Gift Hub

Meeting the Challenges of Wealth

How to Beat the Midas Curse, by Marilyn Gardner from the The Christian Science Monitor.  How well money is transfered to heirs is the topic of estate planning. But how well is the money received? And what discipline coaches and mentors heirs? Maybe that is called financial parenting, but increasingly it is a subject important to advisors in the emerging discipline of values-based planning. Often philanthropy plays a key role in teaching children how to handle money responsibly as active citizens.

Voluntourism

Volunteer in places like New Orleans. Sight see and do good.  Volunteer by day and party by night. Not a bad idea for  travel related business ventures. Here is the history of this successful social venture.

Inspired Legacies

At last! Here is Tracy Gary's new nonprofit, "Inspired Legacies." I approached her a couple of years ago, asking "Where are all the progressives when it comes to legacies and planned gifts? Why do I not see more?" From that conversation Inspired Legacies has evolved as a nonprofit devoted to helping donors, nonprofits and advisors (from all parts of our diverse society) contribute towards a better world. 

How is Tracy different? Well, she is a donor herself. She is not in it for the money. She speaks of caritas, with a smile and of justice with indignation and with hope. When it comes to wisdom, that level of understanding of giving that cannot be taught, branded or commodified, Tracy is among the very few you can hire to spend a day with advisors, donors, or forprofits, clueing them into what it is really all about.  She would admonish me not to say it, since it sounds like humbug but to be with Tracy is something of a spiritual experience. You sense that she is completely aligned at a deep personal level with a ministry of love and concern for those less fortunate, for the fate of our democracy,  and for that of our poor suffering planet.  As she now moves from working with donors on current giving, into working with donors, advisors and firms on catalyzing legacy dollars, she will bring a civic perspective much needed in our "industry." If giving were just dollars and legal work we would not need Tracy, any more that we would need wisdom if we were just meat on two hooves.

National Charitable Institute

NCI

The National Charitable Insitute (NCI) is mounting a national capital campaign to raise a minimum of $100 billion for America’s charities by 2016, through the efforts of highly-skilled and experienced wealth-planning professionals—attorneys, CPAs, insurance professionals, and financial planners—to empower thousands of charitable officers to motivate their wealthiest donor families.

Look out world! The players behind this deal are significant.  Heritage Institute, Crescendo, and Donor Motivation Seminars are allied with Reno and Esperti in what looks to me like a major national effort to "brand," commodify, franchise and dominate the cottage industries we call planned giving, or donor centered philanthropy.  Look for a "Benefactor" team of professionals (a JD, Life Agent, CPA , and a Financial Advisor) to be pounding on your door this year if you are a charity with access to high end donors. "Doing well by doing good" is the motto. Given the price of forming a "Benefactor Team"  (about what it costs to send a kid to a good college for a year, split among the 3-4 members ), the Benefactors had better do well by doing good.   I am scheduled for a conference call with NCI and will follow their development with great interest.

Overall, I believe the days of planned giving and gift planning as an idealistic but sleepy cottage industry are about over. Commodification, branding, consolidation, critical mass and growing to scale are the next phase. Followed by that will be - who knows? Maybe winnowing the good providers from the not-so-good and a growing awareness that gift planning is among other things a wisdom discipline, not unlike teaching, preaching or poetry. What can be commodified will be, and what will remain will be the still small voice of the holy spirit.

Anyway, I do wish NCI well and believe there is plenty of room to just make all of us in the gift and financial advisory world more competent, better equipped and better supported in working with nonprofits, donors and causes. The inspirational element, the thirst for caritas and justice, the love of particular causes, will not be branded, optimized and packaged. You are more likely to find it in the wilderness among the crazies, and among the underpaid nonprofit types. But crazy idealists and underpaid staff without support systems can't easily get the job done either when it comes to complex planning around large gifts by wealthy families. Blending the cultures of civic service with that of planning and sales is a work in progress. The next big move is towards national programs set up like chains or franchises.

As a nonprofit, are you ready for this professionalization and commercialization of legacy giving? Will you join in, hold out, or try to differentiate your efforts? Some of your key donors will be asking.

