Supporting Your Clients With Charitable Planning is Good for Business—Seriously!
When was the last time a client came to you and said, “I’d like to give away 99.9% of all my wealth this year?” We often hear that advisors don’t like to talk about charitable planning with their clients (especially proactively) because the incentives are misaligned and they are worried—they make money from managing assets and if those assets diminish, they make less money. Obviously, this is technically true. However, we have seen, both through research and first-hand stories from financial advisors, that this is rarely the reality. Rather, financial advisors who authentically and proactively support their clients’ charitable interests usually end up managing more assets, getting more referrals, and having more satisfied clients.
We work closely with a national RIA financial firm. They brought us in to support one of their clients—to help the client build a charitable strategy based on their values and priorities and then recommend specific, local organizations to fund based on those goals. The client absolutely loved the engagement and recommendations we provided. We later learned from the firm that offering GiveTeam’s advising to this client was essentially a last-ditch effort to engage them. The firm had realized the client was somewhat unhappy and was planning to move their money to another firm. However, as a result of their positive experience with GiveTeam, facilitated and paid for by the firm, the client decided to keep their money at the firm and moved over even more! This is not an unusual outcome.
Research backs up this story as well. A Fidelity Charitable study of 1,200 RIAs and Family Offices found that firms that offer charitable planning have:
6x the median assets
3x the median organic growth
1.3x the median new money per investor…
…compared to firms that don’t offer charitable planning. Further, advisors who offered charitable planning had a remarkably higher “Net Promoter Score” (NPS: 67) compared to advisors who didn’t offer charitable planning (NPS: 49). Clients who receive charitable planning support are more loyal and more likely to recommend their advisor to others, compared to those who don’t.
Further research shows that proactively talking about charitable planning with your clients helps you.
It shows your clients that you’re interested in more than just their money.
It helps you learn new insights about your clients, which helps you be a better planner.
It can deepen your relationship with your client and even lead to new referrals.
So, what are you doing to proactively and authentically support your clients’ charitable priorities?
