[MUSIC] Welcome back. In the last lesson, you learn to document gift acceptance policies. In this lesson, we will cover building strong relationships between teams that work together in planned giving administration. After this lesson, you'll be able to define the role of an investment team, define the role of an accounting team, and explain how to build strong working relationships between these teams. Let's get started. When you are working in the area of planned giving you will most likely have to interact with various teams. While the name of a team in different organizations may differ in precise wording, you will probably working with these two kinds of teams. Investment team and the Accounting team. Let's look at each of these before discussing how to build strong working relationships between them. Planned giving operations will work with a team that has investment expertise. I have referred to this as the investment team. This team could be internal or external. Either way, this team is responsible for managing the planned giving investment pools. As a reminder, these pools are the assets funding the life income gifts for which the charity is serving as a trustee. The planned giving team is not made up of staff fluent in investing, that is why they need to work with an investment team. The investment team will make sure the planned giving investment pools are invested correctly. Actually it's not enough to just investing correctly. Having one of the best investment teams will differentiate your charity above others. At minimum you need to be on par with other charities, otherwise, donors will look to invest their planned gifts with another charity. If possible, it is in the charity's best interest to invest the assets because that allows them to control the growth and ultimately the remainder available. Planned giving operations will also work with a team that has accounting expertise. I refer to this as the accounting team. This will typically be an internal team. The accounting team, will generally be responsible for overseeing the non-planned giving investment assets. There is a direct connection between the accounting team and the finance and investment committee. The finance and investment committee is made up of volunteers who are experts in the investment industry. These volunteers help guide the investment policy and decisions for the charitable assets. Their main responsibility is the endowment of the charity. Because they're investment experts, the planned giving team can tap into their knowledge to guide the planned giving investments. It's extremely important to have a coordinated working relationship with the investment team and accounting team. These teams are going to be integral in helping the planned giving team secure life income gifts. They will rarely be involved in the solicitation of the gift, but may be included in the cultivation and stewardship of a life income gift. Their most important role is creating a competitive investment record of accomplishment to build trust with the donor. The donors will want to know that your charity can handle the investment of assets they entrust to you. They spent time and hard work accumulating these assets. They certainly don't want to give them to a charity that doesn't properly invest them since ultimately, that could significantly reduce the value. That in turn affects their income or the charitable remainder. In some cases, the donor will be more upset that the charitable remainder decreased to a level that won't allow them to make the impact they envisioned. Your success depends on your donor's trust and your ability to properly account for and invest the assets they give to your charity. A lack of trust from donors could be detrimental to soliciting additional planned gifts, specifically like income gifts, but it could extend to all planned gifts. If the donors are satisfied, there's a ripple effect that positively influences other donor's decisions. If they are dissatisfied, that influence becomes negative, the stakes are high. So having a strong working relationship is important and helps avoid any problems. Here are some of the most common problems that could be encountered, but this list is not exhaustive. One of the most common problems is poor investment returns as compared to other charitable organizations or other investment benchmarks. These poor investment returns could be caused by poor working relationships with the investment team. If the investment team doesn't work with the planned giving team to understand the donors expectations, then the assets may not be invested appropriately. There could be a lack of communication by the investment team to the donor, falling short of a full or timely explanation on the returns. Even when there is a logical explanation, if that wasn't communicated well to the donor, it can undermine trust. Remember, the investment and accounting teams are experts in their fields. However, they may not have significant experience working with donors or cultivating relationships. Our job is to facilitate the interaction with the donor and to manage those relationships for the good of all. Let me give you an example. The investment team decides to switch the management company they hired to invest the assets of the life income pool. Not understanding that donors may have concerns, they don't alert the planned giving team or the donors in advance of the decision. The donors start receiving their quarterly investment statements from the new company without prior notice of this change. Donors are caught off guard and upset. They start calling the planned giving team to voice their concern and frustration. Since the planned giving team was not part of the decision, they can't properly respond. This scenario causes the donors to lose trust. This will obviously affect the donor's willingness to make additional gifts. Therefore, it is important to remember that your best prospects for a future gift are those donors who have already made a gift. Inappropriate communication with the donor can be the end of the planned gifts from that donor, the likelihood of future gifts from the donor and will likely spread a negative regard for your charity to their friends or others in their circle of influence. Building a strong working relationship with these teams is dependent on managing good communication. I believe you build team relationships in a similar way to how you build relationships with donors. You have to be strategic and purposeful in your communication. You must cultivate these relationships to foster and build trust with each individual on these teams. Communication with them in a manner that causes them to be most receptive. I intentionally make sure I have the infrastructure in place to consistently engage, interact with each team through regular meetings. I meet quarterly with each team with an agenda built by all team members. These meetings are used to discuss program direction. After each quarterly meeting, I meet with one individual from the team for lunch. The purpose of these one-on-one meetings is to build trust and make sure they're feeling good about the direction we're going with a plan giving program. This provides an opportunity to have dialogue exclusive to their needs. Some individuals are not comfortable speaking up in group meetings. So this provides a forum for them to provide feedback and input. Any work you put into building relationships with your teams involved in planned giving will benefit your organization and donors. Let's recap what we covered regarding building strong relationships between planned giving and the investment and accounting teams. Now that you have completed this lesson, you should be able to define the role of an investment team in planned giving, define the role of an accounting team, and explain how to build strong working relationships between these teams. In our next lesson, we'll focus on training staff and volunteers.
