High net worth donor trends with Lisa Wolf

We recently sat down with Lisa Wolf, Vice President of Consulting with Westfall Gold, and a contributor/editor at Giving USA. We love talking with Lisa and other members of the team at Westfall Gold, because they really know their stuff. In fact, they recently crossed a major milestone, having now raised more than $1 Billion charitable dollars for their clients!

Lisa was gracious enough to talk with us about what she and her colleagues are seeing in the market today, and what we need to be thinking about, particularly related to engaging high net worth givers.

Here are some of the key points we gleaned from our conversation with Lisa:

• General donor giving is lower year-over-year (again), and retention is also down year-over-year. In fact, all the key performance indicators are down compared to last year.
• Major donor giving is fairly strong in 2019, lifting what would otherwise be a weaker year of philanthropic giving. We also see that more money is going into Donor Advised Funds, so complex asset-based gifts are now more likely than ever before.
• 90% of all charitable giving in the US happens in cash. This is the inverse of how most Americans hold their wealth, especially as net worth increases. This means fundraisers are focusing on an ever-shrinking pool of resources because they are largely not engaging high net worth donors in conversations about how they can give from their assets instead of from their checkbooks.
• Westfall Gold’s research shows that “expert” donors (those who are well educated on the process, etc.) give 3X the level of novice donors. Unfortunately, we also find that fundraisers are reluctant to bring other experts (like financial advisors) into conversations with donors to help educate them about their giving options. Westfall’s research indicates this is largely because fundraisers are afraid that doing so will open their donors to other giving options and take money away from them/their organization. 
• When we think about High Net Worth donors, we need to shift our thinking around engaging them. They are not “donating” to your organization. They are investing in the cause. This means they’re looking for a return on that investment. And your ability to deliver that return, and to tell a compelling story around your impact will dictate how successful you’ll be with high net worth donors.