Principles of effective philanthropy

Ruth Selby:

Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. My name's Ruth Selby, and I'm with the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. I just wanted to let everyone know they're in the right place. This is Effective Philanthropy for Advisors, the second series of six total webinars that we're running with DAFgiving360TM. So, we're so glad that you're here with us. We'll wait a few minutes for our participants to join, and then we'll get started.

So, after our welcome and introductions, here's our agenda for today. You already know that this is an important topic. You're here attending a webinar on philanthropy advising, but we'll go into some of the reasons why specifically this is such an important topic for you to engage with. We'll go over the toolkit, our advisor guides, and the meat of today's content is going to be making and tracking gifts. We'll explain some of the basics of effective philanthropy, and we'll get into why the practice of effective philanthropy will really benefit your practice of financial advising. Next, I'd like to introduce Chris Altimont, senior manager of Charitable Giving at DAFgiving360. Chris will give us a welcome and kick us off. Chris, over to you.

Chris Altimont:

Thanks, Ruth. It's really exciting to see all the representation here on today's call, so thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm grateful to be part of the second webinar in our advisor series in partnership with the Stanford Center of Philanthropy and Civil Society. As Ruth mentioned, my name is Chris Altimont. I'm a senior manager on the Charitable Consulting team here at DAFgiving360, and I cover our advisor relationships in the South Central territory. In my role I work with advisors to provide charitable education tools and resources to support you and your clients' philanthropic goals. This can take many different forms, but typically it involves discussing how charitable planning can be integrated into the wealth management strategies you're already putting into practice, exploring various giving vehicles to help determine which ones best align with your clients' goals and with their capacity, and also providing guidance on tax smart giving strategies in creating a strategic approach to family and legacy giving.

And last year it was an exciting year for our organization as we rebranded to DAFgiving360 from Schwab Charitable in hopes of raising awareness and shining a light on the role that donor advice funds play in charitable giving. And so even with this rebrand, our mission and offer, it still remains the same. And I know you've heard this before, but a quick housekeeping note before we jump in. If you are interested in gaining CE credit for participating in today's webinar, just please stay on for the full 50 minutes to be eligible for those credits. We've alluded to this some already, but today's webinar, it's going to focus on how to help clients clarify their charitable goals and deploy the right resources and strategies to create a thoughtful and tax-efficient giving strategy. You'll hear more regarding Stanford's Advisor Toolkit, which is a step-by-step guide and resource designed to help advisors engage in thoughtful and meaningful conversations and effective charitable giving. And so, DAFgiving360, we did help support the development of this guide along with the content side.

At DAFgiving360 we also offer numerous educational tools and resources that are available on our public website, specifically highlighted here. It's our DAFgiving360 Giving Guide, which helps donors and advisors be thoughtful about their charitable strategies, no matter where they are in the philanthropic journey. And this Giving Guide, it also has a companion guide for advisors that can support you in having these conversations with your clients. I also want to highlight today that we are joined by Vera Michalchik, director of Philanthropy Research and Education at Stanford PACS, and Ruth Selby, who you've already met. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Vera and Ruth. Thank you.

Vera Michalchik:

We have a long and lovely partnership with DAFgiving360, formerly Schwab Charitable, and I am delighted to be here today and to do the bulk of the talking, although I wish that weren't the case, but hey, it's the way it is. I, as Chris mentioned, I'm the director of Philanthropy Research and Education, and Stanford PACS, the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society has a three-part mission. One is to improve philanthropy, and as we do that to think about how we strengthen civil society and ultimately how we can affect social change. So, we're very much on the make the world a better place through philanthropic practice.

We publish the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which some of you may know about, but it really is oriented towards application and practitioners. It's not an academic journal per se, but it really benefits from scholarship and from people who are very thoughtful when they submit articles. We have a review process, so it's something that I think you might enjoy looking at if you have not already.

The group that Ruth and I manage is called the Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative. And yeah, met us both already. The Effective Philanthropy Learning Initiative is an interdisciplinary group and we ground what we do in philanthropic education, in research, social science research, particularly some design thinking and really thinking about the end user. And ultimately, our mission is to accelerate learning for donors and donor supporters. And we would definitely put you all in the donor supporter category, but also the donor category, because we assume that many, many, many of you give and give generously in your own private life. Beyond that we really focus on high-capacity individuals. We use the term high capacity instead of high-net-worth, because we think about the multiple ways in which a person can contribute to social change, whether it's treasure, that is money, but also time, talent, ties, ties, social ties, the testimony you give about places in the world that can be made better through the efforts of you and your clients.

