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. 

Comments

[Gerry]

It is wonderful to see the work that you and Tracy are advancing, I'm sure with the help of many others, move from concept to reality. I'm sure you are right that it is up to the donors.

How does this piece relate to the coordination of other resources, the coordinated time of diverse expert volunteers, for example. Besides our connection to GiftHub and the extended network of people in and around philanthropy, we have few connections to money; plenty of interrelated skills, but time that is constrained by the need to hold a day job. And yet some of us may have a family member who has enough financial wealth to benefit from donor training. Will you offer a class we can invite them to enroll in?

[Phil]

I am hoping to find a venue in Dallas for talking to donors, nonprofits, and advisors, about how they can better coordinate for mutual advantage, and the good of society. Once we get the act down, maybe we can take it on the road. Tracy Gary's book, Inspired Legacies, is a good place for a donor to start. Also Wealth in Families by Charles Collier.

[Dan Bassill]

Gerry asked "will you offer a class...?"

I posted a link today to a web site titled "Center for Problem-Oriented Policing" The page I pointed to is "how to research a problem".
http://www.popcenter.org/Tools/tool-researchingProblem.htm

I feel that the training donors might seek is available, in numerous sites like this. We need to coach people into a process of learning, as a means of gaining information that they use to innovate solutions to problems. This coaching should start as future donors and leaders are kids, going through k-16 schooling. It should continue as life-long learning.

If donors, volunteers, parents, kids, and other stakeholders to a problem, any problem, are learning from the same information, they can begin to converge on some shared visions, with each acting based on his own understanding of the problem and solution(s), and his own set of assets and abilities.

You can find more links like this at http://tinyurl.com/2af5p9

[Phil]

Getting us all to share a conceptual map in a given issue area makes great sense. You would think that foundations would collaborate to create such maps, but such collaboration is apparently rare.

Donor training within an issue area presupposes that donors are already interested in that area. Many of those who might become key donors are not yet in touch with their own charitable passion.

What we need, clearly, is a map of the maps, as well as a process for leading a potential donor to an awakening of their own vision and passion, through the tools and techniques of giving as part of an overall financial and estate plan, to a specific giving plan within an issue area geared to impact.

There is a lot to all this. Today some people do one bit, others do another bit, but few ever get through the whole process. That is a remediable dysfunction, but one we are only beginning to address in working with donors, advisors, and fundraisers.