Navigating Planned Gift Conversations with Your Donors

America is on the edge of “The Great Wealth Transfer.” The Baby Boomer generation will recede over the next thirty years and pass over $30 trillion to subsequent generations. Well-timed gift planning conversations will ensure non-profits aren’t left out of that process. Are you comfortable bringing up the topic of a planned gift with a long-time supporter of your mission? Are you prepared to respond effectively if a donor mentions he’s thinking of including your organization in his will? Or if she says she’s considering making your institution the beneficiary of her insurance policy? Or if he has already provided for your cause in his living trust but doesn’t want to share a crumb of paperwork? If your answer is, at best, “I’m not sure,” you’re not alone.

This session will help you feel more at ease in these conversations by offering you prompts and specific suggestions you can call on during your own donor work, including language for:

• Situations where a donor is only thinking about one of these gift commitments versus when a donor has already “completed” one of them
• Ensuring a gift commitment is structured appropriately/written in a way that matches a donor’s intent,
• Exploring a gift commitment’s value or donor’s privacy preferences,
• Asking for documentation from a donor’s estate planning documentation, and
• Stewarding a planned gift commitment long after it’s been recorded.

Presenter: 

Jason James Shuba, JD, Director of Gift Planning, University of Illinois Foundation

Jason liaisons with advancement staff at UIC, UI Health and Illinois’ Gies College of Business to help alumni and friends make complex, deferred, and non-cash, tax-wise gifts to benefit the University of Illinois. Since joining UIF, he’s improved the University’s gift planning efforts through systematizing the lead follow-up process, crafting more than a dozen from-scratch giving vehicle reference sheets, and designing a one-of-a-kind deferred revocable gift documentation guidance process. Jason previously served five years as a Sr. Gift Planning Officer with the American National Red Cross where he reinvigorated the organization’s dormant gift planning program in its Greater Chicago Region. He earned his Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University and Bachelor of Arts cum laude in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (P.P.E.) from Denison University. Jason keeps an active Illinois law license, runs six days a week, and really wants you to talk with you about the “Black Mirror” episode “San Junipero.”