• The trusted advisor, or confidant, can be anyone on the team. But the trusted advisor cannot just be a special pleader. He or she will get paid in one way or another, and will represent this or that position at the table, but the trusted advisor rises above his or her professional specialty and his or her way of getting paid, and earns the right to be the trusted advisor by simply listening, processing the information, and allowing the family to make its own best decisions. The trusted advisor may also slow down the process, involve other needed specialists, or towards the end, gently urge the process to a conclusion.
• The default choice in a case like the one above is for the family to play it safe. They might well say, "Charity starts at home," if the Church is too urgent about philanthropy. Given the parents unresolved dilemmas, given the murk and uncertainty, the most likely outcome is to do not much, or not much right now.
• If properly planned a case like this could well result in a gift to the Church of several million dollars. But the Church won't get it for asking. They won't get it for pleading. And they are not likely to get it by pitching Charitable Trusts in a vacuum. They need to be at the planning table, or within earshot of it, as the whole plan comes together.
  

Competition or Collaboration?

• So, if you represent the Church, as a fundraiser, what is your next move with this family? My sense is that the best move is to presume upon the common bond of religious faith, and the common bond of Holy Name Cathedral, to simply listen. Emerge as trusted advisor, or as confidante, or as an advocate for the fellow parishioner's better angel, the client's best self. Then, convene the team. Stay quietly involved as the team works forward.  Continue to cultivate and to act as sounding board.  As the team plans the options, your role  as  gift planner will come into focus, and you will get your chance to discuss the gift options in the context of the overall plan.
• If you are tax, legal, or financial advisor, what is your next move, if you are first person to whom these clients turn? Will you or won't you contact the Cathedral? Maybe that will depend on how the Cathedral has positioned itself in town and with you. Do you think of their Stewardship Committee as fellow professionals who will assist in a team effort, or do you think of them as special pleaders with a one track mind, or as well meaning people who have no sense of the proper process, and who are always closing for action prematurely?
• Ideally, Holy Name has cultivated the professional community and positioned itself as a caring team member. If so, whoever gets the case going will feel at ease involving the others who need to be at the table to do justice to this family's plan.
• If we all were to operate in this spirit we would do better for our donor/clients and they in turn would do better for their heirs and for the community.

Practical Steps for Nonprofits, Donors, and Advisors

1. Check out the Resources tab at Inspired Philanthropy.
2. Appendices A and B outline a simple process for bringing donors, advisors, and nonprofits together in common purpose.
3. Consider an event or series of events to educate all three groups.
4. Tracy Gary and I have intentionally put this material out there for all to use. We believe in cooperative advantage and in public goods. We don't want to corner the market on philanthropy. We know that others can adapt these materials to their own communities and make them their own. We want that. Out of such experiments, we want to create an informal learning community so we can uplift giving and givers. The spirit is not unlike "Leave a Legacy."
5. Per Tracy, the materials in the Appendices go over well with their intended audience. In her words, "They love it and money is moving."
6. If you do improvise your own approach to the issues discussed above, please share the results with me, either in comments left on the blog or by email, so we can learn together.

Givers who Keep on Giving

Some of my favorite people, including Anne Ellinger and Tracy Gary, are written up in the Chronicle of Philanthropy for raising the question of how much wealthy families should keep for themselves and how much they should be giving back to society. This is the conversation of fundraising, philanthropy, and donor circles. What will facilitate the mega-giving is better partnerships with the advisors who in many cases control the wealth, as a practical matter, unless the donor bestirs herself to lead or partner. That is the gist of what I am trying to do here, and with Tracy at Inspired Legacies: build inspired donor/advisor partnerships for self, family, and society. In that way we can convert ideals plus wealth to positive social change.

Community Foundations and Advisors: Towards a More Effective Collaboration

The New Green Philanthropy,

Notably, the Marin Community Foundation relies almost exclusively on referrals from professional advisors.

"They are our entry point. We view them as critically important," Derby notes. "Many donors today view their advisor as their first link of trust. Once the donor is confident about all other aspects of their financial planning, they'll begin to consider charitable intent. At that point, the advisor may suggest a donor advised fund as a component of a client's overall financial planning."

