How a Gift To Your Church Can Also Solve A Problem

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had just started to read, “The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks”, by Harvey McKinnon. Because I have over 20,000 face-to-face interviews under my belt in the financial and estate planning arena, I figured I could come up with my own eleven questions. However, my questions would be questions donors should be asking, but don’t.

Now that I have finished the book, I can report that Mr. McKinnon relays many more than eleven questions than his book title purports. I didn’t count them, but there could be a hundred. This is an excellent book and I recommend it for anyone who is involved in fundraising for his or her church.

The plethora of questions is going to make it even more difficult for me to come up with my own eleven, despite the fact I am taking a different slant. My list consists of questions people don’t ask because they don’t know enough about the subject matter. Nevertheless, I’m going to give it my best shot.

My first question people should be asking was, “How can I make a gift to my church without disinheriting my children”?

Today, my second question is, “How can making a gift to my church also solve a problem I have”?

This may sound a little self-serving, but, hey, we’re all human. From a practical point of view, why wouldn’t someone be interested in making a gift if a pressing problem was simultaneously solved?

More important, if you are a fundraiser for your church, wouldn’t you have a better chance at securing a gift if the process of making the gift also solved a donor’s problem?

The key to making this happen is two-fold. First, you have to determine what problem(s) your donor has. This is a skill and topic all to itself. It involves asking questions and patiently listening to the answers. Second, you have to know the potential problems. Education is the solution.

If you’ll permit a short plug, that’s where my publication The Smart Giver comes in. Each of the 24 lessons outlines a typical problem and provides a solution that results in a gift to the person’s church.

Let me give you one quick example of how a gift to a person’s church can also solve a problem.

Libby is a senior living on a fixed income. The current economy has not been kind to her. She has a $50,000 CD down at the bank that has been providing some of the income for her living expenses.

Libby has three problems:

1. The CD is only paying 4.5%.

2. All of the CD’s interest is taxable. In Libby’s tax bracket, she only has $1,900 a year of spendable income.

3. She’s scared to death she will lose her money. Her CD was with Washington Mutual, one of the biggest savings and loans in the country, and they went bankrupt. Her CD was taken over my JP Morgan Chase, another financial giant, but that’s not making Libby sleep any better.

One of the lessons in The Smart Giver goes into detail about how these three problems are solved. I also have a short video at The Smart Giver Podcast that deals with Libby’s problems.

Here, I’ll simply provide a before and after picture:

	Before	After
Amount	$50,000	$50,000
Annual Interest Rate	4.5%	7.1%
Annual Income	$2,250	$3,550
Percent Not Taxed	0%	70.3%
Effective Annual Interest Rate	4.5%	8.49%
Income Tax Deduction	0	$20,047
Gift to Libby’s Church at Her Death	0	$50,000

  
In summary, our solution:

1. Increases Libby’s income.

2. Lowers her taxes.

3. Both of these stretch the buying power of the income from her $50,000.

4. Since Her money was moved to an institution she has supreme confidence in, her worry has evaporated.

5. Results in a gift to her church.