384: How to Launch a Planned Giving Program in One Week (Tony Martignetti)

Episode 384: How to Launch a Planned Giving Program in One Week (Tony Martignetti)

Episode Summary

Small and mid-sized nonprofits routinely tell themselves that planned giving belongs to hospitals and universities, that it takes a lawyer and a brochure to begin, and that raising it with a donor means starting a conversation about death. Tony Martignetti, founder of Planned Giving Accelerator and host of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, has worked in planned giving since 1997 and spent more than twenty years consulting almost exclusively with small and mid-sized shops, and he takes apart every one of those assumptions here. He walks through the three-step, one-week launch at the center of his new book: query your database for loyalty rather than capacity, including the donor whose average gift is five dollars sustained across twenty-five years; start with gifts in wills and nothing else; then ask three to five of those donors, face to face, whether they would consider including you in their will, and stop talking. Listeners will walk away with a program they can launch next week, with no wealth screening and no legal expertise required.

About Tony

Tony Martignetti is the founder of Planned Giving Accelerator, through which he has devoted his practice to launching planned giving programs at small and mid-sized nonprofits, and the author of Planned Giving Accelerated, publishing September 15. He went to law school, practiced for two years, disliked it enough to re-engineer his career entirely, and entered planned giving in 1997 as a frontline fundraiser and director of planned giving, first at a college and then at a university, before beginning his consulting work in 2003. He has hosted Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio for more than sixteen years, covering the full range of what small and mid-sized shops wrestle with, and his stated goal is to help at least a thousand organizations start a planned giving program. He is also, by his own description, an Italian and a big hugger, the kind of fundraiser who will get up and embrace a donor who has just said yes.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium: inperium.org
• Tony’s new book, Planned Giving Accelerated, publishing September 15 wherever books are sold. Join the waitlist at plannedgivingaccelerated.com
• Tony’s website, home to his Planned Giving Accelerator work and his podcast, Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio: tonymartignetti.com
• Tony's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tonymartignetti
• Book recommendation: Planned Giving Simplified by Robert F. Sharpe Sr. (Wiley)
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership | ArmstrongMcGuire.com