Charitable conversations and focus

RUTH SELBY:  All right. I think some participants are starting to filter in. So welcome, everyone. Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you’re signing in from. We’re really excited to be here with you today. My name is Ruth Selby. I’m the Education And Program Manager at Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. We’re really excited to be here. And we’ll wait a few minutes just as folks are filtering in and getting settled.  

Well, this is Charitable Conversations with the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Stanford PACS and DAFGiving360. My name is Ruth Selby. Again, I’m the program and education manager here at Stanford PACS, and I’m really excited to start this conversation today. I am going to share my screen and ensure that everyone can see the slides. Appreciate your patience as I get there. All right. Hopefully, everyone is seeing this title slide, and we’ll go ahead and get started.  

So for today, here’s our agenda. We’ll do a brief welcome and introduction. We’ll go over why this topic is important, right? You’re all signed on for this webinar. You already know that it’s important to have charitable conversations with your clients, but we’ll share some of the insight that we’re seeing from our research and working with donors here at Stanford PACS. We’ll also go over our toolkit, the Philanthropy Toolkit, and Advisor Guide. We’ll work through some charitable conversation starters, some prompts that can be very practical for you. We’ll also do an activity called Finding Your Focus, which helps identify values that can drive your philanthropic giving. And then hopefully we’ll have time at the end for some Q&A.  

Alright, we really want to welcome today, Trevor Coch. From the DAFGiving360 Network. Trevor is the Senior Manager of Charitable Giving within DAFGiving360. Trevor, I’d like to pass the microphone to you to give us a welcome and kick us off.  

TREVOR COCH:  Thank you so much, Ruth, for the kind introduction. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As Ruth mentioned, my name is Trevor Coch. I’m a member of the DAFGiving360 Charitable Consulting Team. Located in Dallas, Texas, since we’re throwing that out there, I’m excited to kick-off the first in a series of webinars with DAFGiving360 and the Stanford Center of Philanthropy and Civil Society, or PACS.  

Now, I think most of you on this call will agree, engaging in philanthropy with your clients starts with a conversation. It’s typically deeply personal values-driven component of your clients’ broader wealth management strategy. While starting this conversation may be new to some of you, it’s a great way to strengthen your client relationships while supporting their philanthropic goals. I think today’s conversation we’ll focus on, you know, how to begin those conversations with opening questions that usually uncover client motivations, and help you guide them towards a value-based giving framework, and ultimately a thoughtful giving plan.  

But speaking of guides, I want to introduce your facilitator for today, Vera Michalchik, Director of Philanthropy Research and Education at Stanford PACS. Vera will spend this hour on topics of starting the charitable conversation, and discovering the values that guide giving. With that, I’ll turn it over to Vera.  

VERA MICHALCHIK:  I’m hoping that the sound is a little crisper. We got some feedback that Trevor’s sound wasn’t coming through well. Is this a bit better? Can somebody note in the chat if I’m sounding okay? Okay, great. Thank you, Gretchen and Andrew and Carrie and Allison and Dan and Wade. I mean, okay, everyone. Great. Fantastic.  

So he gave you my title. I’m here at Stanford, and we have an organization, next slide, that’s really dedicated to improving society through improving philanthropy. That’s been our mission for about 20 years. We also publish the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which is a journal that maybe some of you have seen, but I have loved it for decades before I got here to Stanford, PACS, and it really is probably the preeminent journal for the nonprofit or the third sector.  

I think you’ve met Ruth, our Education Manager and me. And so we can go to the next slide and talk about the group that we’re a part of. It’s called the Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative. The name is pretty self-explanatory. And we are an interdisciplinary organization about 10 years old, and we do research, we build tools and resources, some of which you’ll learn about today, and we also do education programs like the one you’re part of right now.  

So our goal for today, we’re going to talk with you about how to work with high-capacity individuals. And we use high-capacity instead of high net worth because sometimes younger donors haven’t come into the financial resources yet. But we also want everybody here to kind of keep in mind that donors may give other things than money. And we often talk about the four Ts. We talk about treasure, money, time, which is obviously volunteer time, typically, talent, what they have particular skills to be able to do, and then the fourth tee is ties and network, so how do you bring other people into the giving conversation and sphere. And sometimes we add testimony because being a witness to great nonprofit sector programs. And then the sixth T we sometimes talk about is trajectories, which is what young people may do with their lives, giving back to the affiliative nonprofit sector. So this is the way we talk about ourselves.  

