615 N. Alabama St.
Indianapolis
IN 46203
April 4, 2024
I Don’t Know Anything about You…How to Introduce Gift Planning into Conversations with Real People
Presented by Pamela Davidson
Most often charities, their staff and Board members have no idea how to introduce gift planning into a conversation with a prospect except the occasional suggestion of including the charity in a will. This session will address that need, using scripted sentences to introduce gift planning ideas and concepts to most individuals by talking in the universal language of assets and personal planning goals. We rarely know the specific asset holdings of our prospects and donors nor their capacity to give nor much about their personal planning goals. This session will offer statements to elicit those leads in a visit with a prospect, using asset choices and planning goals and NOT the technical aspects of planned gifts to start a meaningful conversation and cultivation. An answer key for each statement is included, what planned gifts might meet that need and with that asset.
Over Pamela’s thirty+ year career, she has made countless presentations throughout Indiana and nationally to development professionals, planned giving councils, estate and tax attorneys, accountants and financial planners, and to prospects and donors about gift planning and charitable giving techniques. She is known for her motivational and empowering message stated in practical and pragmatic terms, about gift planning advantages and options that can benefit individuals, families and valued charities, and the essential ingredient of “how to do what you want to do.” After graduating in the top 10% of her law school class in 1979, Pamela was an examiner in the Estate and Gift Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service, and later practiced business, corporate and probate law with an Indianapolis law firm before joining the nonprofit sector in 1985. She began her nonprofit career at the Indiana University Foundation, spending 11 years there. She helped increase their planned gift expectancies fourfold in only a few years as Director. She next spent three years consulting as a charitable gift planner before starting her own firm in 1999, specializing in gift planning, planned giving program design and implementation, and training.