Your supporters might include younger entrepreneurs or those who work for start up companies in computing hardware and software, biotechnology, telecommunications, and other growth industries. Many of these individuals may have accumulated significant wealth in a short period of time through stock options, like the millionaires of Microsoft in Seattle, Dell in Austin, and those of the Silicon Valley and Genentech in the Bay Area. Some of these younger, wealthy individuals might be aware of your organization through their own, friends' or relatives' participation in your programs offerings including production courses, screenings, lectures, festivals and other special events or media-related gatherings. You can cultivate them to become further involved in your organization and gain significant tax breaks through the making of long term gifts. Simply put, it insures the future of your organization.
Donors can often make their largest gifts as planned gifts.
Once a planned giving program is established, marketed and your constituency matures, planned gifts eventually become realized gifts. Colleges and universities, hospitals and museums have benefited for many years by planned gifts. Yet this kind of program is not only for older or larger institutions. Every organization big or small, young or old can establish a planned giving component to their development strategy. A planned giving program is a public statement of your group's intention to be around in the future while setting up financial structures for the organization's long term stability.