We’re excited to be here with you today because you really are the reason that we exist. We are a mission-driven organization, and we really have the fundamental purpose of serving, serving your… you sector or your work to bring in the best and most thoughtful giving practices that you can support through your practice, through your work as financial advisors and others. Financial advisors, wealth consultants, you have a number of different backgrounds, and we suspect that more than a few of you here today are probably philanthropists yourself. You’re donors, you’re people who give back with the intent of making the world a better place, whether it’s in your local community or more broadly. And ultimately, we hope that the insights that you have in your own lives, and in your work, and working with your clients really sparks new insights and capacities for you in your work as advisors. So big thank you for being here. We understand that this is, you know, both personal and professional when you’re… when you’re seeking to promote charitable giving.  

Okay, so we have a big idea, and our big idea is that Americans are famously generous. We give about $550 billion a year. And one thing we know is that… is that discussing philanthropy in the financial sector is good for business. It helps you as an advisor stand apart from the pack. It helps you add value to what’s increasingly automated and online markets. And it helps you also help families give back and realize their… not just their values, but also a tradition that they may have. And given the… the wealth transfer, the great wealth transfer that we’re seeing happening, it’s… it’s a pretty important time to think about generational transfer and generational wealth.  

So next slide. You know, the challenges. There is competition, there’s fee compression, and there is attrition. And I just mentioned the great wealth transfer. Let’s look at some of the figures around that.  

Next slide. We have about $124 trillion being passed down in about the next 25 years. That number changes a lot. And this is a figure from December of 2024 from a Cerulli report. And there have been various estimates of how many assets are put at risk by this attrition to younger investors. We’ve seen figures up to 90% in the past, but right now, we’re… we’re kind of operating with the 38% to 60% figure. And that even if you, you know, do it rather conservatively, we’re up to almost $70 trillion of potential loss if that money does not stay with the same financial services. Okay, yeah. So there’s a risk that you’re facing.  

One thing we also know from a recent report is that the majority of investible assets are controlled by households with 5 million or more available in investible assets. And this group, very, very notably, is three times more likely to have as charitable giving one of the most important or the most important financial goal. So it really matters to the high-capacity individuals you serve.  

But here’s the gap. The gap is between 87% of financial advisors feeling that charitable planning builds relationships, but only 5% feeling very confident. And these are relatively recent figures. The 5% is a 2023 finding. Affluent investors, very similar numbers, interestingly, 87% want to have charitable giving part of their portfolio and certainly make a charitable impact, but only 6% feel that they get timely advice, that they get advice that’s early in the conversation with their financial advisors, and that really meets their needs to think proactively and to plan.  

So what can you do about that? let’s just summarize first, that we need deeper, broader, and more enduring relationships with clients and their families, that we need to find the meaning of wealth in addition to the practices, the prospects, the things that you support for your clients to accumulate and protect their wealth. And ultimately, we want to leverage philanthropy to make a positive and lasting impact, you with your clients and your communities. So you’re in a particularly remarkably powerful, potent, and meaningful space in society right now.  

And that aligns with our objectives. Our objectives are really to help you incorporate meaningful philanthropic planning. And what we will do in this six-part series is help with tools and resources with aligning philanthropic values and missions, both your own and your clients with their actual planning. We’ll let you know what we consider to be an effective philanthropy approach. We have decades and decades of experience with people who have run large philanthropic organizations and worked with high-capacity individuals and high net worth families. We’ll give you some specifics around dynamics, giving vehicles, and finding nonprofits, and will ultimately want to help you and your clients be informed, inspired, and involved.  

So what do we have? We have a toolkit. You’ll come… we’ll come back to this several times, but one of the things that today we’ll really draw your attention to is how important, as Trevor started in the early part of the conversation, how important it is to identify the values that charitable giving, that your philanthropic giving will be aligning with to really feel that, and to know how that’s going to translate into… into moving capital to places that are going to make the world a better place through charitable giving. We’ll talk about involving family and other parts of this toolkit. 