And all of these really come together to let us ... Make us want to say to you a big thank you for being here and spending your time with us, because you help us fulfill our mission to elevate philanthropic practice. So, very much appreciate you being here. Building on our last session, yeah, that slide represents all of you. Building on our last session, for me we want to be sure to acknowledge that there is largely a gap between what's wanted and needed by clients and what's available. And it leads to sort of a three-prong problem. The gap, next slide, is that clients want more charitable advising. Only 6% feel that they're getting the advice they need, that's the last of the bullet points. And at the same time, financial advisors not generally speaking feel that confident about how they offer charitable support, charitable giving support to their clients. So, really only 5% have a degree of confidence that they're doing it fully to the extent that they want to.

And at the same time, as I was saying, the affluent investors aren't getting the support at the level they want, and yet the vast, vast majority of them want to make charitable impact. And we know that there's still a disjunct between the amount of support and capacity that advisors have and what investors would like. The second, what we call, I guess building block here of what is needed is that a lot of times there's a challenge with getting conversations around charitable giving started. What we've done and what you can see, I don't think it's up yet, but from the first webinar is that we have run through a series of ways that one can help support their clients through initiating the conversation, bringing them into the conversation about giving.

And there are timing conversations, what we call the timing opener. I think we have individual slides for this. No. Or do we not? No, we don't. Okay, we don't. So, timing opener, is it important to you right now? Is it something you'd like to jump into right away or something you'd like to revisit in the future? There's also a values opener that could be built around talking about family values, what values are shared, what values one's family wishes to pass on. There's also what we call the passion and issues opener where perhaps you just really ask clients, ask your high-capacity donors what issues they care about, what their family cares about. Maybe there are illness issues that have sparked an interest in giving in certain medical research spaces, all types of things that matter to them.

And then there's a life experience. Where have you grown up? What are some life experiences that have affected you? Identity, for many people their demographic or their religious or the historical identity really matters to where they want to give and how they want to plan their wealth. And then also a legacy opener, which obviously pertains to what kind of legacy they want to have in the world. And all of these openers are discussed in our toolkit. Christine mentioned the Stanford Advisors toolkit, and we'll come back to that a few times. We also have an Advisor's Corner on our website, which the link we'll put up in time before the end of the webinar.

The third building block that we had highlighted in our previous webinars is that values are fundamental, and I think that that came through in talking about the kinds of openers one might use. But we do have an exercise, the slides for which you can access in the Advisor's Corner on our website, also detailed in our toolkit, which is accessible online, and we'll also give you the links for that at the end of the webinar. And also, if you look at the recording from the previous webinar, you'll see how we run that exercise with donors, with people in our courses. It's an exercise that has people tap into their personal values.

And just to give you the tiniest taste of it, just as I'm talking right now, think of an important moment in your life, just what comes to mind as something that has really affected you, impacted you, let it sink into your body for a moment. What is an event, perhaps from your younger years, that sticks with and resonates with you at this moment, it's going to be particular to who you are and where you are at this moment. I'm going to give you 15 seconds on that with silence.

And as you just hold that moment with you, what values did that event inspire in you? How has that event lasted with you in your life and helped you in your approach? The decision points, the actions you've taken in your life? We all build on significant experiences, and that's a really important thing to carry with you for yourselves of course, but also when trying to help your clients think about where they want to give. It's relationship building as well. It can actually create deeper bonds between you and your client. So, it is a specific exercise. Again, there are many ways for you to access it. It leads to what we call a focus statement. And what it looks like, it's goofy with all these blanks here, but it's kind of like a Mad Libs, and it's, "What's the name of your foundation or your family group or your fund or whatever, has X, Y, and Z values?"

Maybe for me, I'll use my name, the Vera Veracity Fund is committed to justice, to spirituality and to the exercise of personal freedom. And we aim to support, let's say veterans in finding the kinds of supports and the kinds of affirmation of the service they've given to the world through the kind of giving we do. You can just get a feel for how we might help move clients, help move donors to thinking about where they really want to give.

