Plan Your Giving - Say No To Checkbook Philanthropy

Speaker: Beth Renner, National Director of Philanthropic Services

How I would describe checkbook philanthropy is that you will give when asked.

And it's not necessarily having a kind of a strategic plan around it.

And maybe a different way to describe it is having a purpose with your philanthropy and creating a greater purpose with your philanthropy of questioning instead of ten organizations that you give to maybe I will give to five organizations and I will become more intentional about the giving.

I will become more committed with my giving with those five organizations.

Oftentimes when we work with clients around what we consider we would say “checkbook philanthropy”, there's a level of frustration with them as well.

They don't feel that they're getting the greatest fulfillment out of it and every dollar counts - it absolutely does but there's a part of this as well that is around donor satisfaction and so just as we look at these individuals as philanthropists, we also look at them from the lens that they're a donor.

They are wanting to make a difference and so making sure that we are doing everything possible to fulfill on what their goals are is really important to us.