Here’s some more aspects of our toolkit. Sorry, I was jumping ahead of myself just a tad. We have a… we have a  guide that’s more like a textbook, and we have an online interactive resource that kind of follows both the guide and the toolkit itself to allow people to work interactively through the… mostly the same content.  

Next slide. So just more details about the toolkit. It’s got cards. It’s got exercises. It’s a very… it’s a very paper and pencil-friendly way of getting individuals and families to really explore how they want to pursue their giving practices. And actually, we’ve had this rebranded, reprinted, taken up by not just financial advisors in the US or organizations in the US that work with clients interested in charitable giving, but it’s been published in Eastern Europe and in other places in the world, as well, in Australia, actually, and right now is going through a localization for a Hong Kong East Asian audience.  

Next slide. More details on the toolkit. Again, look it up, download it. 

And next slide, please. Okay. So you also have the DAFGiving360 Giving Guide because some of you are from outside the organization, I believe. And it has very similar content. It has an advisor’s guide as well, and it really will orient you towards what kinds of tips and, you know, mnemonic devices, reminders you can have at hand when you’re discussing charitable giving with clients.  

Next slide, please. It has a similar arrangement of chapters, which is a little more focused on the financial advisor role, determining which assets to give, which we don’t really go into in our own guide. We do overlap in thinking about charitable vehicles and in finding organizations to support. And I think you would find them complementary and very well aligned.  

So effective philanthropy, what we advocate in our organization is… in simpler terms, it’s to be thoughtful, be clear, to commit to learn together, and to trust. But to be a little more specific, we take a strong stance that donors and donor advisors should work with a goal in mind. There should… there should be an outcome that people want to achieve through their giving, and that is defined very broadly. The outcome can be increasing the endowment of your university, your alma mater. But we’re hoping that more and more people really think about how they’re giving can make a difference in the world. So what might change through some giving? What might you be able to… how might you be able to move the needle on a social problem? Always be clear in how you think as a donor or as a donor advisor. The funds might help achieve that goal. We stand behind multi-year commitments and unrestricted funding. I know that many donors still really use things like compensation overhead versus actual outlay as a standard, and want to see what may come of giving in a shorter term in order to think about considering a second gift. But really the way nonprofits and the nonprofit sector works, longer term commitment, unrestricted funds, and patience is a critical element of making a difference with one’s philanthropic giving. 

Learning is a critical piece of this. If your client or if a donor is giving to an organization, they want to know what’s happening. You don’t… that doesn’t mean micromanaging. That means just keeping an eye on the function, the implementation, what’s actually happening with the organization. And ultimately there’s an element of trust. Trust between the donor and the grantee. Trust between the donor and the beneficiaries or communities on the ground that are being supported by the funding. And the trust goes both ways. The donor needs to be as open and as… and as transparent with grantees as makes sense for them as well. Now, there are lots of different ways in which a person can enact these principles, but we just stand by these.  

Alright, so charitable conversations. What are they? They’re the conversations that… yeah, next slide. I think.  

Alright, so… yeah, so we’re here. We’ve looked at the toolkit. We want to stimulate your thinking about how you might actually start the conversation. And I know for me, and certainly for many of the advisors that we’ve spoken with over the years, just getting the… getting the right sentence frames, getting the right words in one’s head really is helpful to move a conversation that may seem like it’s not really in the realm of philanthropy into that space, and keeping it open, keeping it… keeping it a safe space for your clients to really express their views and their values, and to go deeper is really what we’re talking about, ultimately, here. 

