Theater Bartlesville recently received a 20,000 grant for meeting their challenge goal in the Planned Giving Partnership, provided in cooperation with the Bartlesville Community Foundation and the Bartlesville Regional United Way.
In an effort to encourage overall fund development for local nonprofit agencies, by including planned gifts alongside annual fundraising and capital campaigns, Bartlesville Community Foundation and Bartlesville Regional United Way launched the Planned Giving Partnership in September 2014.
The program is designed to encourage agencies to consciously build endowment gifts through planned giving. Planned gifts are gifts to charity from donor assets, rather than gifts from a donor’s income. Common ways to give through a donor’s estate include wills, revocable trusts, life insurance, retirement accounts, charitable trusts and charitable gift annuities.
Theater Bartlesville, a non-profit organization, began to struggle along with other such organizations, in the last few years, due to decreased grant opportunities, fewer membership dollars and increased costs. Realizing the need to invest in the future with endowment dollars, charitable gifts and legacy contributions, Theater Bartlesville got involved with the BCF’s Planned Giving Partnership.
According to Joanie Elmore, Managing Director, “We were thrilled to learn that we all had assets and possessed untapped resources and opportunities to give that we just were not aware of! Without the gifts of other art lovers in our community, we feared that our future was possibly not sustainable. We are so excited now to have seen this struggle turn around through Planned Giving! In just a short amount of time, we feel that we have a new lease on the future.”
As a part of the program, Bartlesville Community Foundation and Bartlesville Regional United Way provide a range of services to the partnership agencies and community donors. In order to ensure that agencies may participate in the program without sacrificing services to clients and the public, a portion of the costs associated with the program are underwritten by Bartlesville Community Foundation and Bartlesville Regional United Way. Each agency that participates in the program pays an annual fee, based on the size of their operating budget. In return, each agency receives a full-time, outsourced planned giving office, customized to their organizational culture.