Where people want to give is really the start, as I'm saying. But there are three broad sectors to effective philanthropy that you'll see in the pie chart that follows. The first is the discovery phase, and that really is everything I've talked about so far. What are the capacities, the values, where does the family fit in?

The second is, once you've decided where you want to put money, what outcomes you hope to achieve, even what problems you want to solve, there's a really, really big piece. And the hardest piece, I think, and the most important piece is, what strategy would one use or want to see used to solve that problem? And I say that, because there are almost two million nonprofits in this country, and they all are approaching issue areas trying to solve a problem, but they use slightly different strategies. And how those strategies resonate with a client, resonate with a donor really makes a big difference. Donors may think certain strategies are ill-advised and inappropriate and other ones really seem to make sense. Of course, the way a donor would know if a particular strategy is making sense is this third part of the pie chart, not chai part, pie chart, which is impact. And that's understanding as a non-profit enacts its strategy in the world, what the outcomes are, what the impacts are, what the actual results are of that work.

We consider effective philanthropy to be about what problem any donor organization wishes to solve and what outcome is attached to that problem that they're trying to achieve. The second one is the strategy. How does one go about it? And the third piece is, how do you know if you're achieving it? And it's a very simple three-part way of thinking about what effective philanthropy is, and this is what we teach in all of our courses, whether they're extensive, multi-day courses with principles and foundations or their trusted advisor, or in a briefer moment like this when we're basically giving you the very high level of what effective philanthropy is. I'm going to stop for a moment and ask Ruth, are there any questions in the Q&A that we should be addressing?

Ruth Selby:

No questions at the moment. There is a question now in the chat that says, "Are there tools or tips can you share for evaluating impact?"

Vera Michalchik:

I love that question. It's one of the most important questions there are. There are simple metrics that any non-profit should be able to recite to and for donors. At the same time, we very strongly recommend donors don't ride the non-profits and ask them for an accounting of every penny. But clear results that are aligned with the goals of making a difference in the world, and knowing what kinds of changes there are are something that every reputable non-profit should track to a certain extent, because if they don't, they don't know if they're making a difference. Of course, there are elaborate social science techniques for studying impact, for trying to unearth everything, from, is a social movement being built to, are the right kinds of people getting the right kinds of social services in the right kinds of geography?

But there should be conversations between donors and non-profits about that. And there also should be information for every non-profit on the website about how they achieve, and how well they achieve the impact they intend. We go much more deeply into this, and I think that as a participant in this webinar you will, if you opt in, and I'm saying this with Ruth and Christine here thinking about maybe how we might offer you to opt into the Stanford PACS Listservs, there will be other opportunities for you to get more points on evaluating impact. So, thank you very much for that critical question.

Ruth Selby:

And there is one more question in the Q&A. "Is there a toolkit for individual clients who are interested in learning more about how, when, what to give, and to whom?"

Vera Michalchik:

That is exactly what our toolkit is for. It's for the client or the advisor and one that the advisor can use in collaboration with the client. It's a purchasable hard copy or downloadable toolkit. And is that coming up soon in our slides, but not quite yet, right? We will have the link for that when we get to the description of the toolkit, so thank you so much for asking that as well. Both great questions. Really when working with clients in our own experience and in our advisory experience for advisors, of course you want to talk to them about right-sizing their gifts. Because that's obviously part of being a wealth or financial advisor. But again, our expertise is using best practices for effective philanthropy, and we very much want that to be what we can support you in the more philanthropic side of these two North Star kind of points.

We're going to run through an example of how one, here's how we advise people to talk about with their clients making and tracking gifts. And then we'll show you a little bit more about the toolkit at which point you'll get the link for the toolkit as well. In subsequent webinars we'll dive more deeply into greater detail about selecting nonprofits, and those sessions will be very complimentary to this one. But what we find is one of the first things that clients might ask once the philanthropic conversation has been had and clients want to give are the questions that they'll be asking. They ask questions very much like, "How do I know what programs to support in an organization? How can I be sure that I'm giving the right amount for the organization? How do I know the organization has spent my money wisely?" Which is very much like the question that we just got about evaluating impact. "And how do I keep growing and learning as a donor?"