We differentiate between a few different kinds of people as far as what their readiness is for philanthropic conversations. There are those we consider the visionaries, people on a mission coming into your office expecting a philanthropic conversation; people who are curious about philanthropy, curious about creating a plan for their charitable giving, but may need a little bit of a nudge; and then people who are skeptics or apathetic, and may ask you to prove to them that it’s going to be valuable to them, and wonder why they should consider philanthropy as part of their asset management strategy. And this is something that with a lot of the advisors that we work with, you know, they kind of use this rubric in their mind, and they say it holds pretty well when they’re out there in the world. So what we’re saying with this little schema here, this little set of categories, is that you’ll have people closer to the place of wanting to give and people who are more distant, and we encourage you to think of it as a pathway to a destination. The destination being the giving… you know, the ultimate giving goals, but the pathway being the giving journey, and the early stages of that being what belonged to the curious and the skeptics. 

What affects the giving journey? Let’s stay back one slide, please. Thank you. Sorry. It’s life experiences, it’s passions, and commitments, and capacity of donors. It’s where they are in their life stage, certainly their age. And so all of these things, capacity to give, their passions and commitments, their life experiences, their life… age and life stage combine together to place them where they are along the giving journey.  

So let’s just take a minute, and we want to make this interactive. It’s really hard to do with a very large group like this. Let’s just take a minute and move to our Zoom poll. You’re thinking about how you’ve tried to start the charitable conversation, and see how you might feel about that, generally speaking. Are you… yeah, very comfortable, less comfortable, more comfortable? And then second question, what type of client do you most often see when you’re trying to start the conversation? And lastly, do you get information in your client profiles to help you ask those deeper questions? Thank you. Getting good answers.  

Okay, so it’s interesting, more of you that any are moderately comfortable with starting charitable conversations. Some of you are very comfortable, almost a third, which is fantastic. And you’re the people who are… who other people in the conversation want to have conversations with, other people in the webinar want to have conversations with because you have that great experience. And for those of you that are less comfortable, we very much hope that this series will be helpful to you. Most of your clients are curious, about… you know, like two-thirds of you have curious clients, a few of you have those… well, almost a third of you have those in the visionary category. Only 5% have clients that come in fully skeptical about it. And your client profiles, you’re split almost evenly between you get the information that you want to have to be able to ask the deeper questions in your client profiles or you have some of that. So it’s either yes or somewhat, but there’s probably room for growth in that space. So super helpful to us in our thinking about this, but I hope you find these answers interesting. Yeah, so most of you’re moderately comfortable, or at least many of you… many… mostly curious clients, and kind of split between good information and somewhat good information. I will actually just share the results. Did the results show up? Okay, excellent. Thank you all.  

Alright, so let’s move on to some specifics about the conversation. Whoops, I think I’m fumbling the results sharing.  

Okay, so if you have a pen and paper at hand and can maybe take some notes on the thought exercises. We break the questions that you might use in promoting and pursuing charitable conversations into a few different categories. And we know that it’s always easier to have questions that, you know, give people an out if that they want an out, so that they don’t have to… so they don’t feel put on the spot.  

So the first category is timing, and we give a sample question here. ‘Is philanthropy or charitable giving important to you right now or is it something you’d like to revisit in the future?’ And, you know, the out there is potentially having a lot longer timeline. So just thinking about how does the possibility of pushing this into the future make the conversation more comfortable? So just thinking about timing as a way do you start the conversation.  

All of these questions and prompts are both in the Advisor Corner of our website, which we can give you the link to right now.  

So timing is a big deal. Next category of questions that you might use is prompting people around their family values. You know, what values does your family share? What would you wish to pass on? How do your personal values affect your wealth planning? And would you like at a future date, including the timing prompt of… at a future date to include discussions of charitable giving. So again, the thought exercise here is how does asking your clients generally about values open you up to following their lead to this possible last question of asking them about a time when they might want to talk about it.  

Another set of openers can rest on passionate issues, which is not that different from values, but it is a little bit different because you might find that that they’re really, you know, connected to, say, a particular kind of health concern. And maybe that isn’t a value per se, but maybe somebody in the family has had some kind of medical issue that makes your client passionate about medical research in that space. So the thought exercise is how does asking your client generally about passions open you up to following their lead in that possible last question, have you given any thought to giving to an organization that you’re excited about and why?  

The next possible set of openers are life experiences, which would be just, you know, tell me about something important in your life that’s affected you. How has that informed your wealth planning, and does that lead you to want to think about charitable giving?  