Iraq and Perception Management: Questions for Funders

Veterans March to New Orleans

Walkin' to New Orleans VETERANS AND SURVIVORS MARCH FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE From Mobile to New Orleans March 14-19, 2006.... Every bomb dropped in Iraq explodes in New Orleans. (Via Tom Matrullo).

If you were a public spirited supporter of corporate democracy and you had $1,000,000 you could use to manage public perception of the growing mess where would you put it?

• Bribe or intimidate the media not to cover the event
• Do an ad campaign in the media who cooperate
• Hire the Rendon Group or other firm to plant stories in the domestic media
• Use philanthropic dollars to spin the story through Hudson Foundation or Heritage
• Hire a hack from some think tank to go on tv with the message disciplined story
• Subsidize a scholarly work by the hack
• Create a nonprofit to harass the protesters and question their patriotism
• Arm a skinhead militia to meet the vets with bayonets
• Beef up the police in NOLA with the latest protest suppression gear
• Hire troublemakers and plant them within the protest to discredit the effort
• Hire a conservative Legal Foundation to sue the organizers
• Make it into a religious contribution and have Dr. Reverend Jerome Jowells explain that Katrina was the wrath of God against homosexuals
• Build a freedom pen and have the police herd demonstrators inside the wire
• Hire misfits to dress up in stupid costumes; have a film crew make the demonstrators look like freaks and hippies; provide the footage to the media
• Create a group called The Terrorist Coalition and have them endorse the march
• Hire private detectives and create dossiers on the leaders; share with Homeland Security
• Hire a fund-raising staff and go after the big money and do all these things and more.

White Courtesy Telephone Now Open

Now we can discuss philanthropy!  Glauco (Albert) Ruesga is online. Just ring the white courtesy telephone and ask your most pressing philanthropic questions. My questions basically revolve around etiquette. Is it ok to wear penny loafers to the Crystal Charity Ball in Dallas? I mean, if I am parking cars?   

Drik

Drik Images of Change:

Drik is part of a world wide network of organizations  campaigning for human rights and social change through photography, information technology and media activism. It also provides support for creative individuals who challenge the hegemony of Western media.

Classfied

Via Resource Generation:

Classified is a guide for people with class privilege who are tired of cover-ups, who are ready to dig through the buried files and figure out how their privilege really works. Complete with comics, exercises and personal stories, Classified gives readers the tools they need to stop hiding their privilege and instead put it to work.

You can in fact download the entire book for free.  I passed it on to Candidia, Supreme Goddess of the Free Market, who said, "Why hide your class privilege when you can rub it in?  Limousine liberals make this all so hard. Privilege is just money in jackboots. Enjoy!"

Open Agenda Org

An open grassroots approach to giving, apparently by one person ("who in this case is Brian") doing his giving in open conversation with others on the net. A refreshing change from traditional givers who seek "safe places." Perhaps the open agenda sponsor will learn the lessons of his predecessors and seek a lower profile and safer and more sequestered places, or perhaps traditional donors might be more willing to give in public so others can learn from their efforts.

Satirists In Service to Wealth

The March 6th issue of The New Yorker has an amusing cartoon in which an apparently middle class woman is sitting at a kitchen table saying to her middle-aged mate, "I guess I just have always tried to see the good in rich people." She may have point, I am sure from the advertisements in the magazine that rich people are ok with the editors. But beyond that, seeing the best in "persons of wealth" is what makes philanthropy both possible and inspiring. Seeing the worst is what makes satire possible, but I will leave that to disreputable types like The Happy Tutor. His colleague, Missy Proctor, may yet become a major donor. Personally, as a consultant, I am proud to serve her in whatever way she feels is most appropriate. Without the rich we would be out of business, and the customer is always right. (Inspirational rhetoric and satire may both be ways to find and motivate the client's better angel, just as Jonathan Swift wrote sermons as well as satire. And, I can only assume that he took care not to satirize the high end donors to St. Patricks Cathedral until after the building campaign was successful.)