Sharpe Insights Articles

While sometimes it’s tempting to create brand-new resolutions at the beginning of the New Year, most of the time it’s best to resolve to improve on a practice or habit you already have in place. For 2024, our recommendation is to make your planned giving website the best it can be. Here are some simple…

Origin Story The original use of the term “blended gifts” can be found in a presentation Robert Sharpe Jr. made at the Partners in Philanthropic Giving national conference in Anaheim in 1995. As the focal point of the presentation entitled “How Will the Baby Boomers Boom?”, he noted that the first baby boomers were approaching…

A few weeks ago, I had a very interesting interaction outside of work that reinforces Sharpe Group’s philosophy of the importance of relationship building with long-term donors. After learning how we work closely with nonprofit organizations, my new acquaintance explained that she recently had an unpleasant experience with one of her favorite charities. She was…

Planned Gift Defined: planned gift /’plænd gift/ n. A planned gift is any gift of any kind for any amount given for any purpose—operations, capital expansion or endowment—whether given currently or deferred, if the assistance of a professional staff person, qualified volunteer or the donor’s advisors is necessary to complete the gift. In addition, it…

From August 1972 Give & Take: “A donor usually considers a current gift to your institution as a cash outlay now. To make a deferred gift, a person decides to give at some future date, either a number of years from now or at death. A deferred gift is a present decision to make a…

One of the bedrock principles in gift planning is stewardship. At a recent gift planning conference in New York, the opening speaker, who has been a friend of Sharpe Group for many years, remarked that he’d recently been reminded of something he learned at a Sharpe seminar early in his career. He had never forgotten…