So again, for all of these, there’s a possibility to ask, ‘Is this something you’d like to explore further in our meetings?’ 

A couple more categories. There’s identity. ‘How does your identity affect how you view your wealth and wealth planning?’ Then there’s the question of legacy, of course, and ‘Have you thought about what kind of legacy you want to leave and as charitable giving part of this?’  

So again, between the EPLI Advisors Corner that Allison has posted in the chat, and then what’s available on the DAFGiving360 website, you’re going to find more of these kinds of prompts that can help you just get to the questions, get to the topic of giving sooner, and get there a little faster and a little deeper, which is part of… part of the purpose of this series generally.  

So we’re going to walk you through one of the exercises that we do, as Ruth will emphasize with advisors, principals, donors of various wealth levels, program officers, just many, many people in the sector that invariably, even if it seems like something that would be simple for them or they’ve done before has been valuable and meaningful to them. And Ruth will say a little bit more about that. But Ruth, I’m turning it over to you.  

RUTH:  Thank you, Vera. Yeah, so now we’re ready to jump into our first client-facing module. And this exercise is really a structured conversation that combines a lot of those conversation prompts that Vera just went through.  

You may have clients who, you know, like we said, some are visionaries, some are skeptics, and they may need a starting point. Right? They want to know how to pick organizations to support, or perhaps how to pivot. Maybe they’ve been supporting organizations for a while and their priorities have changed. So this exercise can really help. It is… it’s something that we do with donors a lot throughout the year, and every time I do it, it is so valuable. So it’s deceptively simple, but I think that people can really find value in doing this. Even if you… even if you do it often with clients, sometimes it’s really interesting to do it yourself.  

So one of the things that we had said earlier about like our five tenets of effective philanthropy, that philanthropy really should be a reflection of donors’ values and commitments. So having clarity on what those values are can help keep a philanthropic practice on track. Vera also said earlier, patience, right? Expecting impact or, you know, charitable giving to… you know, to see the changes that you want in the world. It’s good to have patience in that pursuit, and having your values clear can really help with that.  

So many advisory conversations will start with a nod to the big picture, right? We want to do good. We want to give back. And then will go into an immediate deep dive into the nuts and bolts, right, maybe the actual giving vehicles or the tax advantages. But we think that a strategic philanthropic practice would really benefit from this first step, establishing clarity about what those values are. So finding your giving focus will help you get clients unstuck or just starting that conversation.  

So in this exercise, you are going to be the client, and I am going to walk you through the exercise, so you will feel what it feels like to be guided through the process. Keep in mind there are… this is 100% personal. There are no right answers. There is not, you know, what you should or shouldn’t be giving to or be valuing in your life. Your job, or at least my job in this exercise with you, is to help you capture your thoughts and what those values are. This exercise can be done alone. It can be done with couples. We’ve had advisors share with us that sometimes they’ll have done this exercise separately and then come back. And that conversation can be really interesting when people say, ‘I never knew this was so important to you,’ or, ‘Wow, that’s different than when we did it before.’ And it can also be done in families. I’ve heard of some advisors, actually an advisor that we work with in Orange County that does it with her grandchildren, and it’s just a really great conversation starter.  

So grab a pen and paper or open a note-taking window if you’re working on your laptop and we’ll get started.  

So I’d like to invite you, you know, just to maybe shift in your seat, get comfortable, just to signal to your body that we’re doing something different, and maybe put both feet square on the floor and just get grounded. We’re going to take a minute to reflect on experiences that have touched and shaped you. Right? Maybe someone close to you has had an illness, maybe you’re really passionate about young people getting a great education, or maybe you care about the natural world and really want to protect… protect nature. One thing that I like to think about when doing this exercise is to think about all the things in my life that have gone right, and how, you know, they could have gone differently. So we’ll take 60 seconds to reflect on these formative experiences. I will also add, you can think about, you know, pressing issues or things that you see in the world that are really important to you. So we’ll take a full minute to reflect, and I’ll let you do that now.  