These questions will be answered, again, how we think they can be best addressed with donor clients. But just a few key concepts that I think are important, because they're going to be front and center when, "Hey, who should I give my money to?" basically gets asked. So envision this, your client is ready to give generously and perhaps ready to contribute their time and talent as well. And one of the first things we ask is, "Well, do you have a very specific kind of project or program you want to see funded, or do you want to give to an organization broadly? Are you ready to give unrestricted funding to an organization, unrestricted operational funds to an organization that you think represents your goals?"

Unrestricted funds and general operating support give a nonprofit the maximum latitude they need to make gifts, so that they can work flexibly and in line with the wisdom and experience of the grantee. This is the most basic level. You want to operate, you want to give in a certain issue area. Can you find an organization that publishes impact results, very much like the question we just got. And then, do you trust them enough to give them general operating funds, or do you want to understand the specific programs they have and give them restricted funds. Which are generally speaking, I think next slide, going to be targeted for a specific kind of program that the donor cares about. Let's say they go through that values exercise that I showed you above that's kind of like a Mad Libs and they decide they really want to give for music in schools, or specifically for breast cancer research in a medical school. So, in those instances they would give to a program that a particular nonprofit supports potentially.

In a class we teach at Stanford we encourage them to go into the general operating support unrestricted funds, but sometimes they have a really good rationale for why they want to give to a very particular program that a nonprofit supports. But just to push the point a little further, let me just say that if you were investing in a business or your client was investing in a business, they wouldn't say, "We shouldn't pay for management equipment or we shouldn't pay for the salaries of the executives."

High-capacity leaders should be attracted to nonprofit endeavors that have decent pay, and donors should not use overhead ratios as a primary criteria for deciding where to give gifts. And I say this again, because I hear it almost every day. "Well, there was lower overhead for this organization versus that organization that operates in the issue area I care about, so I'm giving to the one with lower overhead." That's not the best criteria. The best criteria is, are they achieving the goals that you want to see achieved, that your donor wants to see achieved? Longer term, more flexible, more open-ended. Operating support is a piece of advice that you can give clients that will really matter to the effectiveness of the money they give.

I've already hit on a couple of these points. Longer term, multi-year, general operating support, paying for overhead. Simplifying and streaming paperwork. If there's a deep enough relationship between a donor and a nonprofit, they're giving a significant amount to that grantee, it's going to be important that they don't overburden the grantee with requests for information, even though they want to know what kinds of impact that the organization is having. Transparency from both sides, responsiveness from both sides, and solicitation for how one might be a better funder if the depth of a relationship is such. That is a really wonderful way to show respect to the nonprofit, to balance out the problem of paternalism that we often talk about with donors and recipients. The donor knows everything, the recipient doesn't. We strongly advise that the wisdom of practice that every nonprofit has and every member of a beneficiary community has should be taken very seriously. Yes?

Ruth Selby:

I'm so sorry to interrupt, but before we move on from the question of unrestricted and restricted funds, there's a question in the Q&A that says, "Often the question from a donor is, 'Does the charity have to use the funds the way I've directed? Like egally is the nonprofit obligated to use the funds the way that I've directed?'"

Vera Michalchik:

Yes, if they're restricted. And yes, if they're specifically restricted in relation to a particular program. I don't know precisely what the mechanisms are per nonprofit. I know what it's like at a university like Stanford. I know what it's like in many organizations I'm affiliated with, but if it's earmarked, it's supposed to be for those reasons, for those purposes. There are instances, like during the pandemic when many donors that had given restricted funds released nonprofit from their obligation to use those funds in a restricted way, because the pandemic created circumstances where the funds had to be used very differently.

Some nonprofits that had worked with, say youth in a community on educational programs ... Oh good, yes, of course I just saw the don't micromanage, but that a lot of youth-oriented nonprofits that had had youth coming into their programs physically during the pandemic were actually able to use that money to support families and parents who were able to give cash gifts to the youth and their families, which was vital for many people. So, that was a very important object lesson for me about how restricted funds really there is a legal obligation and donors have to release those funds.