Once or twice a month, in working with advisors I will suggest they get in touch with a local community foundation. This is maybe 10-25 cases a year out of 2,000 - 3,000 projects a firm our size might touch in a year. What the foundations are missing is what a tiny fraction of the case flow they receive. The bulk of their incoming leads (from the advisory community) represents a miniscule segment of the market advisors control.  Community foundations might think about the world from the advisor's perspective and ask how they might partner to mutual advantage, as well as for the benefit of client and client family.  Most of what I get from community foundations is pretty much about them and what they offer.  They are solicting attention, but not presenting themselves as adding value for advisors.  They may educate on tools and techniques, but that info is widely available elsewhere.  How can advisors prosper by encouraging clients in their generosity? How can advisors prosper by detouring client dollars through a community foundation? Answer that question convincingly and the flow of leads might increase many times over.  Part of this is about helping advisors gets paid on assets under management in the community foundation, but part of it is about marketing, prospecting, and two way referral flows.  Partnering with advisors is not just about how many leads you got, but also how many you gave, and how many working relationships you fostered.  Ultimately, it is about creating alliances for the benefit of the donor that are so effective that donors are attracted to the program.

Inspired Legacy Partnerships - The Parable of the Long-Handled Spoons

In the parable of the long-handled spoons several advisors, several potential donors, and a several fundraisers for several organizations sit at a banquet table. Each has a long-handled spoon and a pot set before  her. The spoons clash in their constant frantic movements as each tries to feed herself from her own pot or that of the others.  That scene is from Hell. In Heaven we have the same table, spoons, pots, and personages. The difference is that each uses her spoon to fed the others, and hence all are fed.

Feed another that ye be fed. Are you ready? 

Is Your Org Ready to be an Inspired Legacy Partner of your Donors and their Advisors?

Is your organization ready for an inspired legacy partnership? A Yes to several of these points would be propitious.

• We will be here in 10 years, whether this program succeeds or not
• We receive annual gifts, some major gifts, and are familiar with planned giving strategies. We do get some planned gifts.
• We have sufficient staff to keep up with the fundraising and the administration.
• Our staffing is relatively stable.
• Our Executive Director has the vision of inspired legacy partnerships
• Although we have immediate needs, we are also able to take the long view
• We want to build current programs and endowment.
• Our Board is supportive of long term programs that may take 3-5 years to make a big positive difference.
• We are not just looking to raise money for ourselves. We see ourselves as meeting human and social needs. We rejoice in the generosity of our donors when those gifts advance the cause, even if in certain instances those gifts do not come to us.
• We see other local nonprofits, at least some of them, as allies, friends and partners in the work, not just as competitors for donor dollars.
• We see the donor as a precious social asset, as a leader, and as a human being in her own right. We honor what is best in the donor for the donor's sake, for her family's sake and for the sake of society. We do not objectify our donors. We do not see them as a two-legged ATM whose purpose is to be tapped for cash to support our work and to pay our salaries.
• We have an Advisory Board of professionals who might support something like this and refer potential donors into such a program.
• I am willing to do a little self-study to get up to speed on issues of concern to wealthy donor families.
• I,am willing to do a little self-study to familiarize myself with the languages of finance, tax, and legal, so that I can bridge into the advisor conversation and be a team player.

Is now the right time?

• We have a critical mass of donors, advisors, volunteers, Board members, allies, and staff who might be interested in taking the larger view.
• We have a small budget or can raise one.
• I have time to prototype something new.
• We can get some other nonprofits to help us do an event.
• We can team up with other nonprofits to bring in some outside speakers.
• We can attract advisors, maybe by offering Continuing Education credits.

If mostly you answer "No," then an inspired legacies program is not for you, but if you can answer "Yes," to the majority of questions, you may well be ready to follow leaders like Charles Collier at Harvard to the highest levels of philanthropic advisory work.

If your mission includes words like "God's love," "neighbor," or "Lux and Veritas," and if you think of your donors as constituents to be served, all their lives long, then you may be mission aligned with a program like this.

We must all be prudent. The donor, charity and advisor must always ask, "What is in it for me?" The answer is, "Less than it could be," unless we converge on an inspired plan that brings us all together as partners in this work. Without a real overall plan, the donor should not let lose of the big dollars. Without advisors who can see beyond taxes and financial return the donor will be led by blind guides. Without nonprofits who can see the donor as a human being first and a donor second, we are all just using each other. When we meet on higher ground dollars flow, donors are more fulfilled, and nonprofits can do the work that make life better for us all. For some donors, some advisors, and some nonprofits, the time is right, for others not.  None of us can do it alone.

Philanthropic Consulting as Paedia

Here is a little thought sequence. It seems to resonate.

