Fidelity came out earlier this year with a very interesting survey entitled The Giving Gap – which looked at “awareness and use of charitable giving methods and vehicles among affluent and high-net-worth donors, and how wealth, stage of life, age, and advisor relationships impact how they give.” Click this link to see the entire report: https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/docs/the-giving-gap.pdf

There is too much to address in this blog post so I will focus on the above graphic: bottom line is that higher net wealth individuals are not as knowledgeable about giving options as you would think.  WE need to educate!

Here is one more graphic from the report – To me, the story of the below chart is the two lowest percentages of “use” on the chart both have to do with IRA and retirement accounts – that’s one huge area of education that you and your fundraisers should be talking up!

Read that report and let it digest. So far, my take is that we need to really step up our efforts to introduce the basics of gift planning options to all of our prospects.