Yeah, I'm going to just say that I've used the word trust a couple of times, and there is a movement for trust-based philanthropy that many of you may have heard about, many of you may be very attracted to and find sort of spiritually aligned with where you are. And many clients may be interested in embodying a practice. And what it really boils down to is a very respectful relationship with grantees and is mutualistic, for lack of a better word right now, mutual transparency between grantees and nonprofits. And that's why I emphasize the unrestricted funds, because that shows a level of trust.

There's another question here, I think. "Do you have any thoughts on donors asking for updates data from the nonprofits?" The rule of thumb we use is that if that data is being collected anyway, and if that data is useful to the nonprofit because it can improve the nonprofit's practice, then by all means ask for it. If it's data, and there is often kind of an idea that a donor may have that a certain kind of data is the right data, but if it's not going to be useful to the ... If it's not the kind of data that improves the practice of the nonprofit it's not a respectful way of asking for data, it is a form of micromanaging. And then the nonprofit is directing its resources to pleasing the donor rather than to serving the purpose that it's there in the world to do.

I'd say have a deep conversation with your donor and say, "Is it helping the nonprofit with their practice? Is it helping them achieve the goal that you have more or less entrusted them to achieve that goal, that data?" I'm talking about the data per se. If so, then great, they should have it on hand, they should be able to give it to you. Should they be able to give you an update every six months? Maybe not. It depends on their area of practice. Some goals take years to achieve some goals, take less time to achieve obviously. So, that's a really important part of the conversation, thank you for asking that.

Ruth Selby:

I might just add there that one question that we have often tried to empower funders, folks that come to our educational programs with is, to ask organizations, when you make a donation to then ask the organization, "What do you want me to know about the work that you're doing?" Because then it gives the organization a chance to engage in real dialogue with the donor, and they can share what they're proud of, what they really ... "We're working on this, but we're seeing a growth in this problem." So, asking those questions, maybe not asking for the answer that the donor thinks that they want, but asking an open-ended question will get a lot more rich data back from the nonprofit as well.

Vera Michalchik:

Oh, that's such an apt and wise comment, Ruth, I in fact just wrote it down. And what that also can do is engage the talents of the donor in helping solve a problem if a problem arises. Every single attempt to make a difference in the social world runs into problems. It is, I just say that without any hesitation, because circumstances change, the world is changing, beneficiaries are changing. What that boils down to is that every implementation of a nonprofit strategy is going to have novel circumstances, even if they're well experienced in that space. And certainly, when there's a new initiative, there are going to be a lot of things to learn during the implementation phase. And so Ruth, when you say that, it reminds me that if there's that level of openness and trust between the donor and the grantee, the grantee can actually tap into the donor for insights how to solve problems. Instead of what many, many grantees do is try to make the donor believe everything's going perfectly, so I appreciate that so much.

Onto our toolkit, and thank you Susie Steele for saying that was a great question. I appreciate you in dialogue with one another in the chat, so that's great. But onto our toolkit, if you go to our website right now, we have three major resources. One is a toolkit, which this webinar series is focused on. One is a little more textbook-y, but it's like cartoon textbook-y in the sense that it's got lots of pictures and diagrams and stuff, is the guide to effective philanthropy. The difference content-wise between the two is that the guide talks much more about how to build strategy. And if a donor really is engaging with a nonprofit on their strategy, the guide has content about that, whereas toolkit doesn't really. We also have a little interactive, I say little, because it's not very long, interactive program that you can access on our website called Learn Effective Philanthropy, which kind of covers the content of both of them. It kind of gives an overview, and there may be a client of yours that would like to run through that and do that interactively.

But back to the toolkit. The toolkit itself has cards for the values exercise we've talked about. It has specific pointers about how to engage in thoughtful conversations and anchor philanthropy around deeply held values. And it talks about many specific and smart strategies in giving. And again, this is what DAFgiving360 helped us build and what we are here to talk about. The sections of the toolkit kind of more or less aligned to this webinar series, but it's broken down into distinct sections. Next slide, please, Ruth. That should be the sections of the toolkit.

Ruth Selby:

Sorry, there we go.