I.  On the Same Page

  1. Inspired Legacies tries to get donor, advisor, and nonprofit on the same page.
  2. Whose page?
  3. The donor's.

II.  Where is the Page Held?

Once we are all on the same page, where will the donor hold that page?

  1. Foot high?
  2. Knee high?
  3. Belly button high?
  4. Heart high?
  5. Level with the eyes?

III.   The Wealthy as  Leaders

What does a person of wealth need to provide effective leadership?

1. Breadth of experience with the issues affecting society.
2. In-depth appreciation of at least one key issue area.
3. An adequate theory or perception of "how things really are."
4. An adequate theory or instinct as to "how things might be changed."
5. Access to best practices, and what has been tried and failed, and why.
6. Role models, peer networks.
7. Ability to recognize talent, bring it into play, delegate to it, back and support it.
8. Personal qualities such as humility, courage, and persistence.

IV. Role of Advisors

• If we did a survey of tax, legal, and financial advisors of how they help clients, not one would mention civic leadership as a deliverable.
• Advisors are all about the means to the ends specified by the client.
• Advisors are most often values neutral or agnostic about client values. Hence they can hardly help to elevate those values.
• For the advisor, values are to identified not uplifted. That would be presumptuous.

V. Role of Nonprofits

Whence cometh the donor's  "values"?

1. The example and precepts of parents.
2. Religious organizations.
3. Schools.
4. Playing on sport teams.
5. Volunteering.
6. In dorm rooms bull sessions.
7. In mentoring relationships with leaders in other walks of life.
8. From books deeply read in youth.
9. By chance, or through grace.

You could go on, but the seedbed of the donor's values are family and civil society.  Nonprofits are crucial not only to providing services to various groups, but to creating a self, a moral identity, a sense of direction, a moral community, and what we call "values," or tendencies, or character, or moral habit. As the apple seed is to the orchard, so is the  moral self to community: both result and cause. Nonprofits are the orchard where  gifts are sown and come to fruition. The fruitful tree is the donor, herself the fruit of what she seeds.

VI. Partnering for Inspired Outcomes

How, then, do we partner for inspired outcomes?

1. Donors to lead towards high ends.
2. Advisors to support means to those ends.
3. Nonprofits to carry out the programs funded in order to achieve the donor's ends in view.
4. But more importantly, the nonprofit to participate in forming the donor's vision, her mental map of the issues, her sense of what might work for social change.
5. More than that, the nonprofit should participate - should have participated  - in forming the donor per se, her values, her very self, as well as her progeny.

VII. Paideia

• We are formed by markets, mostly, by brands and propaganda, and mass media. The self is not what it once was. What we call our self is a sorry affair.
• If we are to be more than consumers, if we are to be citizens, and a free people, we must attend to the making of the moral self, the elicitation of the highest self from the base self. That is the work not of public relations, not marketing, not advertising, not think tanks, not sound bites, not entertainment, not spectacle, and not profit and loss. The term for it is paideia.
• Financial, tax and legal advisors are faithful servants of whatever donor-self shows up. 
• If nonprofits do not elevate the conversation and elicit and nurture what is best in the donor,  and the donor's heirs, we are lost. 
• In the partnership between donor, advisor, and nonprofit it may be that the nonprofit has the most to give and perhaps the greatest as yet unmet responsibility - to elevate the discourse beyond what is in it for the nonprofit - a very poor way to model generosity and vision. 

VIII.  Gift to the Givers

• Can your organization provide to your key potential donors a safe space, like the orchard, in which their gifts and giftedness can come naturally to fruition?
• What can you give to the donor that is so precious it is not sold in stores?
• How can you help the donor foster moral selves and moral leadership among heirs?
• Not your job? Mine neither. So I do it after hours as a citizen. 

Getting Donors, Advisors, and Nonprofits on The Same Page

Sub-Optimal Current Outcomes

I think the field of giving may be stuck in a sub-optimal configuration in which donors give less than they might want to give, nonprofits receive less, and advisors make less than they could and provide less service than they should. First I will discuss why we are stuck, then give one thing that each group might do for the good of the field, one another, society, and themselves.

Why Stuck?

Clients are diffident about their latent passion for giving while talking to advisors. Asked, "Are you philanthropically inclined?" the client's heart closes. "Surely, no one could discuss giving with such fusty professional?" "No," the client says, "I am not philanthropically inclined."

Donors are diffident about discussing their income and net worth with their nonprofit fund-raiser friends. "Keep your hand on your wallet," could be the internal client voice. "If they know what I have they will constantly ask me for more, more, more, more."

