As a child with toy trains I noticed they came in more than one gauge. Some were narrow, some wide, and you had to pick. If you had friends with another gauge train set they could not connect with your set. That struck me as maddening. Now that I do charitable planning, I notice the same. The attorneys have a process, and the trains run smoothly down their track. Nonprofits who do planned giving have a length of track to run on. So do financial planners. So do insurance people doing estate tax planning. But it is as if we had not only different beginning and ending points for our processes, but also different gauge tracks. So, even when the tracks intersect, the goods have to be unloaded and repacked, or the tracks have to run parallel. To uplift the field's productivity, we need increasingly to adopt processes which are for the donor "end to end" and seamless.
Ideally, a common vision, vocabulary, and process for advisors, donors, and nonprofits, will emerge as a key "deliverable" of Inspired Legacies as it convenes the various stakeholders to this field. For the time being, we have to work on stopgap measures, like running a train on two sets of wheels, letting one down, and pulling the other up, as we pass from gauge to gauge. To sense this, ask, "How do I make my ideals active in my financial life so that I have real impact on society for the better?" Ask that of your CPA, or your attorney, or your financial advisor, and you will sense, very often, that you have a "break of gauge." (The nonprofit will answer, "Glad you asked, give to us." The others may ask, "You mean you want a tax deduction?")
Comments