Vera Michalchik:

That's okay. You keep me online and honest, and they don't match precisely to this series, but close enough, and you'll find it really easy to find the section that you're interested in. Making and tracking gifts is actually a little later in the toolkit, but we're moving it ahead for some pedagogical reasons. And right now we've just gone through this piece on making and tracking gifts. And we have a diagram in the toolkit that, I'm sorry, a table, that's what I meant to say, in the toolkit that gives people an idea of how one might want to conceptually go through. I mean, you don't have to use this piece of paper of course, but conceptually go through thinking about the nature of the organizations that one's given to in their recent history and what the type of funding was that was given. Of course, the amount, recurring or not. What kind of vehicle was used? Was it a cash gift? Was it done through a DAF, was it done through some other mechanism?

Basically, these are the kinds of things that do matter when tracking gifts. And once a gift has been made, of course it's not the end of the process. We already talked about evaluating gifts and asking for data and feedback and stuff, so that's really critical, and I loved that we already had that conversation. Let's move on to five habits. Oh, go ahead Ruth.

Ruth Selby:

Yeah, there's a question in the Q&A. "What role will AI take in analyzing charities?"

Vera Michalchik:

A lot, a huge role. And I don't think we've hit it yet, but what will happen is that charities that have comparable target goals, whether it's issue, area, geography, combination of those are going to have their theory of change. That is their strategy analyzable from an AI perspective, and it will much easier for a donor to compare the strategies that nonprofits engage in, because there really isn't something like that. For all the Candid and GuideStar and other tools out there, understanding the strategy of a nonprofit is under represented in the panoply of things that allow a donor to look at for nonprofits. And those strategies are going to be more readily compared with the outcomes and the impacts that they have. This is coming soon. I just talked two days ago with somebody working very hard on solving this problem, and we're going to help that organization build. I think it's within a year that kind of capacity probably will be pretty well available and it'll make a huge difference.

Ruth Selby:

Sorry, Vera, sorry to interrupt. I'm going to share in the chat a link from a blog that Stanford PACS just published with one of the leading thinkers in this space, Rhodri Davies about the role of AI in philanthropy. And I'll just leave it in the chat and hopefully that will lead you on a nice research rabbit hole if this is an area of interest. Particularly for your clients, if this is something that really motivates them or is engaging them and thinking about their giving, I'd encourage you to read some in this space, because it's very exciting.

Vera Michalchik:

And relatedly, there's a lot of duplication in the field right now, and that's not to wish any well-intentioned nonprofit at the end of its existence, much more so it would be highly advantageous, especially with changes in federal funding and other social changes for some of them to combine. We know that Give2Asia has become part of Myriad, for example, and it's been a very strategically effective move. And we may see, especially for some of the smaller ones that really struggle with having adequate resources to do what they need to do that there may be some very beneficial mergers happening in the nonprofit space. Thank you, Ruth, again for keeping track of what I was not keeping track of adequately.

Ruth Selby:

No problem. And I'm actually just going to stop sharing my screen for a moment, because there's another question about a resource for finding nonprofits that align with someone's values. Often the values need to be aligned for effective philanthropy, so is there a resource that advisors could use to find nonprofits that align with folks?

Vera Michalchik:

I don't know the answer to that question, and that means I have just learned something very valuable from you. I love that question. Thank you. That's all I have to say.

Ruth Selby:

One thing that once donors go through the finding your focus exercise and can create their own focus statement, once you have that focus statement that can be helpful then to compare to the mission statements of organizations as a quick check, are we presenting the same values, or is there alignment? It's not always a perfect one-to-one, but having a focus statement for your client can help them quickly identify, "This is what's important to me, and it's also important to this nonprofit that's working in this space."

Vera Michalchik:

It's not a static product, as Ruth has always said when she leads donors and advisors through that, through using that statement. It's something that can be very dynamic done, revised over time. But we just do think that sometimes a concrete object can really help people be more specific in what they're looking for. But as far as a specific website that, or a specific resource to match values beyond issue areas, beyond issue areas or geographies. I mean, I think that's a deep question and I will ponder. In the interest of time, and we certainly will try to answer questions, let's just run through, The 5 Habits of Effective Philanthropy Advisors. And they've somewhat been touched upon nearly all of them, but when the slides come back up, I can do a better job than when they're not up. The first-

Ruth Selby:

I apologize, I had stopped sharing for the Q&A.