Fundraisers don't care how much the donor gives in toto, or what joy it gives the donor, or how much it uplifts family and society. Fundraisers are trained, managed, and incented by and large to get money for their institution. Of course there are exceptions. A few fundraisers serve as philanthropic consultants, but it takes an enlightened institution to be so large-minded. 

Financial advisors don't much like giving, real outright giving, because it depletes assets under management. For advisors "giving" means bottling money up in trusts and foundations managed by the advisor.

Attorneys and CPAs worry about giving because they represent the client not the charity, much less society. The tax and legal advisor's instinct is to protect the client from those who want the client's money. Clients who give their wealth away for the good of society don't make economic or legal sense. Nothing learned in law school or in accounting explains altruism or prepares the professional for carrying on a conversation about meaning, purpose, social impact.

Three Things We Collectively Can Do for Happier Outcomes

1. Donor/clients can take the lead with advisors and with charities. They can clarify their own vision and come forward as lead partners to advance their concept of the a good life for self, family and society. Instead of waiting to be well-served, the donor must demand it - nicely, of course. 
2. Nonprofits can treat donors with generosity. The nonprofit can encourage and applaud the donor's total giving, and the joy in that, rather than simply being advocates of one institution. The greater the total giving, in the context of a sensible overall plan, the greater the money raised on average by the institution that actively promotes the donor's overall well-being, satisfaction, and  impact.
3. Advisors can win by being less grabby. In a suboptimal current situation, some very wealthy and influential people are being systematically under-served. How you get paid on a client is only an issue if you get and keep the client. As donors become more proactive, advisors will lose clients if  the advisor stonewalls giving.  No, the donor is not "philanthropically inclined." The donor is inclined to find a professional who honors and supports the client's best self with strategies that realize the client's highest dream. If you can't kindle to that, go into the backroom with the scrivners.

Result

If donors, nonprofits and advisors embrace these three strategies, we will see greater total giving, happier clients, healthier families of wealth, and a more vibrant civil society. Advisors will get clients, charge fees, and manage  money not given to charity. Charities will ride a rising wealth wave.

Will these good things happen? Not likely, unless the donor takes the lead. Real outright giving is not the shortest path to an advisor payday, and giving will always be cautious without the support of advisors. To jar the situation to a higher set of outcomes, donors must go to advisors and charities not to be handled and processed, but as active partners - in fact as lead partners.

Training advisors, donors and nonprofits to get on the same page strikes me as a small scale business opportunity and potentially significant public service.  I hope Inspired Legacies and those who partner with it tend in this direction. 

Tactical Philanthropy - An Outline

Sean Stannard-Stockton, a philanthropic advisor, began today to outline the process he calls "Tactical Philanthropy." It looks like an excellent process, one that is visionary and strategic, as well as tactical. What I, following Tracy Gary, have been calling, "Inspired Legacy Planning," embodies much the same process - which is not surprising since the process has its own logic; plus Sean and I have disciplinary training in common, and are drawing on the same emerging professional body of practice. What I suspect Sean will emphasize is the importance of execution and monitoring of social investments or gifts. Philanthropic plans start with visions, or goals, some very high level, sometimes almost breathless ("a better world") but must through a disciplined process drill down to specific tactics that can be implemented, tested, and monitored. For a giver or an advisory team to hold all the moving parts in mind, and run or fund the philanthropic project in a businesslike way, no matter how high flown the goals, is truly not only a challenge, but a discipline that is only now taking shape. When you see it as a matter of the donor's resources (financial, intellectual, social) and a hierarchy of real world results the giver seeks, you begin to see nonprofits as just one of many ways to effect change.  As donors turn to advisors like Sean, community foundations and nonprofits will have to adjust. No longer will a "major gift" per se necessarily be the default choice. Increasingly you will see donors, with the assistance of philanthropic advisors, reaching down into the projects funded through nonprofits and asking, "How can I get the results of this project achieved more cost effectively, better, and faster, without having to go through these, perhaps, sluggish, wasteful, and disorganized intermediaries?" I do not know Sean yet personally, but he strikes me as the kind of intellect that will not accept stock answers or stock pitches from the nonprofit the donor may have funded in the past. I suspect he would be asking hard questions about dollars in and results out. And he would be presenting his clients with thoughtful alternatives, including for-profit alternatives, to traditional giving strategies through traditional nonprofits. I will be interested to see how his series of posts on this topic plays out. I would be particularly interested in case studies (presumably fictionalized) showing how the process of tactical philanthropy works in practice.