Now we’re going to… we’re going take a deeper dive. So thinking about those experiences or perhaps the issues that you really care about or that have shaped you, we’re going to think about the values that drive that. So this is almost like a greatest hits of values. I’d like for you to write down every value that you see here or even ones that are not listed that resonate with you that are important to you. And thinking about that experience or those experiences that you just identified that were really formative, what is that… why is that important to you, right? So we’ll take another minute here. Write down all the values on this list or otherwise that are important to you.  

Alright, so hopefully now you have a nice… a nice list of values that really resonate with you. And now I’ll invite you to take 30 seconds to narrow it down to one to three. Really narrow it down to the… you know, the three values that most resonate with you. And sometimes when you put them next to each other, you… it helps valorize them, or say, ‘Oh, you know, actually, this one is most important to me.’ So we’ll take 30 seconds here to narrow it down to your one to three values.  

Great. Hopefully, now you have your three… one to three values identified, and we will plug those values into this value statement. It’s kind of like Philanthropy Mad Libs for those of us old enough to remember Mad Libs. But you’ll put your values into this sentence. So, you know, I might say if equity, empowerment, and generosity were flourishing in the world, it would address many of the problems that I care about. So I’ll give you 30 seconds to write your value statement, plugging in those values that you’ve just identified.  

And then if you have extra time, you’re welcome to put your values in the chat. Sometimes it can be really inspiring just to see what folks are identifying as important to them. So I will do that. And if you have extra time to do it, please do as well.  

I’d love to see that. Integrity, love, and spirituality. So great. Leadership, love, and fairness. Stewardship, right? Being a good steward of the resources we have. Love across many. Thank you so much for sharing. Sometimes it can just be a really nice boost to read these words, and think about them, how they show up in our work.  

Okay, the next step in our process is the issue area. So thinking about the area that you would like to have an impact in, right? Thinking about the experiences that we identified first, the values now that come out of that. I’d like for you to take some time here to identify the issue area, and also noting that these are broad buckets. So education could be early childhood education, you know, for English language learners. It could be post… you know, post… post-secondary education for first generation students, or financial education for women entrepreneurs. There’s a whole variety. So pick one… one to three issue areas, one to three issues that are important to you. And we’ll take 60 seconds to do this.  

Alright, so now you should have three issues that you want to make a significant difference on, right? You don’t… we’re…  in the interest of time… I want to make sure that we have time at the end of the hour for questions, and I know there were a few questions in the Q&A. So what we’re going to do is take the three issues, one to three issues that you’ve identified and put them into… this is our grand finale Mad Lib, your focus statement. It can be like a personal mission statement, or something that… you know, a family foundation, or… or, you know, an individual can use to guide their giving. Right? So you can put your own name, the values that we just identified, and that lower sentence, ‘we aim to address, support, eradicate, change, right, the various issues.’ And then at this point you can also identify the beneficiaries, or the group of people, the population that you hope to benefit, and the geographic area. Right? So an example might be, ‘The Andrews Family Fund is committed to equality. We aim to address educational inequality for low-income elementary school students in East Palo Alto.’ That’s a town very near to where I am. So hopefully you now can put all of… fill… fill these in, and come up with a focus statement that resonates and feels true to you. And this can be super helpful in guiding a client through this process. We’ll take another 30 seconds here just to draft this, so you have it set.  

All right. So that’s our Finding Your Focus exercise. We in the interest of time have really sort of sped you through the process. And I think in a meeting with a client, you might give folks a little time to think and discuss at each stage. But I’d love to invite you to just reflect quickly how that exercise felt, right? Does the finished product, the focus statement, feel like it reflects your values accurately, or at least at this moment? What’s important to you on this day, this month, this year? And what would it feel like to walk a client through this process? Have you ever done something like this? Maybe you’ve done it, but this is your first time on… you know, on the other side of the table. And, you know, I’d love… if anyone wants to put either your focus statement in the chat or thoughts on how… you know, how this might go with clients that would be great to see.  

