Experience & Service to Meet Your Needs

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HOHN RESOURCES, LLC

YOUR CHOICES….

While most clients start with me as a result of my experience and visibility with gift annuities, most soon come to learn that as a planned giving officer before becoming a consultant, I have had many years of experience in every area of planned giving (i.e. Bequest programs, charitable remainder trusts, pooled income funds, gift annuities, gifts of real property, gifts of insurance policies, appreciated securities, donor recognition programs, and more.)

You are in control of this consultant/client relationship at all times. You must actively request my services with a phone call, fax, e-mail or letter to initiate my assistance. In this way, you will not be "force fed" anything and then receive a bill for it. I run my consulting services as James Potter did before me, and in a manner that I would want, if I were buying these services myself. Service and support are always provided with the client in mind, and not with the consultant's interest first. That may be a bit different from what you may expect from a consultant, but I believe it is fulfilling the mission of Planned Giving Resources and allows me to live up to my personal ethics and standards. It is why I have several clients that have been with me for more than a decade. They appreciate that they are in control of both how I am used and how much I am used and they appreciate having access to one with MORE than 25 years of full time planned giving experience at a price you can afford.

Please review the following services and contact me to discuss your specific needs.

Preparation of gift illustrations or proposals,

Assistance in brainstorming with you the "next steps" with a prospect, in any gifting situation,

The "back office" processing of planned gifts, including agreements, gift acknowledgment and gift tax letters for your signature,

Help with selecting professional gift administration companies, banks, investment advisors and the like, among other things.

Filing for State Gift Annuity Permits for any of the ten permit issuing states, on a flat fee basis, (of $400 per state). This is over and above the monthly retainer fee arrangement.

Required Reserve Calculations for gift annuity funds, which must be done in filing for a permit (if you have any gift annuity agreements already in force, as well as once you obtain any State Permits and have to report to these states on your annual fund activity (new gifts added, deaths of annuitants, buys and sells and year end holdings of your CGA Fund portfolio.

Help with any planned giving issues, like the creation of gift illustrations, calculations and paperwork either before or after a gift is received are all part of my offerings. If it has to do with planned giving, I feel sure that I can help you learn how to do it both correctly and more efficiently.

Example of Services

BACK OFFICE WORK
If you want me to show you how I think you should do the “back office” work in correctly processing a charitable gift annuity, which includes creation of a correct CGA agreement in final form, ready for donor to sign, plus a gift acknowledgment letter and a gift tax letter, I suggest you have me process at least ONE cash gift and ONE stock gift, so you will see how I recommend you do it in the future. You will find it to be quite enlightening and your donors will be very impressed.

LETTERS FOR YOUR SIGNATURE
The letters I do for you will be ready for your signature and mailing. Each letter will be available for you to download directly to save to your computer, ready for you to print and use again in the future. I also provide you with all copies for your files and with all enclosures for your donor of everything they need to report their gift and to share the info with both their tax advisor and the executor of the donor’s estate. It is a very complete package.

One available option is if you prefer to supply me with your letterhead (plus 3 times as many second sheets as letterheads, IF you use paper OTHER than white bond), the letters will come to you ready for your signature, as well as on disc, so you can edit them to suit yourself if you wish. If you make any changes, just share with me a copy of the letter you finally mailed, and I will, in time, learn your writing style, and will be able to do letters that are less likely you will have to change.

Following the format developed by James Potter, I can now do a better "tax letter" than anyone else in the industry. The quality of this letter has been credited with many second, third and fourth annuity gifts, when the donor sees how much of an interest you take in helping them understand and report their gift properly. That approach will set you apart from most other charities.

CONSULTING SERVICES -- Our 25 years of full-time, development experience are yours for the asking: James Hohn is always as close as your phone.

Retainer Agreement

An open ended agreement that stays in place until and unless canceled in writing by you or an officer of your organization.

Retainer Clients will receive my “Eleven Pages” package that I provide to improve your gift annuity illustrations and a list of the top nine publishers of gift annuities, life income plans and other planned gift vehicles.

Retainer Basis. This agreement entitles you to up to two hours of my time for any work related to Planned Giving during that calendar month, for a minimum of six months. You will receive an invoice for $195.00 each month in advance. For any work above that initial two hours, you will be billed at the END of the month at the rate of $125.00 an hour, but measured in 3 minute (one 20th of an hour) segments.

Hopefully, this will encourage you to feel free to call me as issues, questions or problems arise, and not feel you must save them up to make a call worthwhile. My clients seem to appreciate this approach to my consulting work. I want you to feel comfortable that I am available to you virtually all the time. I do not travel much, so, if I don't get back to you the same day, I will do so, normally within 24 hours. If I don’t get back to you within 24 hours, please call back, for it will be most likely that something may have happened to your voice-mail message.

Project Basis. You can change a Retainer Basis arrangement to a Project Basis anytime after six months or later by just writing me a letter 30 days in advance giving me notice of the change.

Under the “Project” arrangement, you will receive an invoice ONLY if I do something for you in any given calendar month. While that letter would stop the monthly minimum invoices of $195.00 each, it also would move you to the “Project Basis” at the higher $175.00 hourly rate, for which there are no discounts, with a minimum of a one-hour invoice (for $175.00) in ANY month that I do any work for you under that plan. Also, under that plan, if I do NO WORK in a calendar month, you will receive NO invoice for that month.

RECOMMENDATIONS

My goal is to make you look not only professional but as a warm and caring organization when it comes to your relationships with your donors. In my experience both as a consultant and planned giving officer, such an approach pays dividends in additional gifts, over and over.

GET INVOLVED. Most charities take the attitude that the reporting of a deferred gift is between the donor and the IRS, and they do not need to “get involved”. The donor's advisors handle so few annuity gifts, that most of them don't know what is actually involved. Of course, you can never even hint at that possibility to your donor, but it is the honest truth.

GO THE EXTRA MILE. The philanthropic group that goes the “up and beyond” in their response to a donor’s gift, especially if the donor has done these kind of gifts before with other charities, makes a very positive impact on such a donor. I have found it will pay you dividends many times over in additional gifts to do it right with each donor. It is called stewardship and donor cultivation, in my opinion, probably the most important thing you do to grow a successful planned giving development program. And I am a firm believer in working smarter, not harder.

STAY INFORMED. On the development side of gift annuities, life income plans and other planned gift vehicles, you should be aware of all of the materials that the publishers of these materials make available to charities. I recommend you get on the mailing lists of ALL of these publisher vendors. I provide a list of the top vendors in this field to every client. I recommend you contact all of them and ask them for samples of their booklets, pamphlets and newsletters. Taxwise Giving will charge you for samples of their 24 page booklets, but the others will provide them free. Once you have them in hand, we can discuss the pros and cons of each approach and the “image” that each approach gives you. Choosing which image you want to portray is very important.

ADMINISTRATION. At some point, you will want to discuss with me how you will plan to administer your annuity gift fund. We can talk about that and other things whenever you are ready to proceed. I will provide a list of the major banks that hold themselves out to be experts in the area of the administration of life income gifts. While any bank is only as good as its CURRENT staff, by showing them on this list, I am NOT endorsing them, per se. While you will have to do your own due diligence, I can help you to some degree.