The annual fund can be the most exciting, nerve wracking and ultimately fulfilling aspects of fundraising. Just remember to plan ahead, be prepared and then be flexible! Encouraging your donors to "follow the money" is the most effective way I know to bore down from checkbook giving to philanthropic partnerships.
Any organization which is considering a commitment of staff time and resources to building a planned giving program should begin by focusing on the simplest and most popular form of planned gifts: bequests.
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The increase of personal affluence and wealth has put before increasing numbers of people the opportunity to decide something substantial: whether and how they wish to move from an emphasis on the quantity of their wants to the quality of their needs. The implication for charitable giving is that we will increasingly find affluent and wealthy individuals across all generations and business backgrounds tending either to freely give as a path to care for others and happiness for themselves, or to politely meet quotas. In an environment of liberty, giving that is extracted will be resisted; giving that is invited as a way for donors to identify with the fate of others will be honored. Some charities have up to now been too much like some churches. Because charities feel they are doing God's work, they think they can tell others what to do. Like those churches, charities will always find adherents who will do some of what they are told, but even then many do so only grudgingly. Those churches and charities that offer a freely chosen and nurturing path--one combining personal happiness and care of others--will fulfill their mission. Those that don't, even when they appear successful, will accomplish only a fraction of their potential.
Discover what Paul Schervish and John Havens reveal in
Read Paul Schervish's recent editorial on estate tax in The Chronicle of
Check out The Chronicle of Philanthropy's article on Giving on a Grand
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CharityAmerica Welcomes Paul Schervish is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Welfare Research Institute (SWRI) at Boston College. Schervish is well known to many for his most recent report, Millionaires and the Millennium: New Estimates of the Forthcoming Wealth Transfer and the Prospects for a Golden Age of Philanthropy. John Havens, Senior Research Associate at SWRI is co-author of Millionaires and the Millennium. The study estimates the wealth transfer over the next half century to be between $41 trillion and $136 trillion.  Ask the Experts. Do you have a question about wealth and philanthropy? The Social Welfare Research Institute (SWRI) http://www.bc.edu/swri is a multidisciplinary research center at Boston College specializing in the study of wealth, philanthropy, spirituality, and other aspects of cultural life in an age of affluence. Founded in 1970, SWRI is a recognized authority on the relation between economic wherewithal and philanthropy, the motivations for charitable involvement, and the underlying meaning and practice of care.
Recommended Readings:
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Who Owns Wealth in the United States? Non-married (i.e. single, divorced, separated, widowed) women own 11.9% of total individual wealth (that is, personally held wealth) in the US, and there are almost twice as many unmarried women as men in the US: 28.2 million women and 14.6 million men. More. . . Social Welfare Research Institute The Modern Medici: Patterns, Motivations, and Giving Strategies of the Wealthy A River Rises in Eden: Exploring the Quotidian Tributaries of the Moral Citizenship of Care (February 2000) Millionaires and the Millennium: New Estimates of the Forthcoming Wealth Transfer and the Prospects for a Golden Age of Philanthropy. (October 19, 1999). Social Participation and Charitable Giving: A Multivariate Analysis.
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There is fascination and suspicion about the wealthy. Yet there is a dearth of material in which the wealthy speak for themselves about the meaning of their lives. Gospels of Wealth is the first book to have a broad range of wealthy individuals recount their lives in detail. 
He plants the tree to serve another age. Philanthropy Interactive at CharityAmerica.com engages, questions, and responds to individual and organizational needs as American philanthropy is being redefined in the new millennium.
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Advanced Wealth Transfer Under New Tax Estate Planning at
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