I do want to just be mindful of time so that we have time at the end for questions. So again, just to wrap up on this activity, it is a natural starting point for any donor. It can be helpful to… you know, depending on the values that come up, maybe, right, someone might say community is very important to them. And that may be a window into maybe… maybe they don’t want all of the decision-making about their giving to be, you know, all about their ideas. Maybe they want to incorporate some community voice or beneficiaries in that process. You may find that you have clients that don’t want to manage the whole process, and they’re happy letting experts or the organizations decide. So that can be an interesting conversation too.  

The bottom line, really, is that we believe that philanthropic conversations benefit from starting with this first step, right? It’s really foundational, helps clients know where they’re coming from, and it can also be a very powerful tool to say no, right? Your clients may be… you know, get solicitations or, you know, be considering between various organizations. Having a really succinct focus statement can be a powerful tool to say no to various… various solicitations.  

So again, you can do this exercise, it’s something you can revisit annually, right, to invite clients to say what has shifted? Maybe let’s… let’s try this exercise and see where our priorities lie.  

So I’ll take a peek at the chat, and I’ll also… definitely feeling rushed. And Vera, I will pass the microphone back to you for some of our closing resources and Q&A.  

VERA:  Great. So thank you. And you can modify, there’s no, you know, extreme magic to the formula, people do versions of this, but the idea is to give people a space that doesn’t feel too threatening to really explore, and… and…  and interact with you a little differently than they might otherwise. And when you touch somebody at a more profound level like that, it can really help them open up, and… and… and see you as somebody close to them when it comes to the values they want to enact in the world.  

Okay, so back to the toolkit. You can co-brand it. It’s Creative Commons licensed. You can put your business card in it. If you order a paper copy, you can download it. You can download any and all of our materials. They are available for you to use. They’re again, online, but a printed copy is available for like a nominal fee. We can ship that to you. We’ve had advisors order copies and give them out as Christmas gifts to their clients. There’s just… you know, anything you wish to do is really okay by us.  

RUTH:  There is a question about how to help clients find organizations that match their value system.  

VERA:  Oh, excellent. Thank you. I missed that one entirely. Oh, great. We do have a session on that, and we have resources for that in the toolkit. We have like a five-point and sometimes a six-point, depending on who we’re talking to, set of strategies for doing that. If you wish to come back to that… to that particular session, I think when you go to the reg… registration page, you can see it will be under Finding and Vetting Organizations. And if you download our toolkit, which you can do immediately, you will find a whole section on finding and vetting organizations. And it has like a graphic as to what the possible range of ways of doing that are. And of course there are also many online curation sites that will allow you to do searches in those areas as well. Thank you, Allison, for putting that up. Great, thank you.  

RUTH:  There’s a… there’s another question. ‘Will there be any webinars that will help us understand the value and benefits of a client giving to their DAF from a tax-saving perspective?’  

VERA:  We are not doing that specifically, but that is available to you in the DAFGiving360 website resource that we shared with you earlier, there… the site there. Any other questions? Oh, I see.  

RUTH:  I think that’s it for questions that were put in the Q&A.  

VERA:  Thank you. And we can… we can also try to be more specific about that particular question as we move into our subsequent… subsequent sessions and wish to… you know, to make sure that at least we’re giving you clear direction on how to go to have that question answered. Fantastic.  

Okay, next… oh, right. We’re in good… yes. And please, the resources that are here actually on this DAFGiving360 slide, the website, are actually going to be responsive to the question that we just… that we just read. If there are going to be resources that will help a client give to understand the value and benefit of giving to a DAF. So we encourage you to examine that, and we will try to incorporate some specific pointers more than we had planned into the future sessions. Thank you for that.  

Finally… yeah, just we thank you deeply for your… for your participation here today, and for… and for being here for answering… for asking questions, for answering our polls. And we have one final poll that we can turn you… ask you to address, ask you to let us know how this has felt, whether it’s been valuable or not. And yeah, please feel free to contact us after… after you answer the question. We will… we will put our names and our contact information back up, and you can get in touch with us if you so wish. And we’re just at the top of the hour, so appreciate… appreciate your feedback.  

RUTH:  Thank you all very much for joining us today. We look forward to our next webinar session, which will be in June. And… there we are. And after you have completed the poll on today’s session with feedback, you’re welcome to leave the call. Thank you all very much. We really appreciate you being here today with us. 

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