Vera Michalchik:

That's wonderful. We've already talked about conversations with your donors about this, but there are lots of ways to renew those conversations and to, even using the toolkit as a, "Hey, I just got this." And by the way, the toolkit is, you can reprint it if you wanted to. It is open source, you can put your business card into it, you can co-brand it, you can do whatever you want. We want that content out there. And there are many organizations that have reprinted it to be frank with their own specificities and such. But philanthropy conversations, key practice. The next point is, does that help engage their family? Because we know how important family communication is when it comes to thinking about giving. It's a portal to the next generations. It's a really great way to help families understand their own values and build towards something that they want as a family legacy, not just an individual legacy.

The other piece is this continuous learning process that's so important for donors, but also important for donor advisors. We have many different kinds of learning events that we offer, and some of them go deep in particular areas and we encourage you to stay on our listserv if you would like. And the other one is your own personal experience with philanthropy. How does that shape your ability to help your clients?

And finally, what can you do to help your clients and you really be part of a network of people that support the kind of giving that your client would like to make. We often say, "Hey, maybe you can ask your," ... I'm sorry, "Maybe you can think yourself of the three clients that you'd like to take the next deeper step," if in fact that's how you're thinking about using this particular webinar. Whom among those that you advise would you like to take into a deeper conversation based on this? Maybe write down three names or just reflect on it, specifically who they are.

Now that we've talked about The 5 Habits of Effective Philanthropy Advisors, I just want to remind you of what we believe are five habits of effective philanthropists. And that is to reflect regularly on what they can give and do want to give also beyond just financial support. The issues in the focus area, their focus area are always going to be changing, and give it some attention so that you feel like you are an informed donor. Trust your grantees after you make a gift. Do keep up with what's happening, track, know what you've done so that you feel like you're reminding yourself of what you've done and where you want to be. And of course, a good philanthropist works with advisors to update their philanthropy based on circumstances. I'm sure that you appreciate that.

And we have a lot of these checklists built into our toolkit. Working with donors on an annual basis. Did my giving have some patterns or themes? What did I learn in my giving this year? Again, an excuse to keep the conversation alive. And not only do donors, of course want to have the support of their advisors, but we also know that when you deepen the relationship with your clients by being involved in philanthropic advising and support, you have longer term, more enduring and even multi-generational loyalty from those particular clients. Let's take a quick poll. Google, I mean, not Google, Zoom-based poll, that just kind of gives you a moment to think about the things we were just talking about.

Ruth Selby:

Right, hopefully everyone is seeing these questions in the poll window. Thanks very much for participating. It's very helpful for us to see how the conversation is landing for you, and to see what tools are useful. It's great to see how many people are personally involved in philanthropy.

Vera Michalchik:

Are those appearing in the Zoom?

Ruth Selby:

Oh, I'm seeing them, but public at this stage. But we will see them. But I'm going to wait. We're at nearly 60% of participants haven't completed the poll, so I'll just wait maybe 10, 15 more seconds, and then we'll end the poll and continue with content.

Vera Michalchik:

And Song, I think there's a bit of a mistype perhaps in your chat comment, but we can get back to that separately, I hope.

Ruth Selby:

Yes. And then also maybe just while folks are finishing the poll, it says, "Are GuideStar and Charity Navigator an option for finding non-profits that align?"

Vera Michalchik:

They have, you'll get a long way with them. I just think that the question specifically of values, I mean you're going to have to go to, I think the particular organization to really get a feel for the way. If it's ... Okay, I'll give you a quick example. If you're working on, again, veterans are on my mind, if you're working on housing for veterans and particularly with a justice focus or maybe a spirituality focus, you would probably want to go to the websites for some of the key organizations, the platinum-rated organizations help you get, do a first cut at reducing the numbers and such. So, totally great question. Yes, they're very helpful. I think as they start using AI and other new organizations that are very AI-centered, leapfrog them perhaps, there'll be some really nuanced insight into the way the nonprofits operate, yep.

