Cues and Clues: What Prospects Are Telling You and What You Need to Say, Then

Donors will tell you everything you need to know—if you only listen.  This session will identify many impediments to giving, about assets and family situations prospects are mentioning, and provide a script for your response then, in real time, suggesting a gift idea that could address that concern.  Development’s role extends beyond the nonprofit’s need for the gift, to making practical suggestions as how that donor could make that gift using assets not cash. Our goal is to promote a gift conversation between many prospects and a person versed in talking about often simple gift plans funded at the right life stage, that can address those perceived impediments to giving.

Learning Objectives:

1. Emphasis on listening to what a prospect tells you as their perceived impediment to giving, or their mentioning assets, and family concerns.
2. Realization that the fundraiser can respond right then to what the prospect says, that is responsive to address that perceived impediment.
3. That the prospect can be then handed off to a collaborator like the local community foundation, for expertise the fundraiser does not have.
4. That local education about gift planning is available from our planned giving council and local colleagues you meet there, who can be helpful when needed. 

Pamela Jones Davidson, J.D., has been a nationally recognized speaker in charitable gift planning for decades.  She is President of Davidson Gift Design, Bloomington, Indiana, a consulting firm specializing in motivational presentations about all aspects of gift planning, planned giving program design and implementation, and training.  She is also a Senior Vice President for Thompson & Associates, offering estate planning services to nonprofits.  From 1985 through 1996, she was with Indiana University Foundation, its Executive Director of Planned Giving and Associate Counsel. 

Ms. Davidson received her undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1975, and graduated magna cum laude from the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis in 1979.  She was an examiner in the Estate and Gift Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service, and practiced law with an Indianapolis law firm before joining the nonprofit sector in 1985.

Ms. Davidson was the 1999 President (now, Chair) of the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (then, the National Committee on Planned Giving), after serving on its board for six years.  She was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2018, its second class, and is a member of its Leadership Institute. 

Ms. Davidson is a past board member and treasurer of the Indiana Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (now, Association of Fundraising Professionals, “AFP”), and a past board member and president of the Planned Giving Group of Indiana.  She serves on the Community Advisory Boards of both of her local public radio and television stations and on other local boards.