When Kim Callinan was promoted to CEO of Compassion & Choices a year ago, she made many changes. One of them, she learned from fundraisers, was unusual: She immediately directed more of the group’s resources toward planned giving.
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In an average year, the advocacy nonprofit, which promotes patients’ rights and treatment options at the end of life, gets about $1 million in bequests from its supporters. Over two decades, the group has raised $26 million in planned gifts, roughly 90 percent of that in bequests and trusts.
For most of that time, Callinan says, that money came in without the organization doing much. Now, however, with its first full-time planned-giving officer, an additional $75,000 investment in marketing, and a new push to create a culture of philanthropy at the organization, Callinan believes she could see the annual revenue from planned gifts at least double.
Though the nonprofit is still crunching numbers for 2018, it looks like the gamble is paying off: Giving rose to nearly $8.5 million last year, up from $7 million in 2017, a rise of roughly 20 percent. A big part of the increase, the CEO says, came from bequests and other planned gifts.
Gifts for Now and Later
Compassion & Choices is almost entirely supported by individuals, including through small family foundations. With a lobbying arm as well as a charitable one, the group works to promote policies at the state level to increase end-of-life treatment options, including assisted suicide. Its donors include people who found it through experiences with the deaths of family and friends.
“We have an amazing group of very committed supporters,” Callinan says.
That’s an advantage for fundraising. But because it focuses on the end of life, the nonprofit also deals with a challenge, the CEO says: “Donors come to us later in their philanthropic career.” Fundraisers have less time for cultivating supporters, and those donors already have other claims on their philanthropy.
When Callinan took the top job after serving as chief program officer, she gathered feedback from supporters to help build a strategic plan that the nonprofit launched publicly in July. To promote it, she and Linda Roth Platt, chief development officer, hit the road to discuss it with supporters.
Upon taking charge, Callinan also began to put in place plans to create a culture of philanthropy throughout the organization, making it clear that bringing in resources to further the mission was part of every employee’s job.
To start, she says, all of the staff’s job descriptions were revised: “There was a line within every person’s job description to indicate that they had a role to play in helping to garner enthusiasm.”
When program employees or volunteers go out to do presentations, they are asked to mention that gifts make the organization’s work possible and distribute fundraising brochures.
Callinan introduced a “double ask” protocol for fundraising discussions. When she or a major-gift officer meet with a donor, “we talk both about the opportunity to contribute now and after they’re no longer here. We almost always have both conversations with a donor.” As a result, fundraisers have discovered that a lot of supporters have already included Compassion & Choices in their estate plans; others have welcomed the chance to do so.
Direct mail helps make the case. A quarterly newsletter focuses on the stories of people who have made a bequest and includes information about the group’s impact. People can request a free estate-planning guide. The tone is warm, informative, and authentic and doesn’t gin up an artificial sense of crisis or urgency. “We don’t cry wolf when there isn’t a big, bad wolf,” says Platt.
The Importance of a Thank-You
A “gratitude program” has been part of Callinan’s efforts to focus on philanthropy. The program staff members at Compassion & Choices are also asked to thank donors they work with through the charity’s programs.
“There was a disconnect with people who volunteered and also gave. They would get thanked through the general thank-you process, but they wouldn’t necessarily get thanked by the person they were volunteering with,” Callinan says. “So it left the general impression with that donor that their volunteer support was more important than their financial support because that human interaction wasn’t taking place.” Managers of volunteers are now notified about gifts.
Imbuing the organization’s 10 board members with an understanding of their role in fundraising took patience but has paid off. “You have to meet people where they are,” Platt says.
Some board members were hesitant about asking their friends or even current donors for money. Asking them to make simple thank-you calls helped them get started.
“Once they thanked someone and had those conversations, they saw ‘that wasn’t so hard. Yeah, I could call them back again,’ " Callinan says. Trustees were also paired with gift officers so they could see how to make a request for support.
Now all of the trustees participate in fundraising, Platt says. “We have a couple of board members, I would almost call them gift officers. They’ve built such terrific relationships with donors that it’s made a difference in our work.”
Trustees’ involvement has helped speed up the cultivation process. With current donors who are being courted for bigger gifts, Platt says, “usually you go in, and you get the sense, we’re not going to make an ask at this first meeting. But if a board member has been talking to that donor, you go in, you can make the ask at the first meeting — and they actually increase their giving.”