All right, so sector trends. I just want to, this is what we do at Stanford PACS. We spend a lot more time trying to aggregate across different resources. And what we're seeing is more trust, and I'm talking about the last 10 years, but some of this more the last few years, more trust, less top-down, more participatory, more unrestricted support, fewer strings attached to the giving, longer timelines for results to be achieved from the nonprofit organization. More ways to give, of course, DAFs have become increasingly important and such a, I'm looking for a very specific word, such a real fantastic channel for giving more flexibly and more easily that I think make a real difference in moving resources to places of need.

More responsiveness, so a lot of things changed with the pandemic and a lot of things changed after the racial justice movement around the time the pandemic was at its height. But now of course there are different places in the world where people would like to potentially give more to respond to circumstances. And one of those is in international aid. We know that changes in USAID have made it so that resources that we're getting into the international sphere aren't, aren't as effectively, aren't with the same kind of support. And so, many foundations, many donors are trying to be more responsive in that way. And that relates to the issue of the way justice has come into the discourse more dynamically in the last few years until, I don't know exactly what Target did in the last week, but Costco sales were up and Target sales were down for specific reasons about their commitment to inclusiveness, greater impact.

People are more interested in impact investing and using 501(c)(4)s and sort of blended capital models. So, how can we achieve impact with a number of different ways of giving and trying to align forms of capital with the goals that people are seeking? And then innovations. And that last one is, AI is really going to improve efficiencies in the field. So, we're in the middle of a pretty important inflection point for many reasons. Now, our research, a project that finished in 2023 was interestingly focused on people who don't inherit wealth or come into it through some kind of windfall, but really people who build wealth through professional activity, doctors and lawyers and real estate and financial advisors, and people whose wealth comes from their own hard work. And they have somewhat different attitudes about money and giving than other folks. And that report addresses that. And we're also doing work right now on participatory grant making, and I hope that by the end of 2025 we have a pretty broad view of what donors who say they're doing very participatory partnered grant making with grantees, what they feel that difference is that that makes.

Just want to remind you, again, that the toolkit and other resources are available for you. You can co-brand, reprint as you want. This is your content. There's an advisor's manual tab in the front, which is expanded on our advisor's corner. That's on our website, you can find these. And coming up our next ... Oh yeah, this is the advisor's corner in the beginning of the toolkit. And then yeah, let's do a quick final poll before we just speak to what's coming up, and then we'll be letting you go within the next four minutes. Doing okay, Ruth?

Ruth Selby:

Yeah, it looks like we've got 59% of folks have answered. Maybe we'll take five, 10 more seconds for folks to do the poll if they can. Very helpful to us to see how this information serves you. And then there's a few questions in the Q&A. We've got one that says, "It'd be great to hear from another advisor who has used the toolkit with clients. Seems like a great resource, but I'd love to better understand its practical applications." Which yeah, right, I'm not a financial advisor, so that would be great.

Vera Michalchik:

And we do have an answer to that question that we do work specifically with advisors in philanthropy to get that voice into some of our programming. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that. And any other questions we want to just register before we sign off, Ruth?

Ruth Selby:

I think it says there's a comment here about this moment with federal funding cuts, which is, again, very difficult for many nonprofits. And a question of whether the research is public. It is, and I've put a link in the chat that folks can see that publication about the research of professions and wealth.

Vera Michalchik:

Chris, I want to just offer you an opportunity to say anything final.

Chris Altimont:

Thank you, Vera and Ruth. First, I just want to reiterate, I've been in this space for, well, actually it's been over eight years now, and I still learned something new with every one of these webinars. I just want to thank you again both and Stanford PACS for the great content. As mentioned, we have up to four resources available. You obviously have Stanford's Advisor Toolkit, as well as the DAFgiving360 Giving Guide, and that advisor version as well. If you have any follow up questions specifically with DAFgiving360 resources, feel free to reach out to your local charitable consultant. And if you've actually never had the chance to interact with our organization before, we do also have a business development team that can be a phenomenal resource for you. But otherwise, I was glad to see in the poll that many folks found the content helpful, and I'm hopeful that they're able to apply this content to their day-to-day interactions and conversations. And I'll let Ruth and Vera close us from here. Thank you.

Vera Michalchik:

Thank you all, and I hope we see you on July 29th. Recordings will be available. Goodbye all.

Ruth Selby:

Thanks very much everyone.

Vera Michalchik:

Thank you for being with us.

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