"In most charities, resources invested in prospecting for planned giving donors is wasted." Speaking as part of a panel to the Toronto Chapter of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners, John Hochstadt, until recently Director of Planned Giving & Major...

1. Your corporate image - Does your organization have the appearance of stability? Does the Board help give the organization the appearance of permanence. Are there areas that need to be strengthened? What are the current situations that may cause...

The feedback I received from a recent article in these pages advocating the endowment of bequests suggests a practical problem is quite common across the charitable landscape: current priorities outweigh long-term strategy. In plain language, charities spend the money from...

Based on a presentation at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners If you intend to work successfully with allied professionals in developing a planned giving program, several key assumptions are important. Firstly, the basic ingredients...

In 1992 Ontario increased its probate fees from 0.5% to 1.5%, for estates over $50,000. This has led to reconsideration of the role of probate and of methods to reduce probate fees. Since the fees are payable on the gross...

Charities will do well to remember the recent decision of an Ontario court, in which a testator left 16 per cent of the residue of his estate to "The Institute for Crippled Children." No such institute was found to exist....

Planned giving officers are in the business of encouraging gifts by will. Surprisingly however, many of us are not familiar with the duties of an executor, or the process by which an estate is settled. More importantly, many of our...