High net wealth

Planned Giving for High Net Wealth Prospects

If you have ever worked with (as an adviser, fundraiser, or whatever) a high net wealth family (tens of millions and up), you’ll know this is different territory than even your regular major gift donor.

For the past 13 years, in addition to being a Planned Giving consultant, I’ve moonlighted as a Trusts & Estates attorney/go-fer for a high net wealth family.  This work initially was sporadic but as the windfalls started exceeding the billion dollar mark (and the wealth transfers in the hundreds of millions), this client has essentially become a job.
With all of my exposure to the highest net wealth family planning issues, the schemes from planners/promoters being pitched, and witnessing first hand what works and what doesn’t, I have decided to share this insider view in my newest webinar: Planned Giving for High Net Wealth Prospects (this Wednesday at 12 NOON EASTERN).
Our goal for this session is to help you start developing a successful approach to presenting Planned Giving ideas to your wealthiest supporters.  But, don’t expect the same old planned giving.

Giving Gap (Fidelity high net wealth survey) – What can we learn?

giving-gap-image

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!giving-gap-image-2

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.