Featured Article: What to Do With That Life Insurance Policy Where Premiums Are Still Owed?

Gifts of life insurance sometimes come with a significant caveat: premiums need to be paid. In some cases, the financial costs outweigh the benefits. Here’s what you should take into account when conducting your analysis of a gift of life insurance.

• QUICK TIP: Improve the Visual Experience of Your Website 
• Webinar Guest Presenters Receive High Marks
• Join Us at This Year's National Conference on Philanthropic Planning
• MARKETING CORNER: Move Your Planned Giving Program Forward in 10 Minutes
• Connect with Your Gift Annuity Donors and Prospects This Fall
• Mercy Home Receives Many Benefits From Custom Traning

QUICK TIP: Improve the Visual Experience of Your Website 

The trend in web design today is a clean, easy-to-use site that includes fresh content. This means your site should have plenty of white space. Don’t jam pack it with links or side column filler. Keep the margins clean. You don't want to overwhelm your readers with too much information. Planned giving can already be intimidating enough to some prospective donors.

In marketing, we often say "the more choices you offer, the easier it is to choose nothing." Choice can paralyze, so be careful with how you deliver your message. To avoid confusion, build pathways on your site so your prospects can identify topics relevant to them, without spending too much time hunting around on your site.

So what are you waiting for?

Log in to your website and clean up the clutter. Make your pages simple, use visuals that aid in understanding, and don't overwhelm your readers.

Webinar Guest Presenters Receive High Marks

We’ve been pleased to feature a string of esteemed guest presenters for our Webinars recently, and their presentations have been very well received, even by our high standards. Frank Minton, industry luminary and former PG Calcer, presented “Problem Solving with Planned Gifts” in July. The following month, Professor Russell James from Texas Tech University, who has been creating a buzz at conferences around the country, expanded on his research findings with “Communicating Effectively about Planned Gifts: What 5000+ Test Subjects Tell Us” in August. And during the same months, veteran gift planner Craig Wruck reprised his popular 4-part “Fundamentals of Planned Giving” course, a fantastic introduction to the field.

If you or your colleagues missed the live sessions, or if you attended and would like a copy to keep on hand as a resource for your staff, recordings of these and all previous PG Calc Webinars are available for purchase. The recordings are available either on CD or online at a cost of $150 per recording (the “Fundamentals” series costs $375). 

Frank Minton

Craig Wruck

Russell James

 Learn more or order a webinar recording >>

Join Us at This Year's National Conference on Philanthropic Planning

Donors' philanthropic plans are always evolving. That's why PPP's National Conference is a wise career investment — and one of the best ways to keep on top of trends in charitable gift planning.

We're excited to learn from some of the experts in the field of gift planning, including Frank Minton, head of Frank Minton Consulting, LLC and Russell James, Professor of Financial Planning at Texas Tech University. We hope to see you in Anaheim this October!

Click here for more information on the conference >> 

MARKETING CORNER: Move Your Planned Giving Program Forward in 10 Minutes

Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. Here’s what you can do right now to identify and cultivate your planned giving prospects.

Read more on PG Calc's Marketing Corner >> 

Connect with Your Gift Annuity Donors and Prospects This Fall

It's the season when gift annuity donors and prospects start planning for year-end donations, so reach out! Our BatchCalcs service makes communication more effective by producing calculations personalized for each of your recipients. Sending with BatchCalcs is a fast, easy, and affordable way to create persuasive postal or email mailings. Contact Dave Wolfe at dave@pgcalc.com or 888-497-4970 to optimize your fall mailings.

Mercy Home Receives Many Benefits From Custom Training

We partnered with Angela Stochl, Director of Planned Giving at Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, to provide a custom training session for her organization. She had this to say about her experience:

We asked PG Calc to provide one and a half days of onsite custom training, covering both gift planning and gift administration. The challenges for our organization were: varying technology skill sets, varying degrees of understanding the entire gift annuity process from the first marketing piece to the ultimate death of a donor, and the varying uses of GiftWrap and Planned Giving Manager between our Advancement office and Finance department.  

Our session was not only valuable in helping staff use the software more effectively, it brought us closer together as a team to better serve our donors and to make things easier during our audit. Jeffrey Frye [Senior Client Services Advisor at PG Calc] made sure participants from Development and Finance ended with a better understanding of how our roles influence and benefit one another. Furthermore, we learned about some features we weren’t aware of that are helping us to get a real sense of what our annuity and bequest revenue will be in years to come, making long-term planning easier for our Board and our Office of the President.  

Jeffrey’s ability to understand the bigger picture and to integrate different areas of concern for our organization made the training much more beneficial; this is the additional value that PG Calc brings to the table. Jeffrey continues to provide the highest quality service to our team and we remain very grateful for his dedication.   

Learn more about Mercy Home >>
Learn more about our custom training options >>