Ten Commandments of Planned Giving Marketing

Over the past ten work days Phyllis Freedman, an independent fundraising consultant specializing in planned giving marketing, has been sharing her ten commandments for at The Planned Giving Blogger. They’re wonderful and we should all have them pinned up on our corkboards or written on our whiteboards or as the home screen of our smart-devices, depending on our age and how we post reminders!

I’ll share them here, but there’s a longer discussion and marketing examples on the blog.

I: Thou shall rethink what 60, 70, 80 & even 90 look like

II: Thou shall use a serif font/large pt size

III: Thou shall not reverse white type out of color

IV: Thou shall speak plain English; omit the technical

V: Thou shall design for “skimmers”

VI: Thou shall address unspoken donor objections

VII: Thou shall always include suggested language

VIII: Thou shall make the materials your own

IX: Thou shall use testimonials

X: Thou shall always incorporate a call to action Phyllis has asked for your additional commandments to add to her own.

Visit her blog to see the commandment I’ve contributed. Let’s keep this discussion going since it’s such an important one.

Katherine Swank is a consultant for Target Analytics. You may reach her at katherine.swank@blackbaud.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katherine Swank, J.D.

Katherine has over 30 years of experience in the fundraising industry as a consultant, development officer and advancement team manager. As a member of Blackbaud’s analytics consulting team for over a decade, she facilitates strategic, client-facing content for Blackbaud’s custom modeling, wealth screening, and prospect research solutions to enhance clients’ development efforts with data-driven strategies.  Before assuming this role, she served as the national director of gift planning at
the National Multiple Sclerosis Society home office. Katherine has raised over $200 million during her career. She is a past president of the Colorado Planned Giving Roundtable, a former lawyer and also served as an affiliation faculty member at Regis University where she taught development-related courses at the master’s level for more than 10 years. She is a frequent speaker at BBCON, NACGP, Apra, AFP and other industry conferences.