Seminars are powerful tools in generating interest in planned giving. They are a nonthreatening approach to the donor, and are generally viewed by the public as popular and safe events to attend. An opportunity to provide a free or modestly-priced service, they can also reinforce goodwill and credibility for both the planned giving program and your organization. The opportunities for education, service, and prospect identification make them worthwhile.

The main ingredients in conducting a successful seminar are as follows:

• Determine your target audience
• Know your strategy
• Be flexible in choosing your topic
• Schedule your seminar carefully
• Use the most effective promotional strategies and media
• Create – and use – a checklist
• Deign the format to fit your audience
• Follow-up professionally.

 

Determine your target audience

Seminars provide the opportunity to address each target audience about its particular needs and interests. Some possible audiences would be senior prospects, staff and volunteers, board members, (past and present), and allied professionals.

Know your strategy

Determine your objectives. If you are trying to reach new donors, your audience could be staff and volunteers. Your objective would be to encourage personal consideration of a gift and to enlist volunteers in contacting and cultivating potential donors. Is your objective to establish and provide technical information on gift plans? Is it to stimulate professionals to discuss charitable giving with clients? Is it to build and strengthen existing relationships? Your target audience would be estate planning professionals, and your objective will determine what topic you will offer.

Be flexible in choosing your topic

Ensure that your topic has market appeal. Every brokerage house, bank and charity offers a seminar on Basic Estate Planning, and this topic is pretty well worn-out. So use some ingenuity. A topic such as Retirement Planning Alternatives: Are You Doing All You Should? is certainly more appealing, and has the same objective. Another good example would be Retirement Plan Spending: Use It or Lose It. Try to identify a need in your potential participant, put yourself in their shoes, focus your invitations on donors who have that need and you will greatly increase the participation in your events.

Schedule your seminar carefully

Timing is a critical element in seminar planning. Consider not only when the target audience will be physically present, but also when these audiences will be in the most receptive state of mind. The ideal time of the year for a seminar on income tax planning would be in the fall, while a seminar on estate planning and the importance of having a will would be best held in the spring of the year. The time of day and day of the week also depends upon the target you have chosen. Generally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 1 and 3 p.m. for retired prospects, and at noon or after work for employed prospects, seem to be the best days and times to schedule a seminar.

Use the most effective promotional strategies and media

You will achieve your best response by sending an invitation with a covering letter personally addressed and signed by an officer or a board member of the charity. Depending on the number of invitations sent out, I usually follow up the invitations with a personal phone call, and if there are too many for me to call, I call upon volunteers or staff for help. Other forms of announcements such as newspaper ads, newsletters, or bulletins are helpful, but you can’t depend on a high response rate from these methods.

Create – and use – a checklist

Your checklist should be the first item when you begin to plan your seminar. The list will include a variety of items, depending on the type of seminar, but in most cases they remain constant: setting the date, recruiting speakers, arranging advertising, or sending invitations. Some arrangements will be necessary such as accommodations, audio visual, parking, name tags, registration desk, and guest book. Finally, arrange for refreshments. Create a survey or questionnaire for audience feedback and suggestions for future seminars. Taking reservations and call backs are also very important. On the day before, confirm the set-up and numbers, review your check list, and make sure you have not missed anything. Last but not least, finalize your agenda.

Design the format to fit your audience

A variety of formats will allow you to achieve success based on the nature of your audience (your target market). A basic format would be:

• Welcome
• Reinforce the purpose of the seminar
• Introduce the speaker(s)
• Begin presentation
• Break for refreshments
• Resume presentation
• Questions and answers
• Wrap-up and thank-you
• Mingle

 

Follow-up professionally

The follow-up is as important as the initial planning. Following up on a prospective donor, while ideas and impressions gathered from the seminar are still fresh, is an essential step in the cultivation process. The follow-up, however, must be carried out in a low-key, professional manner. Having the participants complete the evaluation sheet allows you not only to prepare for the next seminar, but also to determine your prospect’s level of interest. A week after the seminar, write a thank-you letter for attending. About two weeks later, follow up with a phone call. Thank your prospect again, and ask if they have any further questions – especially if they have indicated an interest in a particular planned giving concept on the evaluation form. Reaffirm their interest, and the level of commitment.

Seminars offer a wide variety of advantages for gift planners. They provide a valuable service to prospects, allow prospective donors to obtain information in a non-threatening way, and open the door to personal follow-up. They can be tailored to the needs and interests of a target audience, provide good public relations for your institution if you hold the seminars in-house, and are an excellent tool for networking with allied professionals.

Organizing things on the other hand, can be time-consuming, and not only may finding a qualified and entertaining speaker be difficult, but also you always risk the embarrassment of a small turnout. Seminars nonetheless can educate and cultivate a large audience in a small amount of time, and planned correctly, can be very powerful tools.

Based on a presentation to the national conference of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners in April. Frank Dunn is a founding board member of the CAGP and a planned giving officer at the University of New Brunswick.