Advanced Fundraising Strategies and Planned Giving

One of the key elements of a well-rounded, sustainable nonprofit development program is a long-term, mission-driven strategy for creating and retaining individual donor relationships. Depending on their interests, financial capacity, and life stages, donors are potentially the most important source of long-term support to an organization. Establishing these relationships may require significant time, attention, and resources but they can also generate transformative gifts and create meaningful legacies for the organization’s most supportive donors. Students will learn to recognize the donors’ key characteristics and motivations and how they may shift over time. They will evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of making gifts through bequests, charitable gift annuities, charitable trusts, donor-advised funds, and real estate. The role of marketing, data mining, events, social media, stewardship, professional advisors, and community foundations will all be examined as determinants of the success of legacy planning and complex gift strategies.