How to Get Volunteers Talking About Bequests
This month we take a small departure from offering advice and giving information for gift planners to give information intended for you to share with your volunteers.  You may learn something along the way, and you will need to tailor it for your own institution’s ground rules, but the purpose of this article is to provide practical information for those who come in contact with people who can help you encourage more bequest gifts.

      

• Quick Tip: BatchCalcs Lets You Aim Better with Your CGA Prospects
• Marketing Corner: How To Increase Your Planned Giving Leads
• PGM Anywhere Narratives on Their Way
• 2015 Edition of Planned Giving for Canadians Now Available
• PG Calc Welcomes Mike Valoris to Consulting Team
• The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Saves Staff Time by Using BatchCalcs for Their Mailings

Quick Tip: BatchCalcs Lets You Aim Better with Your CGA Prospects 
Our BatchCalcs service lets you add impact to your gift annuity mailings and email blasts by including personalized values, such as the annuity amounts and charitable deductions, in your message. While we are often asked to assume the same gift amount for every recipient when computing these values, it doesn’t have to be that way!

Why suggest a $10,000 gift to a donor you know is capable of giving $100,000? If you provide a target gift amount for each recipient in the data file you send to us, BatchCalcs can use that target to compute the values to insert into each message. This way, you can suggest a gift amount that matches each recipient’s ability to give.

If you can’t automatically generate a target gift amount in your data file, with only a few minutes effort, you can add one manually. Just insert a gift amount column into your Excel file, populate it with a default amount, and then edit that amount for any recipient you would like to encourage to give more.

View Sample Letters >>                 Learn more about BatchCalcs >> 

Marketing Corner: How To Increase Your Planned Giving Leads
From direct mail and advertisements to email newsletters, there are many ways to increase your planned giving leads. But there’s one powerful lead generation tactic you could be ignoring. Learn what it is in this month’s marketing corner.

PGM Anywhere Narratives on Their Way
This fall, we will add to PGM Anywhere all of the narratives that you enjoy in Planned Giving Manager (PGM). This means that wherever you’re running PGM Anywhere - on your tablet, on your laptop, or on your desktop computer - you will be able to produce gift annuity agreements, gift descriptions, proposal letters, IRS election statements, and all the other narratives you depend on in PGM.

If you are one of the many PGM clients for whom we have created custom narratives, not to worry. PGM Anywhere will be able to produce them just as easily as our standard narratives. It will take just a minute or two to load each custom narrative in PGM Anywhere, and then you’ll be ready to go!

Not using PGM Anywhere yet? PGM clients can sign up here >>

2015 Edition of Planned Giving for Canadians Now Available
We are very pleased to announce the release of the 2015 update to Planned Giving for Canadians, an essential resource manual for any gift planner with Canadian donors.

This update incorporates a number of changes, notably the new options for crediting charitable bequests starting in 2016, the new exemption of gain in gifts of proceeds from the sale of real estate and privately-owned shares beginning in 2017, new drafts of charitable remainder and charitable income trusts in English, and comprehensive information about operating a gift annuity program.

Planned Giving for Canadians is available directly through PG Calc or through membership in the Canadian Association of Gift Planners / Association Canadienne des Professionnels en Dons Planifiés.

PG Calc Welcomes Mike Valoris to Consulting Team
PG Calc is pleased to announce that the firm’s Consulting Department has hired Mike Valoris as a senior consultant. Mike will be based in a home office in Philadelphia and his first day was August 17.

Mike was a sole practitioner practicing law in Philadelphia. He joined the American Friends Service Committee in 1998 eventually rising to the position of Director of Gift Planning. Mike was at Swarthmore College as Director of Gift Planning from 2005 to 2013 and he was most recently the Executive Director, Gift Planning at Temple University.

Mike’s experience as a front-line gift planner and director of three active gift planning programs has taught him that the most successful planned giving programs – and planned gifts - require collaboration.

Mike has had broad responsibilities at all of the organizations where he has led gift planning programs, including ensuring best practices and efficiency in gift planning administration, legal compliance, stewardship of legacy circle members, multi-channel marketing efforts, and liaison among legal, investment, and custodian bank professionals.

Mike will be a great addition to PG Calc’s team of planned giving consultants. Please join us in welcoming Mike to PG Calc.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Saves Staff Time by Using BatchCalcs for Their Mailings
For the past three years, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has been regularly using BatchCalcs to personalize their gift annuity mailings. After working with PG Calc on several BatchCalcs projects, Lindsey Torres, Planned Giving Specialist, was impressed by the service:

"Prior to using Batchcalcs for our mailings, our staff ran calculations for all of our current annuitants individually, which typically took an entire day, if not longer. BatchCalcs saved us this staff time, and the price was very reasonable. PG Calc’s customer service and turnaround time is great, which made it easy to complete the project!"

Learn more about The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation  >>
Learn more about BatchCalcs personalized prospect mailings >>