The Endowment Handbook

8How Endowment Donors Give and How They Are Engaged

This chapter enables you to:

• Help donors navigate the myriad decisions they must make when giving to endowment.
• Gain basic familiarity of the types of current and planned gifts that donors may employ in supporting endowments.
• Be introduced to the team members who influence giving decisions.
• Understand the actions that may elevate or undermine a donor's generosity.

Charitable giving can be as simple as the spontaneous decision to drop a $20 dollar bill into a firefighter's boot on Labor Day in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association or it may be far more complex and considered, with many individuals advising the donor who is making the contribution. Gifts to endowment give a donor great flexibility because they can fall anywhere within this continuum, although they tend to be more of the latter, as they often require some amount of planning and consultation. Many of the same planning considerations can apply when a donor gives to an organization's strategic reserves. This chapter provides insights to help an organization guide a donor through that planning process.

How Donors Give to Endowment

Donors decide to support endowment (or reserves) for all of the rational and subconscious reasons explored in the previous chapter. It may be a spontaneous act or explored thoughtfully over months or even years. Once the conclusion has been reached, donors still have many decisions to make.

Once the decision to support endowment ...