Collaborating with Advisors to the “Self-Made”: A Fundraiser’s Next Frontier - NPQ - Nonprofit Quarterly

Collaborating with Advisors to the “Self-Made”: A Fundraiser’s Next Frontier - NPQ - Nonprofit Quarterly: Visionary and effective planning for large gifts in the context of a donor’s ideals, overall wealth, and family situation is necessarily a team exercise. The wealthy potential donor already has advisors who call that donor a client. You will, as a nonprofit gift planner, have to work with or against advisors if you are to tap into the larger dollar. How advisors will respond to you depends on whether you have “control of the case.” To gain control, your key strength is your willingness to engage in the conversation of purpose—one to which you are well suited and well positioned, working for an organization devoted to what is best in humanity. Properly conducted, that conversation of purpose, meaning, and community will drive and redirect the otherwise dry and often self-regarding planning processes that run their course daily in the offices of attorneys, CPAs, insurance professionals, investment advisors, and others who serve the wealthy. You can lift that conversation to a higher level, with a more inclusive view of what counts as winning in life for ourselves, our families, and our communities.