  By Tom Pope
The school has also developed some 20 estate bequests, where donors for the first time designed the university into their wills. "This all comes from the eNewsletter we now send out where we are seeing six to 15 responses each week," said Terry Balko, director of planned giving at the school. "That compares to two to five responses each quarter when we mailed hard copy newsletters." Online technology is starting to change the way nonprofits make presentations to potential planned giving donors. And, the technology is allowing the potential donors to work through some of their questions online, in private. While the technology plants the seed of an idea, it also is providing information for donors to make more informed decisions and to ask better questions when meeting with a human planned giving officer. In Kennesaw State's case, the eNewsletter is part of a turn key Web site system called the GiftLegacy Max Plan that can be found on the nonprofit's Web site. The link goes to a vendor that supports the site's content, Camarillo, Calif.-based Crescendo Interactive. Balko attributed the success to the tool aides in the program that work together. One software function, called Crescendo Presents, allows the planned giving officer to take a laptop into a donor's home and have them view illustrations. "They control the presentation," he said. "We can input the name, date of birth, the amount of annuity they want to see, and the vehicle, it explains how it helps the donor." The tool allows for interaction. The donor can hit the space bar on the laptop, advancing the slides at the potential donor's pace. With a similar tool, called the GiftLegacy Presents Calculator, donors can run a full color personal illustration of a gift annuity or a charitable trust off of the organization's Web site. The calculator includes audio that explains each slide as the donor views it. Donors can navigate through the site to find the GiftLegacy section, where a synopsis of various types of gifts explains possible scenarios. The donor discovers information about tax-free situations, the sale of property or annuities. The prospect can click on the story and see an anecdote from an actual donor. The process also allows donors to work on their own time. Donors can input their figures in their home or office through calculators that also help the donors' professionals. The potential donor is left with flow charts and text they print out without even coming to the planned giving office. "The main benefit of the strategy allows us to cater to whatever level the donor is ready," Balko said. "We can provide a tool with information they need in a chart, a teleconference or a newsletter, because they can go directly to the site for all of the above." The tools are part of a complete marketing system with hundreds of PowerPoint slides from a library that Balko said that he uses for presentations and seminars. Balko said that the technology helps him communicate with more constituents. "We can be cost effective with time," he said. "Donors don't want to spend a lot of time with attorneys to find out information." "The donor has interactive ways of learning about gift plans," said Ardis Schultz, vice president of marketing for Crescendo Interactive. Since Balko started tracking hits on his site last year, the number increased from 40 a day to around 75 today. The cost is better, too. "We pay the same amount for the Max plan, as we did for the quarterly newsletter that reached 500 people," he said. "Now we are only limited to the number of email addresses we store and that's up to 3,500 people a week." But, it still isn't inexpensive. The GiftLegacy Max Plan which offers weekly eNewsletters, satellite teleconferences, videos, and Internet marketing seminars costs $5,000 per year. Other versions are priced for a basic level at $3,000 a year with an intermediate level at $3,500. Only an existing Web site is needed to use the technology. The donor sees the organization's color and feel, which means it's another form of branding. The site content is kept fresh with articles on personal finance, social security, and timely articles covering Washington events. Schultz said that she doesn't have figures on whether people who go to the site are likely to become donors. However, she said that the more education you give donors, the more they will want to contribute. "We're finding that people on the Internet are not overwhelmed by technology," she said. "They are shopping all around the Internet and are making puchases with the clicking process. Moreover, they are coming back with repeat visits." More bells and whistles are sounding further north at Quinnipiac University (QU) in Hamden, Conn. The planned giving office there landed a $50,000 gift annuity with a 6.6 percent pay-out rate. This gift arrived via a Web page link through a program called GiftCalcs, a program developed by Cambridge, Mass.-based PG Calc. The donor's previous gifts had been sporadic and never exceeded $100. "Technology and the ability to do research independently made this individual become a donor very quickly," said Mary Beth Congdon, director of planned giving at QU. "There was no conversation needed because he did several calculations and then emailed me the go ahead." On one hand, Congdon isn't sure if planned giving officers can expect many situations like this, but she said she believes this scenario rings true for many newer planned giving prospects. "Usually, when we close a gift there has been quite a bit of cultivation with meeting attorneys, financial planners, real estate people, and brokers during a lengthy time-consuming process," she said. On the other hand, the transaction with the donor took only one week. "An entirely new group of individuals is just learning about these gifts and want to test the waters like this donor," she said. The GiftCalcs is a Web-based calculator that provides calculations for planned gifts. Visitors to the site use the calculator to explore the potential benefits of various planned gifts. They can use the age or birth date for calculating deductions. The nonprofit can set the GiftCalcs' calculator colors to match its Web site's exact colors with the Color Picker selector. The office can display the logo and customize text. "The GiftCalcs has been particularly helpful to me because financial professionals can go right into a calculation," she said. "Many financial people might not have the easy way to obtain the approximation of the benefits of the gift." The tool reached out to potential donors not normally contacted. Congdon's surprise donor received an article about charitable gift annuities from another organization. "This person was not traditionally getting our newsletter," she said. "Larger nonprofits spend the money to advertise and it's expensive for a smaller organization to duplicate that," said Congdon. She admitted that the donor could have found out the financial details without GiftCalcs, but the process became easier with the tool. "I simply pointed him to the calculator and said that he didn't have to meet me for lunch or have to meet with financial advisors," she said. GiftCalcs has three levels of service called the Basic, Plus or Integrated. The basic allows donors to calculate but does not give the charity branding or reporting. The second level, called the Plus, gives a charity a color scheme on the page and sends a reporting package for statistical information. The cost for both run $300 for set up and $295 for an annual subscription. The third level, the Integrative, costs $500 for set up and $495 for a yearly subscription. "We do Web-scripting so the site itself takes the form of the nonprofit's page so donors will see the same color scheme, logo and look," said Gary Pforzheimer, president of PG Calc. "Branding is very important for the charity and comes with the higher level," Pforzheimer said. "A donor can walk away with a printout that shows the logo of the nonprofit and that's an extra advertisement." For the use in the donor's home, the PG Calc's Planned Giving Manager is a laptop software that provides proposals for many situations. The tool comes with toll free telephone support and online help to answer questions. The PG Calc s staff helps with up-to-date developments in planned giving. The technology is available in two smaller versions called the Mini Manager and the Gift Annuity Manager, which works just for gift annuities. The costs for each break down as: $1,295 for the Planned Giving Manager License and $595 for the annual service, $495 for the Mini Manager License with $425 for its annual service, and $300 for the Gift Annuity Manager License with $125 for the annual service. Who uses the new tools? That depends on the sophistication of the marketing of the charity. An office could be small but active and decide to use such tools. A development office might see value of the approach if it is just starting out because the approach is a relatively inexpensive way to reach out, according to Pforzheimer. Response rates How should officers look at the possible response rates? "When we mail 5,000 to obtain 50 responses and only one becomes a $50,000 donor, we consider that mailing a success," Congdon said. "This is the same." The key is to be seen. "Our challenge is to contact as many seniors as possible," said Kennesaw State's Balko. "The Internet could be intimidating if it wasn't structured the right way, but we have readable text with easy fonts that have white space to make it easy for seniors." For Balko, "this is the beginning of the process that sparks an interest for donors," he said. "It's a numbers game because the people who visit sites will be more likely to become donors in the future." Tom Pope is a New York City-based journalist who writes about management issues.
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